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Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein are not business as usual.

Before these tech entrepreneurs invest in a startup, that startup’s founders must sign a commitment to diversity. That's something of an anomaly in the Silicon Valley area, where much lip service gets paid to diversity in tech, but little progress has been made in the last few years towards diversifying the tech workforce.

Mitch's preoccupation with inclusion stems back to his childhood.

"As a kid, my shaping experience was that of exclusion -- not racial, not gender, not class, but exclusion is exclusion," he said during a talk at the Black Enterprise TechConneXt Summit 2017 in San Francisco.

Mitch became successful in business in the 1980s, founding Lotus, one of the earliest tech companies to create business software.

The Kapors own the Oakland, California-based Kapor Center, which houses three entities: Kapor Capital, the Kapor Center for Social Impact, and the Level Playing Field Institute. They invest in tech startups that seek to narrow gaps in opportunity and access for underrepresented communities and eliminate barriers to full participation across the tech ecosystem.
The Kapors signed on to President Barack Obama's My Brother’s Keeper (MBK Alliance) in the wake of Trayvon Martin's 2012 death. The 17-year-old African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

My Brother’s Keeper addresses opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color and ensures all youth can reach their full potential. The alliance was launched as an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit in 2015 to scale and sustain this mission.

It was a mobilizing force, Mitch said.

In 2015, the Kapors promised to invest $40 million over three years in a set of initiatives designed to give women and underrepresented minorities a better chance to become tech entrepreneurs.

These included:

*$6 million to expand the SMASH (Summer Math and Science Honors) Academy, a five-week summer program in California for underrepresented students.
*$25 million-plus in investments in tech startups working to narrow achievement gaps. At least half of the companies will have founders from underrepresented groups.
$3 million a year to promote a more diverse tech ecosystem in the San Francisco Bay Area.