At 0.69% in Q1, the dip in funding for Black founders ‘no longer evokes an emotional response’
Black founders are also seeing a year-over-year decline in Q1 funding, according to new Crunchbase data that looked at seed, venture, private equity and corporate venture capital funding allocated to Black entrepreneurs. This might be a good time to look for alternative funding avenues, according to founders TechCrunch+ spoke with.
The data set shows that in Q1 2023, Black founders raised an estimated 0.69%, or $312 million, out of the around $45 billion Crunchbase totaled for the quarter. Per Crunchbase numbers, Black founders saw a decrease in year-over-year funding from Q1 2022, when Black founders raised 1.5% — or $1.26 billion — out of the $81 billion allocated in private funding.
That’s a 75.2% drop in funding.
It’s not all bad news, though: Although funding dipped in the early half of 2022, it steadily increased from $191 million in Q3 to $279 million in Q4, jumping again to $312 million in the first quarter of this year.