Hundreds of Start-Ups Tell Investors: Diversify, or Keep Your Money

When Trevor McFedries set out last year to raise money for Brud, his robotics and artificial intelligence start-up, he found himself in many meetings with "a ton of white guy" venture capitalists. So Mr. McFedries, who is black, and his co-founder, Sara DeCou, a Latino woman, added a condition for investors: The pair would accept money only from venture firms that had a woman or a person of color in a position to write them a check. "It was counterintuitive for us to raise money from a bunch of white guys who want to extract all the value from the world," said Mr. McFedries, who eventually collected several million dollars from firms that met the condition. "We're interested in reshaping the way that tech looks." Mr. McFedries is one of more than 400 tech entrepreneurs and chief executives who have now banded together, in a loose coalition known as Founders for Change, to pressure the venture capital industry to diversify its ranks.