To Seed Or Not To Seed: Exploring Inefficiencies in VC

This is the full discussion exploring inefficiencies in the venture capital allocation process.

The discussion occurred on March 8th, 2025, during SXSW Interactive.

Listen as

Lance Mason

moderates a discussion between Ethan Austin (Outside VC);

Kwame Boler

(CEO and Co-founder of Spritz) and Esosa Ighodaro-Johnson (Black Women Talk Tech).

Due to audiovisual (AV) issues at the beginning of this session, we will need to re-record the first portion of the panel, during which we presented our research and data visualizations on the funding gap.

We defined the funding gap as the variance between the amount of actual venture capital allocated to various demographic groups and our expectation of capital to be allocated to those groups (based on their representation amongst the population of venture capital-eligible startups).

P.S. The transcript will be updated soon!

Subscribe to be notified when the first portion of this panel is made available:

Photographs

Credits

Videographer: Tayo Falaiye (from Austin Production House) for SXSW

Photography: Jeremy Rashad Brown (from Brown Boy Productions) for SXSW

Original SXSW Link: Click Here