Stephen DeBerry of Bronze VC on social impact investing, GP commits, & the next-gen of underrepresented managers

Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

I’m extremely excited to bring you this week’s episode of Stephen DeBerry from Bronze investments. In addition to being an experienced investor at previous stops at Kapor Capital, Omidyar, The California Endowment, Stephen also developed the “Eastside” thesis which spoke to the inequities that are often present in eastern communities. He presented this thesis in a now viral TED Talk and was a factor in why Stephen decided to invest in change through Venture Capital at Bronze VC.

Stephen did his undergrad at UCLA and his masters work at Oxford. He is a British Marshall Scholar and Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He was on the Board of the Dalai Lama Foundation and Ebony Magazine and The Root/Washington Post named one of the 100 most powerful African-Americans in the United States.

We had a great conversation on social impact investing, GP commits, and why he feels strongly about helping the next generation of under represented managers.

In this episode we discuss the following topics:

01:25 Stephen’s journey into VC

06:25 How the Eastside thesis came to be

13:00 Why venture capital can solve certain social inequities

17:35 The difficulty he faced in his first fundraise

21:43 Advice to other non-traditional venture managers

29:02 How investing in non-traditional companies affects portfolio construction

33:00 Addressing the structural problems with the VC system

38:15 The problem with anchoring on GP commit as a measure of alignment

Mentioned In This Episode:

* Stephen’s TED Talk

We’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Stephen! Follow @SamirKaji and give your insight and questions using the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com