In the midst of a heartbreaking and infuriating week, members of the Minnesota Venture Capital Community released a letter of solidarity through Forge North mourning the death of George Floyd and rejecting the racist actions of Tom Austin.
“We recognize there are many deep and far-reaching challenges with the injustice we are seeing in our communities this week which we want to be an active part of engaging on solutions,” Mary Grove, who serves on The Minneapolis Foundation’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement to tech.mn. “With this post, we wanted to pull on this one very specific thread around VC, because we know that Tom Austin’s actions completely fly in the face of our investor community’s values, and we want to proactively affirm our group’s values in a transparent way.”
“Our doors are open, and to our communities of color and all underrepresented entrepreneurs – we stand by you.” — Minnesota Venture Capital Community
The letter underscored the venture capital community’s dedication to, “broadening and demystifying the closed networks that usually accompany venture capital,” and was signed by many prominent members.
“With this post, we hope to dispel any notions locally or nationally that this is what VC in Minnesota is and state our aspirations around continuing to work hard toward a more inclusive ecosystem,” Grove said.
