Episode 16: Increasing Inclusion in Startups&Venture Capital w/ Brian Brackeen - General Partner @ Lightship Capital - a podcast by Will Weinraub

from 2020-07-02T07:00

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Today, I am joined by my friend Brian Brackeen, who is the general partner at Lightship Capital. 

Brian and I go way back in the #MiamiTech scene together. 

Brian was the co-founder and CEO of a facial recognition company called Kairos, that really pushed forward the whole space with some incredible innovations. In particular, Kairos really broke-ground by making a stance to never sell their technology to government or law enforcement for surveillance purposes due to the ramifications that it could cause.     

Now after moving on from Kairos, Brian is the General Partner of Lightship Capital, a $50M venture capital fund that is focused on investing in minority-led startups.

In this episode, Brian and I discuss recent events and the importance of this moment. After the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, there has been a huge demand to see real change across our nation, primarily with racism and the plight that Black American's across our country have to deal with on a daily basis. 

Racism exists in many forms and through many different communities. Unfortunately, Brian has first hand experience dealing with systemic racism in the startup and venture capital space, and he recently wrote an article called “Some Of My Fellow Venture Capitalist Are Racists. Here Is How You Fix It” which I thought was absolutely eye opening.

After reading that article, I asked if Brian would come onto the show to give more about his perspective as a Black founder turned venture capitalist, to have some difficult conversations about the racism that exists in those spaces, and what actionable steps we can do as a community to help.

I’m incredibly grateful for this conversation, and I hope you get as much value out of it as I did.

Find Brian Brackeen:

Check out Brian's latest article: Some Of My Fellow Venture Capitalists Are Racists. Here is How You Fix It.



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