Mara Zepeda and Jennifer Brandel, co-founders of Zebras Unite, believe that getting larger isn’t the answer for every startup. In fact, they wrote an opinion piece for the Harvard Business Review on why “we need more startups that don’t prioritize growth above all else.”
According to the entrepreneurial pair, corporate America’s “growth at all costs” worked for too few and there are too few people sitting at the funding table.
“If the CEOs at the Business Roundtable are serious about fixing shareholder capitalism, they need to take an honest look at who gets funding, how local communities are affected, and what voices are missing from the conversation,” they wrote.
The two don’t hold venture-backed companies in high regard. They wrote these startups “breed toxic culture, worker exploitation, and homogeneity both in leadership and shareholders. In some cases, these companies can also destabilize sectors that are bedrock to local economies and, some have argued, erode the foundation of democracy.”
The entrepreneurial game is not fair. Black startups, Black women startups have many more obstacles.
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“Not everyone has a fair shot at entrepreneurship. According to one analysis, 82 percent of the venture capital industry is male, nearly 60 percent of the industry is white male, 40 percent of the industry comes from just two academic institutions. Meanwhile, 80 percent of all venture capital goes to only three states. Fewer than 1 percent of venture capital-backed founders are Black, and 3 percent are women,” Zepeda and Brandel wrote.
But there are options for startups by people of color. There are such funds as Black & Brown Founders, Native Women Lead, Digital Undivided, Founder Gym, and Backstage Capital.
Startups can also partner with organizations meant to give them a boost, such as Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, which has built a network of worker owned, democratically self-managed cooperatives. Then in New York, there’s Cooperative Home Care Associates with more than 90 percent owned by women of color, it is the largest worker-owned co-op in the state.
The pair also suggests that startups “learn from living zebras.”
“Over the last three years, a diverse founder community has come together in the Zebras Unite movement. Unlike ‘unicorns,’ high-growth startups valued at more than a billion dollars, Zebra companies prioritize mutualism, shared prosperity, and social good over Silicon Valley’s ‘winner take all’ mentality. Many of these companies were founded at the margins, by women and people of color,” they wrote.
Zepeda and Brandel also advise startups to create more public/private collaborations — to build a bridge between Wall Street and Main Street.
To prove this could be done, the pair created organizations to help startups such as Civic Exchange (of which Brandel is a co-founder). The newly launched co-working space and learning community is centered on how news, information and technology can increase democracy and freedom. “Working across journalism, government, education and social services, these startups are helping democratic institutions evolve to better serve the public. They achieve this goal by recognizing that they are stronger together,“ they wrote.
Then there is Business for a Better Portland in Oregon (of which Mara is a co-founder). Considered the city’s fastest-growing business organization, it has advocated for “critical investments in clean energy jobs for communities of color affordable housing, and equitable access to capital for all entrepreneurs.”
