Diversity and Inclusion is no longer a “nice to have” business strategy. It is a critical component in growing businesses and building an inclusive future. Companies of all sizes are responsible for implementing and growing their diversity and inclusion programs while remaining extremely knowledgeable about diversity statistics across their organizations.
Diversity and Inclusion Survey
Diversity is a critical business approach to generating better financial returns. In a report from the Kauffman Fellows Organization, diverse-founding teams have been raising more VC money than White-founding teams over the past 18 years. When comparing the median funding amounts, diverse-founding teams raised 17% more than White-founding teams at the Series B round and 60% more capital at the Series E round. On average, Diverse-founding teams also achieved higher returns on positive exits.
At Cisco Investments, we are committed to fulfilling the promise of powering an inclusive future. Our Diversity & Inclusion survey is our way to help support next-generation enterprise technology companies. Cisco Investments' reporting is in accordance with the definition of diversity outlined by Cisco's annual Our Purpose, Our Progress Report, where "diversity" is the percentage of Underrepresented Minorities (URM – African American, Pacific Islander, Alaskan Native, Indigenous Americans, and LatinX), persons of two or more ethnicities, and women in the leadership team.
In April 2022, we asked our portfolio companies about the composition of each company's senior leadership (founders and executives) as a proxy for the company. "Executives" were defined as people with roles including Vice President and above. For our U.S. portfolio companies, we requested a breakdown of ethnicity, gender or gender identity, and disability status. Then, we asked if each company had a formalized Head of Diversity role. Lastly, we overlaid other information, including the number of employees and technology domains. Compared to 2021, we expanded the survey to include non-US companies.