Ethnicity

Last year we recognised that our ethnic representation was not good enough so we outlined our commitments to pushing this forward. Unfortunately this hasn’t been enough to improve our representation of minority ethnic groups. Despite a 5% increase in Asian representation across the team, we have also seen a 2% increase in people who identify as white, moving from 73% in 2020 to 75% in 2021. 

One action we’ve taken is to send out our new diversity dashboard on a weekly basis, increasing visibility around the diversity of our hiring pipelines to ensure we are always challenging ourselves to hire more diversely.

Disability or mental health condition

10% of our team have a disability or long-term health condition, with 6% preferring not to say. We know that the past 18 months have been particularly tough on our mental health, that’s why we have implemented quarterly mental health days. This encourages everyone at Founders Factory to make sure they are prioritising their mental wellbeing by spending the day looking after themselves. These days also encourage everyone to talk about their mental health with their co-workers. Opening up the conversation around mental health in the workplace is so important in helping us to support one other.

Education

60% of our team have a bachelor's degree or equivalent, with 32% having a masters or equivalent. Although some of our teams require formal qualifications for their professions, we want to ensure that working for Founders Factory is accessible to all. That  is why we have taken the decision to remove all formal qualifications from our role requirements unless it is absolutely necessary for that job. We hope this will encourage people from all educational backgrounds to apply to work with us.

New Talent Initiatives 

The fact we’ve struggled to hire diverse talent to the level we would like reinforces our belief that we need to make the change from the bottom up. As a result, we are investing more time and resources to source and upskill diverse talent. We wanted to call out some of our key initiatives, trying to build talent and drive investment into more diverse entrepreneurs and tech talent. 

The Future Founders Lab

Run in parallel with our venture design process, this new programme will aim to build a cohort of future founders with a focus on investing in underrepresented talent, identifying key indicators of founder success that look beyond university or employer history, as well as matching business concepts to the lived experience of founders. Our ambitious targets for this will build a far more diverse talent pipeline: 50% female founders, 35% founders from minoritised backgrounds, 15% from lower socio-economic backgrounds, 5% LGBTQ+, and 5% with disabilities. Our first initiative is being run alongside our Mission Studio, in partnership with innovation agency Nesta, where we’ll be building impact-led ventures. 

Black Seed

We’re partnering with two London-based entrepreneurs—Karl Lokko and Cyril Lutterodt—to launch Black Seed, aimed at building a community around and bringing investment to black-owned businesses. Over the next three years, this hopes to bring seed funding to a portfolio of 30 businesses, as well as office space and support.   

Hispanic Star Ventures

In the US, we’ve launched a $10 million pre/seed investment program aiming to overcome the challenges that Hispanic founders face in the US. The Hispanic community makes up 17% of the US population, and 51% of projected population growth, but receives just 1% of VC funding. Over the next three years, the programme will support 30 Hispanic-owned tech startups.

Power to Underrepresented Founders events

We’re hosting events targeted at Black founders and LGBTQ+ founders providing connections to VCs and investors through 1-2-1 office hours, as well as masterclasses from the FF Operations team

01 Founders

This free coding course, part of the Founders Forum group, is designed to diversify the talent pool and widen access to tech jobs for underrepresented groups. Their mission is to train 100,000 diverse software engineers by 2030. You need no academic qualifications to apply, the course is entirely free provided you complete the programme, and there are maintenance grants for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. There is also an employment guarantee for all graduates at one of 01’s partner companies. 

New internal practices 

We’ve also taken on several other internal workstreams to enhance our approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion:

• Religious holiday leave - all employees are encouraged to take leave around holidays that aren’t covered by UK bank holidays

• Gender neutral family leave policy - we’ve equalised pay for the primary carer to be either parent irrespective of gender. We've also codified return to work practices

• D&I materials for the portfolio - on the recommendation of Diversity VC, we have created extensive D&I resources for the use of founders in our portfolio, helping them to build diversity and inclusion into the fabric of their companies. We also ran a webinar with Hannah Keal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Unleashed on ‘Diversity and Inclusion in Startups’, to talk to the portfolio about how to build a diverse and inclusive company from day one 

• Our Women's Network continues to flourish - hosting monthly speaker sessions and meet-ups (now in person again!) on topics including ‘Turbo-charging your personal growth’ hosted by Alice Ter Haar, ‘Mental Health + Resilience’ hosted by Michelle Morgan, ‘A conversation on Leadership’ hosted by Accelerate Her, ‘Female Financial Empowerment’ hosted by Emilie Bellet of Vestpod, and ‘Crypto: why women need to know’ hosted by Sara Feenan.