Mitch Kapor

Freada Kapor Klein

Kapor Center Investments

As the founding partners of Kapor Capital and the nonprofit Kapor Center in Oakland, Calif., Freada and Mitch Kapor target their investments in tech companies that close gaps for communities of color and low-income communities. This is an area they feel is overlooked by most venture capital firms. The result is that a significant number of diverse entrepreneurs that are developing innovative solutions to close these gaps are not receiving funding. In fact, they aren’t even getting a look from traditional VC firms. “We do better than 75% of venture capital firms out there, which are only focused on making money,” said Freada, referring to Kapor Capital. “Our model can be used to convince other VC firms that having a diversity lens, a gap-closing lens, can be an effective way to get a return on investment.” Their investment criteria is less focused on traditional metrics and pedigree of the founder. Instead, they have developed the concept of “distance travelled.” In other words, they believe that “Where did a person start out in life, and what hurdles and barriers have they overcome? That tells us a lot about their persistence, their resilience. Those are important character traits to succeed as an entrepreneur.” If only the venture community, as a whole, adopted their investment thesis.