We’ve wanted to undertake a project supporting ethnic diversity in entrepreneurship for quite a while. But we’ve held off until now in order to do it properly. For context, during the pandemic we hosted a few virtual roundtables on the topic, and while the speakers and attendees were great, the feedback was that we needed to deliver more than just a platform for an interesting conversation.

A subsequent interview with Sharon Vosmek, CEO of Astia, cemented this view. In her words: “your job is to convene the conversations that lead to investment; not lead to more coaching; not lead to more sponsoring; not lead to more hand waving. 92% of all VCs are white male. It’s that simple. And when you have that profound disparity, or what I’ll call that consistent a phenotype, you should have no expectation to achieve any sort of result other than what we’ve seen in venture: that it invests in white men of a specific phenotype.”

Today we’re launching something substantive, working with Morgan Stanley on the Inclusive Innovation Forum.

It will bring together some of the leading ethnic minority entrepreneurs, investors and policy experts in the UK and Europe, as well as a wider network of the most ambitious, high-potential entrepreneurs and people supportive of ethnic minority entrepreneurship.

But crucially, it’s also a project to find entrepreneurs for Morgan Stanley’s Multicultural Innovation Lab, which is expanding to the UK. It’s offering £200,000 to each participating company in exchange for an equity stake. The 51 companies that have participated in the Lab to-date have already raised over £100 million.

The project will be led by the incredible Anisah Osman Britton, who has dedicated her career to ensuring that building the future is an inclusive venture. Anisah is the director of storytelling at alternative VC fund Calm Capital Fund and a startup life reporter at Sifted. She also founded 23 Code Street.

So what’s next? Subscribe to our new Inclusive Innovation Forum newsletter to be kept up-to-date with what we’re up to, and forward this on to entrepreneurs, investors, or policy experts that we should get involved.

Speak for Yourself
We already have lots of events in the pipeline, and in the coming weeks we’ll be announcing lots more. With so many speaking opportunities, we want to hear from you if there are any issues related to entrepreneurs that you wish you could talk about with our incredible network of entrepreneurs, experts and policy makers.

For example, we’ll be running roundtables with the immigration department of Kingsley Napley on the impact of immigration rules on businesses, and co-hosting an event in The Shard with The Office Group on how to attract talent in a disrupted landscape. We also have our ongoing Female Founders Forum with Barclays and our Green Entrepreneurship Forum with Mishcon de Reya. But there will be much else besides.

Whether online or in-person, speaking at one of our events doesn’t always require a lot of preparation. One format that works well is to have ‘conversation starters’, which just means you can talk off-the-cuff about an issue impacting your business or your area of expertise.

As well as getting prominence for you and your business, speakers at our events often give us insights for policy research and for our discussions with the government.

If you’re keen to get involved, just get in touch with our events team, letting them know a little about yourself and what you would like to talk about. Bullet points will be fine. We’ll read them all and we’ll be in touch if and when an opportunity arises.

On the Horizon
I don’t normally share job opportunities, but this one is too important to miss. The Regulatory Horizons Council (RHC) team is looking for its next Chair to manage and lead the Council.

The RHC is an independent expert committee that identifies the implications of technological innovation, and provides the government with impartial, expert advice on the regulatory reform required to support its rapid and safe introduction.

I’ve been very encouraged with the work they’ve done so far on drones, genetic technologies, medical devices and fusion energy, which are well worth reading.

Find out more about the role here.