We document that ethnicity is a major determinant of how founders of U.S. startup companies match with partners of U.S. VC firms. A shared ethnicity increases the likelihood that a VC firm invests in a startup, strengthens the degree of the VC firm’s involvement, increases the size and scope...

The venture capital market is characterized by personal interactions between VC firms and the startups they finance. Yet we have little systematic evidence of how startup founders get matched with partners at VC firms. By assembling data at the individual partner and founder level, we compare...