Investing with Impact: Beta Boom Builds the Future of Equitable Tech

Kimmy Paluch, MBA ’11, started the pre-seed venture capital firm Beta Boom to address the stark lack of funding awarded to tech companies founded by women and people of color. A Crunchbase report showed that Black and Latinx founders received only 2.6 percent of overall funding in 2020. While that figure was on the rise for female founders, it dropped from 2.8 to 2.3 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research also shows that funding alone is not correlated to a startup’s success. To confront access gaps in underrepresented groups, Paluch and co-founder Sergio Paluch developed a hands-on coaching program. “We don’t tell our founders what to do,” she says. “It’s about guiding them so they can set their own practices.”

The Beta Boom team looks for drive when identifying partner companies. “Grit is that ability to persevere. You want to solve a problem so badly that you keep going.” It’s an attitude embodied by Fiveable, a social education platform that offers a comprehensive library for high school students preparing for AP tests. Fiveable CEO and co-founder Amanda DoAmaral was not deterred by the pandemic.

Instead, she saw it as an opportunity to strengthen her mission of delivering equitable EdTech services. The company is one of ten in Beta Boom’s current portfolio. Promoting pathways for female, Black, and Latinx founders is critical to defining an inclusive future for venture capital. “As a founder, I don’t think I dreamed big enough, because I didn’t see myself represented,” says Paluch, who worked in product development in the Bay Area before relocating to Salt Lake City and shifting her focus to supporting underserved founders. “Venture capital lets us scale businesses and have greater outcomes. Why not let that align with the things we want to solve in the world?”

Paluch has leveraged her community of MIT Sloan peers during her own career trajectory, saying, “I could not have done this without the power of the network of MIT. As MIT Sloan alumni, we stand for something.” MIT Sloan is also where she became inspired to create lasting impact in her work. “It opened my eyes to see that you can do well and make good in the world. We can solve the problems we want to while everybody rises.”