At 0.69% in Q1, the dip in funding for Black founders ‘no longer evokes an emotional response’

Yikes. Geez. Blimey. However you feel about it, it might be time to focus on alternative avenues of funding.

Black founders are also seeing a year-over-year decline in Q1 funding, according to new Crunchbase data that looked at seed, venture, private equity and corporate venture capital funding allocated to Black entrepreneurs. This might be a good time to look for alternative funding avenues, according to founders TechCrunch+ spoke with.

The data set shows that in Q1 2023, Black founders raised an estimated 0.69%, or $312 million, out of the around $45 billion Crunchbase totaled for the quarter. Per Crunchbase numbers, Black founders saw a decrease in year-over-year funding from Q1 2022, when Black founders raised 1.5% — or $1.26 billion — out of the $81 billion allocated in private funding.

That’s a 75.2% drop in funding.

It’s not all bad news, though: Although funding dipped in the early half of 2022, it steadily increased from $191 million in Q3 to $279 million in Q4, jumping again to $312 million in the first quarter of this year.