A year after Atlanta’s Fearless Fund settled suit, firm expands its mission
NEW YORK — September a year ago, Arian Simone said she made a vow.
Simone made that promise the day she settled the landmark racial discrimination lawsuit that made her and her Atlanta-based venture capital firm Fearless Fund the first targets in the fight against corporate diversity, equity and inclusion.
A conservative group had sued Fearless Fund and the firm’s nonprofit over a contest aimed at supporting women of color founders.
From the day of the settlement forward, she said she would not cower nor change her mission of economic inclusion and freedom for women of color founders. Instead, she said she would expand her work to close those funding gaps, not just in the U.S. but across the globe for the Black diaspora.
On Monday, Fearless Fund held its first event since settling the lawsuit to debut the culmination of that promise: the Fearless Global Initiative.
Much has changed in the past year. President Donald Trump has returned to the White House and led a campaign against DEI practices in government and the private sector. Some companies have abandoned previous DEI commitments, while others have become less vocal in their support.
Simone presented a new vision of how to move forward in a climate hostile to DEI and brought together global leaders to discuss who holds power, economic inclusion and how to keep doing diversity work.
About 100 guests gathered at the event in New York, held the day before world leaders convened at the United Nations General Assembly. Among the dignitaries included were U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Liberian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sara Beysolow Nyanti, CNN anchor Abby Phillip and civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
The Fearless Global Initiative is about “making sure that we are active participants in helping getting certain policies written in order to support the kind of work that we do,” Simone told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I knew that it wasn’t just as simple as having a fund. It was literally, we’re going to have to get policies to change. We’re going to have to get different doors to open so that more people can even do what it is that we do,” she said.
Fearless Fund was founded by Black women to invest in women of color. Through its first venture fund, Fearless invested $26 million into dozens of startups founded by Black, Latina and Asian women. At least eight of those startups were based in Atlanta, including Slutty Vegan.
But in August 2023, the conservative American Alliance of Equal Rights sued Fearless Fund and its foundation over a $20,000 small business grant program the VC firm’s nonprofit provided to Black women entrepreneurs, alleging it was discriminatory against non-Black businesspeople.
There are stark disparities in the funding Black and minority entrepreneurs get versus their peers. In 2024, Black-founded startups received only about 0.4% of all venture capital invested into American startups, according to data firm Crunchbase. In 2022, female founders of color received just 0.39% of all venture capital investments, according to Fearless Fund.
This is despite Black women making up about 7% of the population and 1% of business owners, according to an AJC analysis of figures from data firm LendingTree.
But the Alliance’s lawsuit launched Fearless and Simone into the spotlight as a symbol of the fight against the coordinated legal backlash against corporate diversity initiatives. Last September, Fearless and the Alliance settled the lawsuit, ending the grant contest.
“We were the first lawsuit in the anti-DEI war, and that’s why we were trying to sound the alarm to so many people to let them know we’ve got to nip this in the bud now or it’s going to get out of control,” Simone said.
“And we now see the out of control.”
Since January, companies, municipalities and universities have stepped away from DEI programs as Trump and his administration target those initiatives in the public and private sectors.
But Simone said she believes there is common ground to be found between those who fight against DEI and those who champion it. Her solution: demographic equity, which “simply states the demographics of the people must match the demographics of the contracts, the investing and the funding allocations,” she told the audience.
“This is (as) good for the white Kentucky coal miner as it is the Latino California farmworker. Demographic equity means delivering the resources, the financial support at a scale that reflects the population. This is something we can all get behind,” Simone said.
She said she would be presenting a petition at the U.N. this week to chart a road map for demographic equity. It’s unclear if Fearless will also pursue legislation in the U.S.
Legacy of the lawsuit
But before Fearless was a symbol of the fight against the anti-DEI movement, it was a venture firm. In the past year, since the suit was dismissed, that work has also continued, albeit at a different scale.
Simone said she’s continued to advise the firm’s portfolio companies and has been running the small business loan program she launched last year.
Still, the lawsuit took its toll. Simone stopped raising a second venture fund because of the current climate. And before the firm was sued, Simone said it would have, on average, about 20 big corporate sponsors a year. This year it has only had three — UPS, JPMorgan Chase and Costco.
For Simone personally, what she went through “was literally hell,” she told the audience.
“It was really unnecessary, you know, just because we decided to be audacious and cut million-dollar checks to Black women, it caused a serious disruption in this country,” she said.
Simone even received death threats during the legal battle, according to Alphonso David, one of Fearless’ lead lawyers.
But the legacy of the lawsuit isn’t in what Fearless lost, Simone said, it is in “the work that we plan to get done in order to improve the right to fund marginalized communities.”
About the Author
Mirtha Donastorg is a reporter on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s business team focusing on Black wealth, entrepreneurship, and minority-owned businesses as well as innovation at Atlanta’s HBCUs.
