Financial Success Is Not Enough for Latinx-Founded Companies

I immigrated from Nicaragua to Florida at age 17. As a teenager in a new country, I naturally sought out role models. But there weren’t any business leaders, elected officials or even school principals who looked like me.

There was no Black Marc Benioff or Latino Steve Jobs. It meant that the road to success was something we had to imagine ourselves, without anyone to guide us.

This is still largely true today. While Latinx business leaders have made strides, they occupy just 5% of board seats on the S&P 500—and just 17 are CEOs. They represent just 3% of Fortune 1000 directors, and hold less than 10% of leadership positions at tech giants.

The only way this can change is through successful Latinx entrepreneurs and widespread visibility of their accomplishments to inspire every individual with an idea to chase their dreams.

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Measuring success through social impact

When a startup receives a $1 billion valuation and achieves unicorn status, those founders might think they’ve reached the climax of their entrepreneurial journey. But here’s why that’s not the case for Latin entrepreneurs: Less than 1% of all tech startups founded by Latinx entrepreneurs actually achieve this coveted status.

That’s not good enough. This is an all-too-small community that should be much larger.

For Latinx-founded businesses, true success must be measured far beyond the financials. Big valuations are helpful, of course, and they facilitate the scale at which we can create change.

But they’re not the true end. As Latinx entrepreneurs, we need to build upon financial success to pay it forward to the community.

It’s about leveraging one’s success to instill support for increased representation of the Latinx population. It’s about focusing on becoming role models of what a person of color can accomplish in this country. And we challenge other Latinx founders to set the same goals for themselves.

All of us can create change

One of the most difficult challenges young professionals deal with is getting over what they don’t know. There are young Latinx professionals who don’t know about networking or negotiating, and aren’t going to school with hotshot venture capitalists or the children of CEOs. They have to learn it all on their own.

That’s why the real challenge is to ensure that the next generation of founders doesn’t have to face the same uphill battle. As business leaders, we have unique platforms to inspire change—and we need to capitalize on them.

To the community of business leaders reading this: We need more Latinx leaders who inspire the startup community. We need those who have spent years talking about the power to transform to truly start acting on those promises.

It’s a small but critical shift in how business leaders have been acting up until this point.

Here are a few small but impactful ways you can enact change:

• Whether you’re a startup or a large enterprise, you can make organizational changes that help create a positive impact, such as incorporating diversity as a core component of recruiting and philanthropy efforts.
• Track it just like other business metrics. Diversity should be tracked and scrutinized just like leads generated or deals closed. It’s that important to the success of the business.
• Advocate for STEM careers and helping underrepresented minorities become exposed to these areas as early as grade school. Support STEM initiatives and organizations. These initiatives all share something in common: They have close, direct ties to their local community. It’s not just about money—it’s about how it’s distributed, who is benefiting and who is contributing.
• Leverage boards, nonprofits, government and education in concert to positively impact the Latinx community.

While the success and visibility of underrepresented minorities has improved since my early days in Florida, we still have a long way to go. I encourage all business leaders to embrace the challenge to inspire our next generation of Latinx founders.

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