Close your eyes and imagine a young tech founder with the right pedigree, lots of potential, a game-changing product that no one’s ever seen. Someone with an air of mystery and eccentricity who’s able to fundraise with ease and stack a board with political and business icons. A founder who becomes a media darling–and then loses it all in disgrace after the government declares it a sham.

Now open your eyes and imagine that founder is a black woman.

The SEC’s decision to charge Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes with fraud on Wednesday caps a remarkable rise and fall for the tech exec. It’s also a lesson in the divisions of power and privilege that plague the tech sector as a whole. Sadly, Holmes’s worst legacy may be to deepen those divisions. Black women have long remained at the margins of an industry with big gender imbalances, and we’re likely to suffer the most from any thinking-twice about women founders as a group.

Related: How These Black Founders Are Building Startups Without Investors To Back Them

The Race Gap Among Women Founders

As Jay-Z says, “Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t,” and the statistics are stark: Black women are the most educated group in the country, and we represent the highest percentage of any demographic enrolled in college, according to government figures. We’re also proportionately the biggest participants in the labor market and generate some $44 billion in revenue each year as entrepreneurs.

Yet it’s incredibly difficult to imagine a black woman having a chance to reach anywhere near the heights from which Elizabeth Holmes was able to fall, because black women typically get nowhere close to the same funding opportunities. The fact that Holmes raised over $700 million for Theranos is a feat for any founder but especially for a woman: As it is, scarcely 2% of VC funding goes to women CEOs. By comparison, black women raise a paltry $36,000 in an average round. And when black women founders do beat the odds, they typically have tangible products, an established clientele, incoming revenue, and additional metrics to make their cases.

Unlike Holmes, who raked in millions before having much to show for it, black women founders are virtually never funded on potential alone–or even on the basis of a promising minimum viable product. As a result, it’s easy to count the number of black women founders who’ve raised $1 million or more: There are only 16 as of October 2017. And when VC funding doesn’t pan out, black women seek innovative ways to raise necessary funds, in addition to simply bootstrapping.