Allison Byers’ Post

Transcript

Thank you. Thank you, chair and committee members for letting me come and testify today. My name is Allison Byers. I'm the founder of a tech startup called Scroobious. We are an AI powered platform that connects diverse founders with investors. We've helped over 550 founders, the majority of whom identify as underrepresented, create their pitch material for fundraising, and we have witnessed the bias and injustice that they face in the fundraising process. I have experienced this personally many times and it is why I started this company. So we see this injustice reflected in the numbers that we've all heard today, where of the $238 billion of venture capital allocated in 2022, women got 1.7% of that, black founders less than a percent, black women less than 0.35% of that money. I challenge you to find another industry or resource in our country that has that level of disparity. This data comes from trusted sources like Pitch Book and Crunch Base. Yet they rely on industry partners and news sources because funds are not required to report their diversity metrics. And despite an increase in public rhetoric, 8 out of 10 investors view the funding landscape as balanced. Those investors are general partners of funds, and they manage money that comes from endowments, wealthy individuals, pensions like CalPERS, and other fiduciary. Backers. Is that where those investors want their money going? So we have witnessed the positive impact of other bills that require data reporting in areas like board composition and diversity in the workplace. This bill takes a crucial step toward rectifying the inequities in the funding landscape of venture capital by establishing accurate measurement and public availability that will foster accountability and progress. California's responsible. I'm wrapping. I'm gonna wrap up. California's responsible for 36% of US venture funding. So this will have a global impact. I'm going to close now. I'm testifying today because this is deeply personal to me. This issue is a female founder representing a community of hundreds of underrepresented entrepreneurs. And I'm proud to support SB54. I hope you will be, too. Thank you for your time. So just to follow up just a little bit more, is it that? See, what I'm wondering is, are the presentations coming and being rejected or is it that they're just not coming, in which case this ain't going to hurt. I'd just like to know what we're dealing with. Sure. If you don't mind, perhaps would you like to answer that? Because you sure? Well, I think the spirit of the bill as we would all like to know what's going on. A real lack of transparency in any of the questions that you're asking because it isn't mandated. And what we are seeing, I can tell you based on data that I've seen from all the reports that are coming out from private institutions who are taking it upon themselves to measure this is there are a lot of meetings that are being taken. It is not an issue of people going for funding or pitching for funding. In fact, black women are starting businesses faster than any other segment of our population and receive the lowest amount of venture funding. They're not. Actually getting the funding and we want to measure it right We we wanna actually have some accurate data here so that we all know what's going on. I'm happy to support the bill and I'd like to move the bill.