You can’t “support DEI” and not pay your interns!
If you are a VC firm supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion with one hand and offering unpaid internships with the other hand, you’re showing that you fundamentally don’t understand DEI.
In a nutshell, you can’t champion equitable opportunity in your flashy newsletters and speaker panels and then turn around and expect people to work for free. That doesn’t just send a mixed message — it makes it painfully clear that you’re only paying lip service to DEI. If you truly believed in these principles, you wouldn’t saddle ambitious, often marginalized talent with a zero-dollar paycheck.
There’s absolutely no excuse for this. VC firms, almost by definition, have money — sometimes more money than they know what to do with. (If you somehow lack the funds to offer even a modest wage, maybe don’t hire people… Or consider a different career altogether)
It’s not complicated: free labor is exploitation, and it’s incredibly exploitative when it filters out those who can’t afford to work without compensation. By opening these roles exclusively to interns who have a financial safety net, you are effectively gatekeeping this profession and shutting the door on countless talented individuals who don’t have the luxury of wealthy families or cushy savings accounts to lean on.
Going a layer deeper: Unpaid internships effectively weed out candidates based on socioeconomic status, which, in our society, is still inextricably tied to race. Countless studies show that lower-income populations are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, or otherwise non-white, thanks to generations of systemic injustice… Which you are propagating by turning away smart, driven people simply because they can’t afford to take on another financial burden in an already punishing job market.
So stop. Just stop. Stop wasting everyone’s time with lofty DEI promises if you’re unwilling to pay your interns the bare minimum. There’s no plausible defense for cutting corners where young, diverse talent is concerned, especially not for organizations that invest in companies with millions — or billions — on the line.
If you want to foster true diversity and meaningful inclusion, start by acknowledging that unpaid internships are structurally biased. If you really care about equity, pay people for their work. Otherwise, you’re just perpetuating a system that benefits the privileged and pushes everyone else further to the margins. And, to be fair, a lot of VCs seem to be totally cool with that. If that’s you… Carry on, I guess.
