Seth Levine > Quotes

“Women receive only a fraction of venture dollars (2.2 percent in 2018, according to Fortune) compared to male company founders. And startups led by Black women have raised even less, only about 0.06 percent of total venture dollars invested between 2009 and 2017, according to digitalundivided's ProjectDiane. Black women may be the fastest‐growing segment of new business founders, but in the world of tech startups and venture capital, they might as well be invisible.”
― Seth Levine, The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business

“Black founders also continue to deal with overt racism. As reported in the 2015 CB Insights Analysis, about 1 percent of venture capital investments end up in the hands of Black founders, despite the fact that Black founders represent 11 percent of the population. In addition, Black founders are often denied loans or receive a lesser loan amount than requested. More than 53 percent of loan applications by Black founders are denied. In contrast, approximately 25 percent of loans for White founders are denied.”
― Seth Levine, The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business

“Stock buy‐backs – companies using cash from their balance sheets to purchase their stock in the open market for the purpose of retiring that stock and increasing their earnings per share – hit an all‐time high in 2018, with over $800 billion spent on such efforts. That was an increase of over 50 percent from the prior year and represented the most extensive annual stock buy‐back total ever recorded (the previous record was 2007, just before the Great Recession of 2008–2009). Contrast that to more traditional R&D investing that increased at a much more modest 8.8 percent that same year.20 When given the choice of where to invest the additional dollars generated from paying lower taxes, companies chose to invest in boosting their stock price, not in their businesses' future development or in their communities.”
― Seth Levine, The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business

“The high‐tech entrepreneurs who garner so much of our collective attention are a tiny sliver of the small businesses that drive the US economy. Fewer than 1 percent of entrepreneurs are backed by venture capital. Less than 250,000 businesses are “high‐tech.”
― Seth Levine, The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business

“The average White family in America has nearly 10 times the wealth of the average Black or Latino family. Many Black families who have established themselves in the middle or upper‐middle class are only one generation into that income and wealth class.”
― Seth Levine, The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business

“In a recent analysis, the Center for American Entrepreneurship determined that 43 percent of Fortune 500 companies were started by either immigrants or the children of immigrants. These immigrant‐founded firms employed 12.8 million people in 2016 and generated $5.3 trillion in revenue. Immigrants start businesses at roughly twice the rate of nonimmigrants and as such they are a critical component of our entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
― Seth Levine, The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business