Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
A Latino group that connects venture capitalists with startups and pushes media to diversify has raised its first $100 million fund focusing on new Hispanic companies, Russell writes.
Why it matters: Less than 1% of funds from the top 25 venture capital and private equity firms wind up in the hands of Latino-owned businesses, according to a study by Bain & Company, the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and the research nonprofit firm Latino Donor Collaborative.
Driving the news: L'Attitude Ventures announced this week it had raised over $100 million for the fund through a strategic anchor investment by JPMorgan Chase and initial investments from Trujillo Group and Bank of America.
- Other investors include U.C. Investments and MassMutual, Barclays, the Royal Bank of Canada and Polaris Limited Partners.
- L’Attitude Ventures founder and general partner Sol Trujillo said the fund is an opening salvo for an investment boom directed toward early-stage Hispanic-owned companies.
Latino entrepreneurs are responsible for about 50% of net new small business growth in the U.S. over the past decade, according to data from 2007 to 2017.
- Those Latino-owned businesses are growing in annual revenue faster than white-owned businesses, the study found.
Of note: The total economic output of U.S. Latinos reached $2.7 trillion in 2019 and would be tied for the seventh-largest GDP in the world if U.S. Latinos were an independent country, according to a detailed study by the Latino Donor Collaborative.
- The study found that the 2019 U.S. Latino gross domestic product of $2.7 trillion spiked from $2.1 trillion in 2015 to $1.7 trillion in 2010.
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