Notion launches Included, a VC fellowship for under-represented communities.

Highlights of Included:

• A minimum of 10 six month internships on offer at the end of the programme
• If you belong to a community that is under-represented in VC, you can register your interest here
• We’ve received almost 1,000 applications for 30 places
  

Introducing Included:

Entrepreneurs can come from anywhere and are often outsiders. Yet European VCs - unlike the entrepreneurs they like to invest in - are largely from the same backgrounds, with similar life, work and educational experiences. Meanwhile, received wisdom in venture capital says “invest in founders that come through warm introductions, from people you know and trust”; which may be efficient for the VC but limits exposure to any entrepreneur operating outside their known networks.

Human potential is equally distributed, but venture capital clearly is not. What’s more, many overlooked communities - female founders, refugees, first generation immigrants, disabled entrepreneurs, ex inmates - are often far more entrepreneurial than the norm.

We believe diversity builds stronger communities, better businesses and better investment strategies We want to reach out to people from different backgrounds, minority groups and overlooked or excluded communities and introduce them to the world of venture capital. Our goal is to increase the number of underrepresented communities within the venture capital industry and create effective multi-generation change. So, together with our partners, we created INCLUDED VC.

Included is a 12 month programme, designed to offer diverse and underrepresented people, from across Europe, knowledge of and access to the venture capital community. We are working with an incredible group of founding partners and sponsors, including Point Nine, Creandum, Seedcamp, Enern, Daphni, Mangrove, K-Fund, Santander Innoventures and Wilson Sonsini.

We are committed to playing our part in achieving diversity and gender equality across the VC community and are working with community partners at FifftyFiftyPledge, TERN, Backstage Capital, Diversity VC, YSYS, Femstreet and many, many, more.

So if you are from a minority group, had a different life experience, but share our passion for tech startups, entrepreneurs and venture capital, please complete your registration application and get in touch.

A personal note:

I'm grateful to my colleagues at Notion for giving me the latitude to launch this programme (in particular the inspiration and force of nature that is Chris Tottman and his #fiftyfifty movement), the support of our founding partners and two others I’d like to call out - Nikita Thakrar our inspiring Program Director and Andy Shannon for his advice and support. I’d also like to say thank you for all the support we have had from the European tech ecosystem - VCs, start ups and community partners - it has been quite overwhelming.

Application details:

If you think you’re a suitable candidate for the Included programme, please complete your registration application - it only takes 156 seconds and we welcome applications from everyone!

A huge thank you once again to our VC partners for their support: PointNine, Creandum, Seedcamp, Daphni, Enern, Mangrove Capital, K-fund as well as our Sponsors Wilson Sonsini and Santander Innoventures, and all our other community partners.