2. Introduction
As VCs aspiring to drive positive outcomes by investing in tech for good
founders from all walks of life, we hope that we can level the playing
field for any founder to build an impactful tech for good business.
This hope extends to our team and we are dedicated to creating an
inclusive workplace - one where all team members can feel safe and
valued at work and the wider community.
This deck summarises BGV’s team and portfolio practices that promote
diversity and inclusion.
3. Our Guiding Principles
Understand the problem. We seek to understand the big challenges faced by people,
society and the environment, and we look for the same in our founders. We know that
those who truly understand the problem they’re solving and their users needs are more
likely to succeed.
Be imaginative, act early. We strive to be imaginative and to spot the potential in new
ideas. We’re not afraid to experiment and learn from both our successes and our
failures. We believe in doing, not pondering.
Lead by example. We celebrate the radical approaches generated by diversity. This
means championing inclusion in both our portfolio and our own team. We always work
hard to act with integrity, fairness, and respect; we try to understand our impact and
any unintended consequences.
Be part of something bigger. We believe in the power of generosity and actively look
for ways to help others where we can. We’re proud to actively help grow the global tech
for good movement.
Take the long view. We understand that there are no quick fixes for changing difficult
real world problems; but we’re optimistic, patient and here for the long haul. Our
commitment to our portfolio ventures is for life.
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4. Investment approach
We back ambitious early-stage
founders who are using technology to
tackle social and environmental
challenges and provide world class
support to help them grow and scale.
All companies join BGV’s three-month
intensive tech for good programme and
receive life-long support.
5. BGV Team diversity
79 active
ventures
379 FT
employees
(50.2% female, 0.3%
non-binary)
44.3%
A Better
Society
19%
A Sustainable
Planet
36.7%
Healthy Lives
Portfolio diversity
Portfolio diversity data as of 30th of June 2020. BGV Team data as last reported as of the 31st December 2019.
Proportion of companies split by theme
7. BGV Team
We survey and report on our team diversity and inclusion
We survey our team, Investment Committee, Board and Venture Partners to understand how all
groups feel about working at BGV. We openly publish this data in our annual Impact Report.
We offer flexible remote working
Every member of our team can work from home when and as they require without requesting
managerial approval. Most people in the team take this up to either work from home or occasionally,
work from abroad for short periods of time to spend time with their families.
Our salaries have been designed to be fair
We are a Living Wage employer and the difference between the lowest and highest paid employee
within BGV is 4x. All salaries are reviewed on annual basis to achieve consistency across the team.
Working Practices
8. We offer enhanced parental leave
We offer 26 weeks of shared parental leave, which is significantly higher than statutory
requirements. Our maternity and paternity policies are enhanced in terms of pay and were drafted
to be equal for either parent.
We have a Grievances and Whistleblowing Policy
BGV is committed to maintaining the highest standards of honesty, openness and accountability
and recognises that all partners and members of staff have an important role to play in achieving
this goal. We have put necessary processes in place to ensure that any employee who has been the
victim of or has seen any wrongdoing is able to come forward.
We have an open salary policy
Every salary we pay is visible to anyone in the team. In addition to encouraging transparency, this
approach contributes to fair salary setting.
We are a certified BCorp
Our latest verified score is 94.7. Being a BCorp means that we adhere to an objective standard that
assesses BGV’s impact on our employees and environment.
9. We offer mental health support to all employees
We offer Spill on an ongoing basis to all employees. With Spill, every team member has access to
on-demand mental health resources and a course of therapy to support them through challenging
situations at work or their personal lives.
We set company objectives as a team
At BGV, we use the OKR system to prioritise our efforts on a quarterly basis. We set these objectives
as a team and value everyone’s contributions equally rather than setting priorities top-down. This
helps to ensure that each quarter we are working on things that matter to each team member.
10. We have a team-created Progression Framework
Our Progression Framework has been designed with input from everyone in the team to ensure we
have clear levels and guidelines for promotion opportunities. This is used to ensure that promotion is
based on skill and adherence to to company values and reduces the risk of unconscious bias.
We offer transparent and empowering performance
reviews
Twice a year, each team member requests feedback from people who they have worked most with.
This feedback is openly shared and discussed with multiple people to ensure fairness. At BGV we
believe great feedback is:
- Timely - relates to performance and events no more than six months ago
- Relevant - about the person’s actions not the person
- Constructive - with examples and evidence to illustrate and support it
Our performance reviews are opportunities to celebrate each person’s achievements and help them
identify skills and opportunities they should work on next.
Professional Development
11. We offer a generous learning and development budget
equally split between everyone in the team
Every member of our team, irrespective of how long they have been at the company or what ‘level’
they are at, has access to a yearly £1,000 learning and development budget. Everyone in the team is
encouraged to spend this to upskill in areas, which they believe to be important to their own personal
development.
In the past, our team have used this on everything from specialised training in their subject area to
memberships to communities, such as YSYS that promote diversity in the tech ecosystem, and
attendance to events.
12. We use Applied to reduce unconscious bias during hiring
We use Applied for recruitment to uncover the best candidates through a data-driven approach.
Our hiring team uses short competency-based questions about day-to-day problems an applicant
would face on the job, structured interviews and tasks to assess candidates - all of which have
been shown to reduce bias and be better predictors of success than CVs.
We post all open positions to diverse networks
We post all openings outside traditional platforms like Linkedin because we want to encourage
applications from a diverse applicant pool. We actively seek opportunities to hire employees from
underrepresented backgrounds. Our team is particularly unusual for the VC industry, 68.8% of our
employees identify as women and 31.3% come from an ethnic minority background.
Hiring
Our onboarding process was designed to help new joiners
learn and feel included
We make an active effort to build good relationships from the outset. In addition to meeting every
member of our team in the first week, our new joiners also complete a user manual that describes
important things we should know about them and write a blog post introducing themselves to the
wider BGV community.
13. We hire two Associates every year on a contract to help
more people enter the VC and tech industries
The VC and tech industries are notoriously difficult to enter, which is why we offer two Associate
roles every year to help more people gain work experience in these areas. These roles are typically
offered on a full-time 12-month contract and paid at London Living Wage to enable more people
to gain this experience.
14. Culture
We regularly survey and poll the team to understand
sentiments on working at BGV
We use a combination of custom surveys, CharlieHR pulse checks and annual Culture Amp surveys
to gather insights from everyone in the team, including people who might not feel comfortable
voicing their opinions in team meetings. The annual Culture Amp survey also allows us to segment
sentiments by demographic groups, giving us a better understanding of where we should
prioritise our efforts.
Any results are always openly shared and discussed with the entire team.
Our social events are open to all and aim for inclusivity
irrespective of anyone’s background
We actively invite each other to social events and when possible, usually spend Fridays after work
hanging out together. We’re a small team but many have organised their own events too -
everything from running clubs to cinema outings and even the occasional online quiz - all of which
cater for a variety of interests and personalities. Throughout the pandemic, we have either moved
our socials online or have created virtual and in-person options to ensure that everyone can join.
15. We strive for diverse representation at our events
Representation matters, which is why we promote a diverse range of founders and speakers in the
events we run. At last year’s tech for good meetups we had eleven speakers who identified as
women, and eight as men with different socio-economic and religious backgrounds and sexual
orientations.
We love celebrating small wins as a team and show
recognition at all levels
We never shy away from saying something nice to each other and share big and small team
achievements in our Slack for everyone to see and celebrate. Each Friday we host a team meeting
that we use as an opportunity to reflect on all the good and bad that has happened that week
(because it is important to support each other through challenges as well).
Every birthday, we get together and in times of a global pandemic, got creative with our
celebrations by making something unique for each team member (think everything from frying
pan pizza kits to team-wide recommendations on games to play at home!).
16. BGV Portfolio
What we do to level out the playing field for
underrepresented founders and encourage inclusive
practices within our portfolio
17. Portfolio
We have a fair and transparent investment application
process
In the VC industry, warm introductions are 13x more likely to convert to investment for founders. This
means that founders from under-represented backgrounds who do often do not have established
networks are at a disadvantage. That’s why we continue to run the tech for good meetups, host regular
drop in sessions as well as open Q&A events closer to programme deadlines to maximise opportunities
for ambitious founders to meet us and learn more about our offers. We also work with diversity and
inclusion networks who help us promote opportunity to founders form underrepresented
communities, such as YSYS, Foundervine, Femstreet, Out in Tech, and many more.
For both our programmes in 2019, we met 94 individuals through drop in sessions, and another 129 at
BGV events and 180 who we sourced proactively. We are typically the first investor in our companies
and certainly the first stop on a VC trajectory.
Funding
18. We track and monitor our portfolio diversity data
We have already been collecting the gender breakdown of our portfolio companies since 2013. This year
we have initiated conversations with other VCs and communities to understand best practices and
appropriate benchmarking tools. As a result, we will be expanding our diversity and inclusion analysis to
include a more diverse range of demographic and socio-economic indicators, spanning from the
application stage to our decision-making for later stage ventures seeking follow-on investment.
Each application is reviewed by multiple stakeholders
Diversity data at application stage
We take a permission-based approach to ask applicants to submit D&I data about themselves and
ensure that this data is excluded from the application to remove any unconscious bias.
Review Process
Every venture that applies for funding and participation in our programme is reviewed by at least five
people, representing a variety of BGV stakeholders, such as BGV team members, portfolio companies
and mentors. We do this to reduce bias and ensure data-driven decision-making at application stage.
Interview panels
We always ensure that our interview panels are gender-balanced.
19. We believe great founders are the ones who understand
the problem they are solving
BGV’s mission is to solve the world’s toughest challenges and in order to do that, we believe we
need diverse founders who can leverage their unique experiences to come up with novel solutions.
We do not favour founders with prior business experience or a technical background and instead,
actively seek out people from all walks of life who have a deep understanding of the problem they
are solving.
We do not require founders to engage in their startup
full-time
While we believe that full-time commitment is beneficial to the growth of any venture, we
understand that not all are in a position to leave their jobs immediately (especially, those providing
for families or people who do not have savings to fall back on). We see full-time commitment as a
goal to aim for rather than a prerequisite to gaining BGV investment.
We offer early-stage follow-on funding
Our investment model expects that companies will continue to raise capital in order to scale rapidly
and with purpose. We recognise the difficulty that comes with securing early-stage rounds and try to
aid in filling that gap with follow-on investments of circa £50,000 at pre-seed and £100,000 at seed
stage.
20. We offer diversity and inclusion support for our portfolio
As an investor, we are in a unique position that allows us to engage with numerous ventures
throughout different stages of their growth. We believe it is important to support our teams on their
paths to achieving best diversity and inclusion and are offering sessions and resources to do so. To
date, we have organised sessions covering inclusive hiring, building products with inclusivity in mind
and running an interview process. We have also created a dedicated Slack channel for sharing tips,
tools and questions about building a diverse and inclusive business for our portfolio.
Diversity and inclusion content and best practices are an
integral part of our Tech for Good programme
We run workshops on team culture and inclusion during the programme trying to bake in diversity
from the start. Sprints on designing with people in mind also include unintended consequence
scanning to ensure product and service design decisions are inclusive, especially for tech for good
products that are prioritising the needs of marginalised communities and individuals. Additionally,
we have a range of mentors and partners in our network, who provide their expertise on
accessibility on a regular basis.
Support
22. What’s next?
There is still a lot we want to do. Within the next year, we want to:
● Collect and publish applicant diversity data at the programme
application stage and on portfolio level
● Expand our investor network to level the playing field for
diverse founders
● Review BGV’s internal diversity and inclusion practices and
establish new ones to offer further support to
underrepresented founders and our team