How One Trailblazer Remade The Venture Capital Model To Serve Black Entrepreneurs

Kathryn Finney has never been afraid to start something new. From Yale-trained epidemiologist to fashion blogger to one of the most influential women in tech, Finney has found success in multiple industries as well as careers. Now, as a venture capitalist, Finney is laser focused on helping other Black entrepreneurs find success by changing the investment landscape for Black founders.

Finney credits her success to an upbringing without limitations. “You know that one gene that people have that tells them don't do something? My husband often says I don't have that,” Finney says with a laugh. With parents who took their own entrepreneurial risks, Finney has always felt emboldened in pursuing whatever she set her mind to. “I grew up as this young Black girl seeing my parents take risks that paid off. I thought I could do anything.”

Having invested millions of dollars in Black and Latinx entrepreneurs through her work with Genius Guild, digitalundivided, The Doonie Fund, and The Greenhouse Fund, Finney recently won PayPal’s inaugural Maggie Lena Walker Achievement Award, named after the first Black woman – and first woman period – to charter a bank and serve as its president in the U.S. “Her legacy means that we've always been here,” Finney explains. “As a Black woman in this space, you often feel like you're the only person but your success has already been paid for by your ancestors.”

In 2003, while working in healthcare as an epidemiologist, Finney started her blog, The Budget Fashionista, on a whim. Later, the success from her blog would morph into regular media appearances and eventually a book deal. “I didn't even put any thought behind it,” she explains. “Then it was like, ‘oh my God. I can get paid to do this? People actually care about this?’"

“As a Black woman in this space, you often feel like you're the only person but your success has already been paid for by your ancestors.”

It was around this time that Finney enrolled in an accelerator program where she was, unsurprisingly, the only Black woman. After presenting a natural hair care subscription box in a culminating pitch challenge, she was told by a white male panelist that he didn’t think she could relate to the “average Black woman” because she used an accountant. Not only did the panelist’s feedback undermine Finney’s invaluable insight, it ignored Black women consumers as a whole. While she gleaned plenty of new and useful information from the program, Finney then understood how these V.C. programs may serve as a detriment to Black thought-leaders. “By having all these programs, you shift the blame away from what the true problem is. It's like, ‘no, we're ready. We're good. We have companies. We have businesses. We are here. We're ready to deploy capital.’”

By the time she sold her media company in 2013, she founded digitalundivided, a social enterprise designed to help “catalyze economic growth in Black and Latinx communities,” according to its website. And it would be through this work that Finney would hit a turning point in her multifaceted career when the fund’s official 2016 report, Project Diane, revealed the dismal numbers of venture capital funding among Black founders, with most raising significantly less than the average startup.

In light of COVID-19 and seeing how smaller businesses were having a harder time navigating government assistance and Paycheck Protection Program loans, Finney knew that the heart of her operation would need to shift to support more entrepreneurs. Using $10,000 of her own money, she started The Doonie Fund, named after her grandmother, to encourage Black women entrepreneurs to continue building their businesses amid what became the first year of a surging pandemic. “As a business, it was devastating,” she explains. To aid businesses in need, Finney authorized funding of small grants for several companies. Through doling out over 1600 $100 micro-investments, Finney says the impact changed not only her life, but the lives of those business owners, citing one woman who pivoted from clothing to face masks and donated $10,000 back into the fund after netting over $100,000 profit in sales.

By that May, the tragic murder of George Floyd and an ensuing racial reckoning took center stage. As a Minneapolis native who went to elementary school a mere six blocks from where the murder took place, those events of 2020 added a new spark to her vision to create a more financially supportive and sustainable world for Black people. Finney harnessed all of her frustrations as well as the moments of hopeful inspiration into a fund called Genius Guild, a $20 million dollar studio and venture fund that invests in innovative Black founders. “We're investing in people who are rethinking concepts like caregiving and the supply chain,” she explained.

In her upcoming book, Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business If You're Not a Rich White Guy (as well as its corresponding podcast), Finney emphasizes the virtues of being mentally prepared, crafting a strong support system, and being comfortable with failure. “You need a toolbox to help you get through,” she says. “Also, it’s important to get comfortable with putting yourself out there, getting feedback from people, and then making your offering better and putting it back out there again.”

Even as a self-described futurist, Finney will often look towards her roots to help inform her work. As a direct descendant of citizens affected by the Tulsa massacre of 1921, Finney understands what communities and the larger world can look like when Black businesses have the tools and resources to be self-reliant. “We have this legacy. We don't even have to look for it. We don't even have to imagine it. You can't imagine the future if you don't know your past.”

“You can't imagine the future if you don't know your past.”

For other BIPOC business owners, Finney says her one piece of advice is not to lose time trying to appeal to the white, male-dominated world of venture capitalism and instead focus on a product that creates value. “We have the same 24 hours that everyone else has,” she says. “If we have to spend 20 of those hours helping others come around to the fact that Black people can create a business, that means that we only have four hours left to actually spend on our business.”

For Finney, her work offers her a chance to imagine a world far different than our current reality, built by innovative minds that often go ignored. “There’s something about being around people creating in this time when everyone else is destroying,” she says. “It gives me hope for the future.”

This article is part of a series shining a light on the recipients of the first-ever PayPal Maggie Lena Walker Award, which aim to recognize the achievements of underrepresented women who are economically empowering their communities and creating a more inclusive world. To get the full story, read the BDG Studios profile on the three winners of the Maggie Lena Walker Emerging Leader awards as well as our conversation with artist Reyna Noriega and Walker’s great-great granddaughter Liza Mickens.