Renegade and Concrete Rose
In the Fall of 2019, I was lucky to get to know Sean Mendy while he was deep in ideation mode on what was to become Concrete Rose Capital. Sean wanted to leverage his background across startups, policy, and social impact to build an early-stage venture firm to address the racial wealth gap.
Concrete Rose was built around two core beliefs:
The definition of diverse companies had to be broad. Not only to invest in underrepresented founders (with emphasis on Black and Latinx), but also include companies founded to meet the needs of underrepresented consumers.
We need to act beyond money. Success will require an ecosystem change, in which diverse founders, operators, consumers and talent have the ability to be represented, empowered and supported. We need to broaden networks and access opportunities for diverse talent. Opportunity must be equally distributed.
Today, Concrete Rose is backed by entrepreneurs and operators with long track records of investing in and creating opportunities for underrepresented talent (including Jeff Weiner, Scott Forstall, and Zander Lurie), and investors who have been long advocates of diversity (including Theresia Gouw, Reid Hoffman and Josh Kopelman).
At Renegade, we partner with purpose-driven founders and teams who are authentically dedicated and committed to building diverse teams and inclusive company cultures — regardless of their own personal backgrounds.
We care deeply about diversity, not only because it is the right thing to do for the world we aspire to live in but also because we know that diverse companies drive better returns.
We also believe that Black Lives Matter, and that in order to drive true change, we must adopt scalable and repeatable ways in our own organization to drive the success of diverse talent and founders.
We were honored when Renegade was invited to be one of Concrete Rose’s Strategic VC Partners, alongside, ACrew, Greylock and NextPlay Ventures. Not only are we like-minded firms, we are also in the early days of writing our own stories as organizations. As we each build our firms, we have the unique opportunity to share deal flow, harness best practices in firm-building, offer outstanding support to companies across both of our portfolios, and share talent pools.
We are excited to partner with Sean, Ian Beadle, Jason Norman and Will Bumpus at Concrete Rose Capital and work together towards a more inclusive and diverse venture ecosystem.
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According to McKinsey & Company, companies that prioritize racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to financially outperform their competitors.