Yasmin Cruz Ferrine is a longtime institutional investor who left traditional asset management to personally tackle the racial wealth gap in venture capital, designing Visible Hands around a three-capital model that provides founders with financial capital, social capital, and inspiration capital including representation and executive coaching. She rejects the idea that founders should be literally hungry to build companies and gives each fellow $25K upfront to counter the reality that many women and founders of color cannot afford to go months without income or tap wealthy friends and family networks.

• Championing equity and protecting capital access for underrepresented demographics. She actively discusses the systemic threats to diversity in the industry, such as lawsuits against firms like the Fearless Fund that target Black women-led ventures, arguing that these legal challenges stifle necessary growth and innovation.
• Valuing resilience and adaptability in founders, particularly during periods of market instability. She highlights the importance of leadership traits like capital efficiency and the ability to navigate ambiguity, noting that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank revealed which founders could lead effectively despite uncertainty.
• Creating new pathways and infrastructure for diverse entrepreneurs. Rather than simply asking for inclusion in traditional spaces, she advocates for building entirely new support systems, exemplified by her work launching accelerators specifically for BIPOC talent and partnering with major organizations to distribute non-dilutive funding.
• Offering transparent, tactical advice on the fundraising journey. She shares insights from her own experience raising capital, emphasizing that founders should invest in their brand identity early on and treat fundraising as a disciplined process where a quick rejection is preferable to a drawn-out uncertainty.
• Viewing venture capital through a lens of generational progress and legacy. She draws personal comparisons between her current role as an investor and the labor of previous generations in her family, framing her work as a necessary effort to ensure the future economy includes everyone.