LGBTQ+ Discount – Diversity Pricing
Introduction
If you identify as a Person of Color (POC), Woman or LGBTQ+ founder or co-founder, we want to give you a 75% annual discount on our Grow Plan – you’re entitled to subscribe to an annual Grow Plan subscription to Cuttles for the cost of 1 month on the Grow Plan, €48. We hope with this we can help you even more throughout those first, crucial years of venture building, both by providing a fun and exciting universe and a powerful platform for learning about entrepreneurship, doing business planning, financial forecasts and preparing investor pitches, but also by offering individual guidance and support from our online Startup Success Managers.
How To Get The Discount?
Haven’t tried Cuttles yet? Start with a free 7-day trial. A technical limitation means you can’t apply the diversity discount during the trial itself. Once your trial ends, or whenever you’re ready to use the discount, fill in the form below and follow the instructions. Running into trouble? Message us in the chat or email [email protected] from the address you signed up with.
Why Do We Give A Discount for Diverse Founder?
For the greater part of the past decade, an increasing amount of research and data from companies like McKinsey, Harvard Business Review, CB Insights and Crunchbase, has shed light on the need for and effect of diversity when building solutions for the world’s problems, big and small. And the results are clear. Having people from different backgrounds on teams and in business is not just a branding statement. It leads to greater innovation, inclusive products that reach more customers and higher profitability. In other words, diversity makes better businesses, society more prosperous and is, per definition, a great investment. But if that’s the case, how come diversity in startups and venture capital is so far behind? Shouldn’t the startup industry be the frontrunners and brave enough to change a broken culture?
These were some of the questions we asked ourselves when we began looking into diversity in the startups.
One of the first facts that stood out to us was that just 2-3% of global venture capital is invested in women-led businesses, however, 38% of all new startups in the US alone are founded by women. If we look at diverse founding teams with at least one woman, the numbers are slightly better but still just around 15-17%. In Q1 2019, 83% of venture capital went to all-male founders, but if you scratch the surface of data from VC firms, it actually shows that diverse businesses outperform all-male teams by quite a lot.
And if you look at founders, who are people of color, the numbers are no more uplifting. Only 2.8% of VC backed startups have Black or Latinx founders. Considering how much of the world’s population these people constitute, this makes no sense whatsoever to us.
Taking a look at our population’s general composition and who holds the most buying power only makes you wonder more. The majority of people in the world are people of color. Women represent 49.6% of the population – and gender identity is increasingly expansive and fluid. According to the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization, 85% of consumer purchases are made by women. In the US alone, African-American consumers hold $1.3 trillion in annual buying power, according to a 2019 report from Nielsen.
Solutions built by diverse teams capture more customers. Yet minority founders still struggle to raise anywhere near the funding that white-male founders take for granted. No surprise, then, that women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and other minority groups think twice before starting their own businesses.
The numbers speak for themselves. When it comes to starting a business, especially ventures with the potential and ambition to grow big and fast, equal opportunities don’t exist.
For us at Cuttles, it isn’t enough to speak up, do a campaign or donate to a good cause. Instead, we want to change our pricing model to reflect a greater support and empowerment to diverse founders and founding teams, and that is why we have introduced our Diversity Pricing.
We’re a small fish in a huge sea, but we’d still like to push more startups and corporates toward similar approaches. We believe we can help minority founders plan and present businesses that earn real attention from VCs, consumers and the world. If the big players won’t join in, though, our impact stays limited.
If You Are A White Male 👱🏻♂️ And You’ve Read This Far
Want the 75% discount and want to back more diversity in startups at the same time? Donate at least €100 to a cause that supports diversity, and we’ll apply the discount to your account. Just email [email protected] with a picture of your receipt attached.
Can We Do Better?
We’re always curious to hear how we can do better at supporting diverse founders and founding teams. Got feedback or a suggestion? Send it to [email protected], we’d genuinely appreciate it.