Woman and multicultural founders are often judged with exceeding scrutiny. That's why it's important to find angel investors with a proven history of investing in diverse founder teams, such as those below.

In this article, we rank angel investors with the highest investing rates in women and founders of color according to available Crunchbase data.

We used the ratio of these angels' diversity investments to the total number of their investments, or "Diversity Investment Rate," as a measure of their willingness to invest in women and diverse founders. We also looked at the success of their portfolio as measured by their companies' exit rate.

Assuming that diverse founders value both the angel investors' propensity to invest in folks like them and to help them succeed, we combined those two factors in a "combined score," which is how we arrived at our ranking of angels. Note that we only looked at angels with at least 20 investments since these ratios are much less meaningful for very small portfolios.

Without further ado, here are the top angel investors for women and diverse founders.

Top 50 Angels Investing in Women and Founders of Color

Topping our list of top angel investors for women and founders of color is the late Tony Hsieh. Although the startup community lost Tony some time ago, we decided to keep him on this list as a tribute to his amazing work with founders. Thank you, Tony! You continue to inspire us!

Not including Tony Hsieh, Julie McDermott is the top angel investing in women and founders of color! Rounding out the top three stops are also Joanne Wilson and Jennifer Fleiss.

It's interesting to note that the investors at the top of the above list have moderate portfolios, usually 20-30 investments.

Top 50 Angel Investors by Diversity Investment Rate

Looking at just the diversity investment rate of angel investors with at least 20 investments, we get the following ranking:

Julie McDermott, Joanne Wilson, and Jennifer Fleiss have the three highest rates of diversity investments in their portfolio. Way to go!

Top 50 Angel Investors by Total Number of Diversity Investments

And finally, looking just at those angels with the most investments in founders of color or women, we have the following ranking:

Once again, those angels with the biggest portfolios don't necessarily have the highest diversity investment rates.

Target Less Active Angels

Perhaps the most interesting finding of our analysis is that those angels with the most angel investments seem to also have among the lowest diversity investment rates.

Out of about 900 investors in our data set, the most active angel investors cluster around the middle of the list with regard to their diversity investment rate. Incidentally, many of the most active angels also tend to have mediocre exit rates of their portfolio companies.

What does this mean for female founders and founders of color?

Perhaps the best investors for diverse founders are those with a moderate level of activity rather than the most active and often most well-known ones.

An Important Caveat on the Data Set

As with all data, there are likely some missed or inaccurate data points. All data for this analysis came from Crunchbase, and it seems accurate enough for comparative purposes. However, I would not worry too much about whether the 26th ranked investor should really be in the 25th spot, for example.  

It's worth noting that this data is from Crunchbase, which classifies "Diversity Investments" as those in startups founded or led by individuals that identify as Black or African American, Native American, Middle Eastern/North African, South Asia, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or Woman. While Black, Latinx, and female founders seem to be fairly accurately recorded in the dataset, other groups are clearly undercounted from a spot check we performed.

Conclusion

Underrepresented founders face enough hurdles in their journey, and hopefully, this list is a good starting point for those of you looking for angel investors that will evaluate you and your startup fairly.

Also, be sure to check out our mega guide for finding and pitching angel investors.

As always, I look forward to your comments and feedback on this list!