Early-stage venture capital firm Harlem Capital is receiving a $ 10 million investment as part of Apple’s Diversity Push.
Apple announced the investment on Wednesday as part of its plan to dedicate $ 100 million to racial justice and justice.
CEO Tim Cook originally announced the Racial Justice and Justice Initiative in June as one of several corporate responses to civil unrest following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The funding will come over the next two decades and will help Harlem Capital achieve its goal of investing in 1,000 diverse companies in 20 years.
“We always try to get capital in relation to the population in the hands of the people,” said Jarrid Tingle, managing partner of Harlem Capital, in an interview on “Squawk Alley” of CNBC on Thursday.
The company currently has 21 investments in 11 cities and nine industries. Forty-three percent of companies are run entirely by women, and 47 percent by black or Latin American CEOs.
Companies in the company’s portfolio include black media company Blavity and government platform GovPredict.
The company previously received a portion of PayPal’s $ 50 million investment to fill the venture capital financing gap that black and Latin American entrepreneurs are facing.
According to a Crunchbase Diversity Spotlight report for 2020, the founders of Black and Latino accounted for only 2.6% of the total $ 87.3 billion in funding towards the end of 2020, though dollar amounts are increasing every year.
However, Tingle remained optimistic that the tide would turn.
“The time will come,” said Tingle. “The challenge is that they didn’t really get those opportunities until 2013 or 2014, so they never got the chance to get to the point where they would go public.”
While some experts point out a pipeline issue, Tingle said he doesn’t face it when identifying companies with different leadership skills. When Harlem Capital started an investment search, they found 200 women, black and Latino-run companies that had independently raised over $ 1 million.
“Our bet at Harlem Capital is that helping these entrepreneurs help them build businesses, create wealth, hire different people and then invest back when they are successful, and that happens,” said Tingle. “But we also believe that you cannot be what you cannot see.”
