How Boston Lost Big on Black Tech

A few years ago, as the executive director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets, I got the idea to partner with Mass Innovation Nights to showcase African and African-American founders of technology companies—think of it like a science fair, with each company having an exhibit and a chance to pitch their company and products to potential investors, employees, and the media. I only needed 15—easy, right? Not so much. It took me months to find them, searching all of the incubators, accelerators, shared workspaces, and colleges across the state.I often felt like a detective, asking people, “Do you know, or have you heard of, a Black founder of a tech company?” In contrast, I could walk into a place such as the Cambridge Innovation Center and find a dozen white tech founders on one floor (and there were several floors). If it was this hard for me to find Black founders, I knew venture capitalists, who had stacks of business plans to vet, weren’t going to go looking for Black-founded STEM-based startups. It was clear to me we had a problem—and at the time, I didn’t even realize the scope of it.

On paper, Boston should be a Black tech founder’s dream city. It’s among America’s top three tech investment hubs, alongside Silicon Valley, and leads the nation in life-sciences funding. The region consistently ranks third in venture capital deals and total funding nationally. For life sciences, Massachusetts stands alone at the top, drawing more NIH funding and venture capital than anywhere else. Add in tax incentives for biotech, pre-zoned science parks, and the presence of 18 of the country’s top 20 biopharma companies, and you have what looks like perfect startup terrain. Yet search “best cities for Black founders” or “best cities for Black tech entrepreneurs,” and Boston often doesn’t make the lists at all. Not just near the bottom—utterly absent.

The numbers are stark. When the Boston Globe analyzed Crunchbase data, it found that companies with Black founders received just 0.4 percent of Massachusetts’ $34.8 billion in venture capital investments in 2021—ranking the state a dismal 20th nationwide. By contrast, in Atlanta, Black founders captured 8.9 percent of investments (though funding for Black-founded startups has since dropped nationwide), helping create a city that now boasts more than 11,000 Black millionaires and several billionaires. Boston, despite its advantages, has yet to produce a Black billionaire.

The stakes couldn’t be higher when it comes to Boston’s racial wealth gap. Currently, the city’s Black community holds roughly $1.65 billion in net worth, while white residents command $69.59 billion, based on 2022 Urban Institute data. Meanwhile, investment firm ARK Invest recently projected that emerging technologies—from AI and battery tech to blockchain, robotics, and gene sequencing—will generate more than $200 trillion in market value by 2030. This booming tech sector could offer a path toward generational wealth for communities of color.

But without a clear strategy to close the wealth gap, continued venture capital influx only threatens to push the city’s already astronomical cost of living even higher—affecting all Bostonians, regardless of race. So the question remains: Where’s the plan to address it?

Modern Venture capital’s mid-20th-century origin in Boston is well established. In 1946, the American Research and Development Corporation pioneered the industry, backing future giants like Digital Equipment Corporation. That foundation helped create a biotechnology cluster that Harvard Business School professor emeritus Michael Porter has called “one of the strongest in the world.” Yet while other cities have helped Black founders overcome centuries of systemic barriers—from the destruction of Black Wall Streets and Freedom Colonies to patent exclusion for enslaved people, redlining, restrictive covenants, and GI Bill discrimination—Boston has fallen behind.

One view among those in the industry is that there is some degree of implicit bias at play. Call it “pattern recognition”: When you see an investment in a person like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or Sean Parker is successful, you look for the next one, not one who is Black with dreadlocks. Atlanta has an advantage because it already has lots of successful Black businesspeople and successful Black founders in the tech space. That makes it easier for investors to believe in the next Black founder who pitches them.

Another reason is that until recently, Boston lacked VC funds specifically targeting Black founders, in stark contrast to Atlanta (home to Fearless Fund and Collab Capital) and Los Angeles (home to MaC Venture Capital and Backstage Capital, which focuses on all marginalized groups). This funding disparity partially explains why those cities have seen more successful exits by Black founders—something Boston has yet to achieve. Atlanta has even produced a “unicorn” (billion-dollar-plus company): Calendly, a business communication platform valued at $3 billion in 2021. “Atlanta is what a next generation, global, post-Silicon Valley tech hub looks like,” Lisa Calhoun, founding managing partner of Atlanta-based Valor Ventures, told TechCrunch. “Our demographics are 10 years ahead of the U.S.’s transformation into a majority-minority society.”

Another possible reason Boston has not done better is that it already has a large, diverse, and growing economy that includes healthcare, education, financial services, technology, life sciences, and tourism. If there was never another Black founder of a STEM-based company, it’s likely that very few people would notice.

When capitalism’s promise of freely flowing capital fails to reach Black and Brown innovators, we don’t just perpetuate inequality—we rob ourselves of vital solutions.

Yet the stakes of diversifying tech and biopharma entrepreneurship extend far beyond equity. With global challenges mounting, we need every bright mind working on solutions. When capitalism’s promise of freely flowing capital fails to reach Black and brown innovators, we don’t just perpetuate inequality—we rob ourselves of vital solutions.

Founders of color, in particular, have the opportunity to capture massive untapped markets, generating returns for impact-focused investors. While millions of people from diverse backgrounds face unique challenges, those problems often remain invisible to mainstream investors who’ve never encountered them. Take Reginald Swift, founder and CEO of
Lawrence-based Rubix LS. In 2016, his medical research company, focused on improving outcomes for globally diverse patient populations, struck 42 investors as uninteresting. One even dismissed it as “niche.” Later, Swift’s comment to the Boston Business Journal was telling: “There are 7, 8 billion people on the planet, and about 4 billion of them are of diverse descent. And you’re telling them that’s niche? I think they were short-sighted in a lot of ways.”

COVID-19 proved his point. When vaccine clinical trials were criticized for their lack of diversity, Swift’s company stepped in to recruit underrepresented groups, and investors finally saw what Swift had known all along: Serving diverse communities wasn’t just necessary—it was profitable.

National competitiveness adds another dimension to this challenge. With only a small fraction of the Black community currently holding STEM jobs or degrees, America is missing out on a vast pool of potential innovators. Moving underrepresented groups from tech consumers to tech creators is vital; that’s because successful Black-owned tech companies do more than turn a profit—they build generational wealth in historically overlooked communities. These companies create quality jobs, often with equity stakes, offering paths to the middle class and beyond. For employees, this can mean the difference between renting and owning a home, and between basic and comprehensive healthcare.

Finally, there’s proof that these investments spur returns. Boston-based Reinventure Capital, a venture fund focused on investing in early-growth, post-seed companies led by overlooked founders—Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, people of color, and women—has shown that BIPOC funds can outperform their peers. Take the firm’s Fund I as an example: The company boasts it has delivered returns that are double the industry average and “consistently ranks in the top 25 percent of all U.S. venture capital funds of its vintage year.”

But while other cities have recognized the importance of increasing the number of Black-founded STEM-based companies and developed strategic plans to address the issue, Boston’s leadership in the public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors has largely overlooked it. The 2021 mayoral race crystallized this blind spot: Despite countless debates, not once did candidates address plans for increasing Black-founded tech companies. When I tried repeatedly to add this question as Greater Grove Hall Main Streets’ executive director, organizers dismissed it as too narrow in appeal.

So what, exactly, should we do if we want to increase the number of Black-founded STEM-based companies in Boston? First, we must do the research to truly understand what’s driving the disparity among cities. Then, we need to build the business case for investment. Boston’s civic leaders won’t do it just because it’s “the right thing to do”—and if they did, it would fall apart like some current DEI initiatives.

From there, what we really need is a comprehensive strategy on the civic level. When Massachusetts set out to lead in areas like climate technology and artificial intelligence, governors Maura Healey and Charlie Baker didn’t leave it to the market—they committed resources and developed a plan. Supporting Black-founded STEM startups demands the same level of intentional planning and investment.

Celtics all-star Jaylen Brown and his nonprofit Boston XChange are already leading the way in providing grants, resources, and services to businesses founded by people of color. Perhaps Andreessen Horowitz could partner with Brown to create an East Coast version of its Talent x Opportunity initiative. The rest of Boston’s leadership community needs to step up. Ideally, the region would see the formation of a committee comprising representatives from the corporate, nonprofit, public, and philanthropic sectors whose goal would be to commission the research, interpret the findings, develop a plan, and secure commitments from all stakeholders involved.

In the meantime, there are other ways we can start increasing the number of successful Black-founded STEM companies. Establishing a listing of companies, especially those looking for funding, would make it easier for those interested in investing in Black founders to find them, and would also be helpful in building a necessary ecosystem for the founders themselves. Holding an annual showcase of Black-founded STEM companies would also help make them more visible. Boston is one of the few major cities that does not have a Black tech conference.

Other cities’ successes offer a roadmap, but Boston needs its own blueprint—one that leverages our unique strengths while addressing our specific challenges.

Similarly, building a sustainable ecosystem requires long-term investments in the talent pipeline. The city should expand school-based or after-school STEM education, AI and coding programs, and entrepreneurship training for students to provide early exposure to the industry, and provide resources for mid-career Black professionals who want to start their own company.

The good news is that Boston doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. In Atlanta, accelerators and incubators such as the Engage Fund and Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative have made the city a hub for diverse founders. In Miami, organizations like the Center for Black Innovation and partnerships with the Knight Foundation have helped the city prioritize equity in its tech ecosystem. Los Angeles’s PledgeLA coalition has brought together VCs, tech leaders, and the Annenberg Foundation to focus on diversity and equity. And in Baltimore, reports like Collectively We Rise showcased how collaboration among businesses, educational institutions, and government can drive economic inclusion.

These successes offer a roadmap, but Boston needs its own blueprint—one that leverages the city’s unique strengths while addressing its specific challenges. Every week we delay means missed opportunities for innovation, job creation, and economic growth. Our shared future prosperity depends on it.

This article was first published in the print edition of the March 2025 issue with the headline: “The Missing Pipeline.”