Kristina Liburd had grown used to being the only Black woman in the room.
Liburd is the CEO and founder of Viageur, an AI-powered travel concierge based in Boston, as well as an attorney with CounselUp Legal, which provides legal services to entrepreneurs. Earlier this year, as she was working with other local founders in the travel space, she noticed again and again just how white the travel tech scene was.
"We become the monolith of Black people," Liburd said. "We have to speak on everyone's behalf."
But in recent weeks, catalyzed by a string of high-profile deaths—particularly the alleged murder of George Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis—startup and venture capital leaders leaders have at long last begun to reckon with the racism in their own ranks.
Investors, business partners and consumers are asking, "How can I help? What can I do?" Liburd said. Some of that, she says, is performative; it's easy to publish a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and move on. Next, leaders will have to address things like the diversity of their investment portfolios and their own teams.
To help with that effort, on Monday, Liburd launched the Black Startup Collective. As it exists right now, it's a Typeform where Black entrepreneurs can fill out information about themselves and their ventures, with the intention of creating a public directory of Black-owned startups for investors and the innovation community as a whole. (Interested entrepreneurs can fill out the form here.)
"The aim is really to have one place of information for everyone," Liburd said. "The consumers that want to support, the investors who want diversity, the business partners who want to support—this is where they can look."
Although the form has only been online for a couple of hours, it has already received dozens of responses. Liburd is now figuring out the best way to make those responses public. She has also received messages from people with similar lists and networks that could potentially be integrated.
Liburd points out that Black founders, particularly Black women founders, only get a minute portion of venture capital investment. A February report from Fit Small Business found that just 1 percent of venture-backed startup founders are Black, and Massachusetts ranks in the bottom half of the best state for Black entrepreneurs.
"This is my aim: to assist, to make that uphill battle much less arduous, to provide [Black-owned startups] with the ability to get them the attention they deserve," Liburd said. "Sometimes, they don't get the means to be the next unicorn. This is my way of trying to bridge the gap, to get this list and provide a different avenue for everyone."
