Three States Captured Nearly 75% of US Venture Dollars in 2025

California, New York and Massachusetts together absorbed nearly three-quarters of all US venture dollars in 2025, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Eric D. Dawson, CEO and founder of RIVET, says that concentration reflects a systemic blind spot: investors reward familiar networks rather than demonstrated problem-solving ability.

"Access is not innovation," Dawson writes in an essay arguing that funders systematically overlook young innovators outside privileged circles — particularly those whose chief credential is living close to the problem they are solving.

Dawson speaks from more than 30 years of experience supporting over a million young changemakers, beginning with his own start as a social entrepreneur at 14. He now leads RIVET, an organization that funds young problem-solvers in underserved communities.

What does the venture concentration mean?

The NVCA data, cited in Dawson's essay, shows how tightly capital clusters around established hubs. Those hubs produce extraordinary talent, Dawson concedes, but reliance on familiar networks and credentials becomes a shortcut for deciding which ideas deserve attention.

The pattern compounds. Innovators with the right connections get noticed sooner. Early attention leads to early funding and broader networks. The same signals keep getting rewarded because they already feel familiar.

Dawson draws a sharp distinction between polish and substance. "Pitch fluency shows that someone knows how to communicate an idea, while not proving they have identified the strongest problem or built the most robust solution," he writes. The reverse also holds: strong ideas still need testing, execution and evidence. His point is to stop confusing familiarity with quality.

Who does the current system miss?

Dawson points to Joshua Ichor, a 25-year-old Nigerian hydrologist and founder of Geotech Water. After being hospitalized from drinking contaminated water in his own community, Ichor studied hydrology and built technology that helps communities monitor water quality, detect contamination and keep water infrastructure working.

"His advantage was proximity to the problem," Dawson writes. Ichor's firsthand understanding of unreliable access to safe water gave him knowledge an outsider would have needed years to acquire. RIVET is providing him with funding support.

Walter Okwir, a Ugandan innovator, shows the same dynamic. He watched girls in his community leave school, marry early and have children younger because of limited access to menstrual products. His own sister dropped out of school when she began menstruating; she was married with four children before the age of 20.

After receiving a small amount of catalytic funding from RIVET, Okwir bought four sewing machines and began producing reusable sanitary pads. The result: more girls stayed in school, delayed marriage and reduced teen pregnancy. He also taught every boy in his community to make pads for their friends and sisters — a decision Dawson says "fundamentally shifts who is responsible for menstrual health."

How should funders change their approach?

Dawson lays out three concrete practices for leaders who want to widen their innovation pipeline:

• Look beyond the usual places. Expand searches to include schools, youth groups, community organizations and grassroots networks alongside established universities and startup programs, widening the field before applying rigorous evaluation criteria.
• Give proximity more weight. Ask how well the innovator understands the problem, whether affected communities trust them, what they have tested and what they learned — then evaluate execution, whether the solution works and whether it can scale.
• Make smaller, earlier bets. A modest grant, a pilot, a mentor or one strong introduction can give someone enough room to prove what works. Companies already make early bets on new technologies; Dawson argues they should bet just as readily on problem-solvers who did not come through the usual doors.

Dawson also pushes the argument inside the enterprise. At the next performance review, project plan or input-gathering session, he writes, leaders should ask how to bring the insights of young people with lived experience to the table.

The stakes, in his framing, are straightforward: while innovation is widespread, opportunity is not equal. "There are billions of young people ready to change the world," Dawson writes. "Are we willing to bet on them?" For corporate innovation teams and venture investors alike, the 2025 concentration figures suggest the honest answer, so far, is no — and that the cheapest arbitrage available may be looking where the money is not.