Entrepreneurship is a critical pathway to wealth-building and job creation. If Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) started and owned businesses at the same rate as White people, they would add approximately 9.5 million jobs to the US economy (Morelix et al 2017). Black and Latinx entrepreneurs in our study discussed investing in employees from underinvested groups; other research shows that they are more likely to hire other people of color (Giuliano, Levine, and Leonard 2009) and that they are providing much-needed services in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities (Perry and Romer 2020). Despite the crucial role of Black- and Latinx-led small businesses, there is a substantial racial funding gap. The Federal Reserve Banks (2021) reports that 40% of White-owned small businesses received all of the non-emergency financing they applied for compared with only 13% of Black-owned and 40% of Hispanic-owned small businesses.
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