An entrepreneur and a social activist remake the future of investing and business, offering a groundbreaking "win-win" roadmap for creating wealth and addressing inequalities by investing in groundbreaking tech companies that defy assumptions from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. Companies backed by venture capital drive the U.S. economy, accounting for hundreds of billions of dollars in sales and profits. The problem is that most of the wealth created winds up enriching elites while the businesses funded by venture capitalists widen economic inequality. Committed to doing things differently, tech venture capitalists Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor launched Kapor Capital to prove that investing in gap-closing startups-companies whose services or products close opportunity gaps for both communities of color and low-income communities-is good business. Over the past decade, they've broadened the definition of success to include profits and accountability for the impacts a business has on employees, communities, and the planet, helping to launch close to 200 companies engaged in achieving social and economic justice while showing remarkable growth, with many valued in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Like every VC firm, they have experienced high-profile blowups and total losses. But Kapor Capital's investing principles have created a stunning new ecosystem of Black and Latinx entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors, all devising innovative, effective solutions to address the most pernicious problems afflicting many of America's poorest communities. In Closing the Equity Gap, Freada and Mitch share their core beliefs that all companies must make a positive impact, and that the obstacles entrepreneurs overcome in life are a far better predictor of long-term success than the schools they attend or investment dollars raised from friends and family. Using stories behind some of the most remarkable companies ever launched, they show that the standard investment model doesn't work, how it can be fixed, and what the future could look like if more investors joined them.

Praise for Giving Notice

"Is the corporate playing field still an obstacle course for people who are 'different'? Freada Kapor Klein, one of America's leading diversity advocates, thinks so. In Giving Notice, she and her coauthors tell you why and what to do about it.This refreshing and eye-opening new book blasts the 'diversity industry' and the 'meritocracy myth-makers' for ignoring the daily indignities and subtle biases that shape career prospects. Giving Notice tells it like it is and then tells it like it could be, offering every American a vision of workplaces that are good for people, companies, and the economy."
--Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor, Harvard Business School and best-selling author of Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End

"This book will clearly set the new standard for the field.I think it will be amazing and it should be required reading for anyone in the investment business."
--David Blood, managing partner, Generation Investment Management and former CEO, Goldman Sachs Asset Management

"Freada Kapor Klein provides many insights into the microdynamics of diversity issues and even more insights into policy issues, organizational dynamics, and ways to change practice. She takes fundamental issues and articulates them in a very concise, engaging, and easy-to-digest way. Her examples are interesting, often humorous, and always clear."
--Stephen Small, chair, African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley