Closing the diversity data gap – we need your help

Tech has a diversity problem.

This isn’t controversial. We see it at tech industry events. In the Medium posts from discriminated former tech employees. In the mainstream news stories on toxic culture. But as a data company, we know that diversity has a data problem. 

Diversity beyond gender

Binary gender studies are relatively straightforward, which is why gender is the most covered area of diversity research in tech (the binary thing’s not ideal though we’ll get to that too). But ethnicity data is notoriously difficult to accurately source, and we believe the only responsible way to gather it is to ask people directly how they self identify.

It’s crucial that as an industry we are able to hold a microscope up to ourselves, to see how we are doing, and where we can change. And we can only do that with robust and reliable data.

That’s why we’ve added a new field to our user profiles that we’d like you to populate.

We need your help

Whether you’re a founder, VC, corporate exec or work in a startup, we’d like you to claim or create your profile on Dealroom, and help us gather the most comprehensive living dataset on ethnicity and gender in the tech industry. That means we’ll be able to produce research reports looking at founder and VC ethnicity in different territories, sub-sectors and funding stages for example. 

When we get to a point where we believe we have sufficient data coverage in this area for reliable analysis, you’ll be the first to see the findings.

So if you’re up for helping out, here’s what we’re asking you to do. Firstly if you’ve got an existing Dealroom profile, great! You can find your account profile details here. We’ve added a new ethnicity field that you won’t have seen before, and we’d love if you could fill it in.

If you don’t yet have an account, you can search Dealroom to see if you’re already listed in association to a startup or VC. E.g. if you’re Anne Boden (Hi Anne if you’re reading), you can claim an existing profile.

If not, then not to worry, you can set up a new Dealroom profile here.

Once you’re in, you can update details about your startup or fund, and fill in the new drop-down ethnicity field.

You can also choose to make your company/fund discoverable by this data point, but this is an opt-in.

We’ve also extended our gender options. This was a field we already had on Dealroom, but the only options were ‘male’ and ‘female’. We’ve now added other options of Non-binary, None of the above, and Prefer not to say. NB. We are planning on moving away from male and female to man and woman in the next iteration.

Claim or create your profile
Even more diversity data

We know that diversity and inclusion extends beyond gender and ethnicity, including but not limited to socio-economic background, LGBT+ communities, disability and neurodiversity. These are on our radar and we may add more fields in the future.

All of these fields are optional, and not a prerequisite of having a Dealroom account, but we are hopeful that with your help we can provide a comprehensive dataset on the capital flows to and performance of underrepresented founders in tech.

Thanks to our partners Atomico, BACKED, Community Growth Ventures, Cornerstone Partners, DiversityVC, OneTech and Unconventional Ventures for their feedback and support. If you have any feedback or would like to be involved, please do get in touch.