3: John China, President, SVB Capital

John China is the President of Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) Capital where he leads a dual LP and direct investment strategy, managing $6.4 billion in assets under management. He and SVB Capital are LPs in the top 15 funds in all of venture, giving him an unmatched view of the workings and thought process of the top funds regarding diversity in venture capital and tech. He is a first generation Mexican-American who attended Stanford and is the highest ranking person-of-color executive on the entire SVB executive team.

In this episode John gives us the story of how the top firms in SVB Capital’s venture portfolio did not have positive reactions to the Diversity Rider and his belief as to why they are not incentivized to change in the short term. However, since founders are now embracing diversity, the top firms will need to change to keep winning the best founders. John believes that the way venture capital is practiced today is no longer sustainable and that even though LPs “don’t like change” they see it coming with diversity being the mainstream. John shares a specific effort by Theresia Gouw of Acrew Capital to get diverse LPs into her new fund, and why LPs who are investing in diverse fund managers who haven’t had access to capital should stop apologizing for doing the right thing.