"Black Angel Group": Alphabet's internal angel investment agency for black employees

A year ago, within corporate giant Alphabet, black Google employees and other black employees at Alphabet were invited to informal events around angel investing during Black History Month. This is organized by employees so that anyone interested can learn more about the structure of startup deals, typical timelines for possible exits, and more.

The idea is not to create a lot of structure around this temporary angel investment school, but just an opportunity for those staff to hear more from some knowledgeable colleagues.

Candice Morgan said: "It's more like, 'Hey, here are some ideas; you might even want to invest together.'" Morgan is a partner at GV and focuses on equity, diversity and inclusion.

In two weeks, five attendees gathered to bring the idea to life. After that, more people raised their hands to ask how to get involved. Soon, the Black Angel Group grew rapidly, and now there are a total of 35 black leaders and Alphabet insiders — including people from Google, GV, CapitalG, YouTube, and Gradient Ventures.

The company's alumni such as Malik Ducard — a former vice president of YouTube who recently joined Pinterest as its chief content officer — are also part of the collective.

These are powerful individuals and stronger groups whose members are just beginning to leverage their collective expertise—from product management to software management to user experience to people operations—to wedge into interesting deals. Over the past year, they've invested more than $500,000 in about 10 companies, including Bowery Farming, Polar Signals, Matter and Career Karma.

In each case, the members are brought in by a smaller committee and then invited to decide for themselves. While half of the companies so far have featured black founders, one of whom is also a former Google employee, supporting black founders is not the goal, nor is it the goal to find companies founded by former colleagues. Jackson Georges Jr. says the focus is on finding companies with a focus on "ethical" seeds to the Series A stage. Georges Jr. is a growth partner at CapitalG and a member of this collective.

"We are black angels, and black angel networks are generally more diverse than most angel networks," Georges Jr. says, though the main focus is on finding the best deals to create intergenerational wealth for its members.

This explains why Black Angel Group is poised to raise its profile and put more effort into more of its dealings.

Part of this growth will come in the form of dollars. Morgan expects the group's investment this year to be "several times" to date.

Some of the growth will also come from new members. As Jason Scott, director of developer ecosystems at Google startups, explains: "Participating in the Angel program [last year] was the foundation for a lot of members. But we've now launched a program so that other interested black Googlers and Alphabet members can apply to join. ”

Not everyone has to be a millionaire. In order to make the collective as inclusive as possible – and as strong as possible – members plan to encourage those who may not be accredited investors but are becoming investors to participate in the transaction process. In fact, Georges Jr. suggests that actively educating employees or alumni who are still rising but eager to learn more about finding and investing in deals and mechanisms ranging from special purpose tools to portfolio support is a win-win for the group.

Of course, the world of black investors may need some expansion. Currently, less than 4% of venture partners and only 1% of angel investors are black.

In fact, given the collective experience of its members, their willingness to write more checks, and the growing interest shown by founders in bringing more diverse investors into their capital markets, this group may continue to emerge in future deals.

Morgan noted that performance insights startup Polar Signals is one example, and its CEO and founder Frederic Branczyk is very cautious about its capital balance — "it's very diverse." She called some of the other founders "explicit" as well. As she points out, "an important part of our value proposition is working with founders whose values align with ours," and a focus on diversity "also gives us a lot of signals about those founders."