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Although VCs responded swiftly, investment in Black-founded startups reverted to prior levels within two years. This temporary reaction was concentrated among those who had never previously invested in any Black entrepreneur. Moreover, the investors who responded were less likely to invest in more than one Black-founded startup and were less inclined to engage deeply by taking a board seat. Finally, it appears that the best Black entrepreneurs may have anticipated this \u201ctoken\u201d response because they did not match with investors who had no experience funding Black startups.<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation.<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1287\/mnsc.2024.06410 .<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2024.06410","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,19]],"date-time":"2025-08-19T15:36:07Z","timestamp":1755617767000},"page":"3332-3350","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Minimum Viable Signal: Venture Funding, Social Movements, and Race"],"prefix":"10.1287","volume":"72","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6173-4142","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Matt","family":"Marx","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853; and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1196-8311","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Qian","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3604-7073","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emmanuel","family":"Yimfor","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York City, New York 10027"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"109","reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Aneja A, Luca M, Reshef O (2023) The benefits of revealing race: Evidence from minority-owned local businesses. 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