VCs backed Black founders after BLM – but it didn’t last
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 5-Nov-2025 17:11 ET (5-Nov-2025 22:11 GMT/UTC)
Five years ago, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, Black-founded startups had “a moment” when venture capitalists (VCs) were eager to invest. In the two years after Floyd’s death, the share of VC dollars that went to Black businesses jumped by 43%. Unfortunately for those fledgling companies, and the ones that have followed, that interest and those dollars were short-lived, according to new Cornell research.
Air pollution from oil and gas is causing 91,000 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of health issues across the United States annually, with Black, Asian, Native American and Hispanic groups consistently the most affected, finds a major new study led by researchers at UCL and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).
Commonly attributed to issues such as work dissatisfaction, burnout or lack of purpose, quiet quitting isn’t new. However, in the post-pandemic years, it has seen a definitive resurgence. Researchers think that perceived lack of control plays a role and suggest ways to reduce this workplace phenomenon.
Jackson Somers, assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR), investigated participation rates and the economics behind residential composting programs. Somers published his findings in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
Somers found that on average, there is a 2.3-pound reduction in the amount of organic waste going into landfills per household per week when a city implements a composting program, using Austin, Texas as an example. This represents only about 30% of the average weekly food waste generated by a U.S. household.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how the same health information affects the behavior of individuals differently. A recent study revealed cultural differences in how people respond to hypothetical COVID-19 infection information at the local level. The analysis also found differences in how individual subgroups react differently to pandemic information.