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VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

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Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#71

Post by digitaltrees »

adam wrote: post #34
xibalba wrote: post #15

The author of this article cites as evidence of racism higher response to her husband's solicitations of VCs than her own. However, comparing their resumés, its pretty easy to see that this is unlikely to be attributable to racism. Husband has founded multiple start-ups that were acquired, is technical, and worked at Google and YouTube. Meanwhile, the author has personal trainer and gym owner as experience.

I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc. One might argue that without the special consideration these VC's rushed to say they would give, how would someone l…

Yes. Exactly this. If a VC is going to use the same filters for inbound deals. The same networks to connect to founders, the same metrics and stats. Then all their rhetoric is BS.

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#72

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

manaman wrote: post #66
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's their private capital, why shouldn't they be their own gatekeepers?

Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics etc.?

Yes, I did. But that does not mean they will invest in startups which they believe will bring negative returns or that don't otherwise suit their portfolio.

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#73

Post by manaman »

oh_sigh wrote: post #35

An insidious effect of racism is that one can explain any negative interaction through that lens if one is inclined. Based on her post, I don't actually see racism, I see someone with a stronger background and more bona fides being more successful at pitching than someone with less of those things. In most other situations, HN commenters would be saying something like 'anecdotes are not data'. I think it's hard to dr…

Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics which founder belongs to?

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#74

Post by oh_sigh »

manaman wrote: post #73
oh_sigh wrote: post #35

An insidious effect of racism is that one can explain any negative interaction through that lens if one is inclined. Based on her post, I don't actually see racism, I see someone with a stronger background and more bona fides being more successful at pitching than someone with less of those things. In most other situations, HN commenters would be saying something like 'anecdotes are not data'. I think it's hard to dr…

Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics which founder belongs to?

Yes, and?

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#75

Post by anotherfounder »

I'm so glad she wrote this, and that she named names!

As a female founder (not black though), we went through a similarly congnitively dissonant process. A-List investors who would publicly talk about supporting female founders would behave the worst (esp. female investors, Hi Aileen!), investors whose entire brand was around supporting ethical startups (or insert any similar alternative movement) would be the least interested in that aspect (Hi Spero Ventures!) All of that, along with a healthy dose of rudeness.

In our experience, those at the very very top of the totem pole gave us the fairest chance, and those below them, were the very worst. In the end, it was hard no to feel that an investor's Twitter persona was a sham, in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler.

FWIW, I know my experience was not alone. There are tons of now well-funded female founders who will echo this sentiment. I just wish there was a way to have a public list of those who walk the talk and those who just tweet the walk..

EDIT: Adding something from thread below to focus more on solutions, and providing perspective on why what is happening is not enough.

>...What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG?

> Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#76

Post by avilay »

Even if her business idea was bad, or her app didn't have traction, or her LI profile was not impressive enough, she deserved, at the very least, the following:

  * Access to VCs, she had to use her husband's email to get access.
  * Some constructive and personalized feedback. This does not have to be very detailed, a couple of no-BS sentences will do the trick.
I get that VCs are too busy to respond to each and every email they get, but they, and every one of us in the tech sector who is in a position to do so, needs to walk the extra mile to pull in people from under-represented communities who are trying to get in.

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#77

Post by aSplash0fDerp »

rayiner wrote: post #47
sib wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that her experiment changed three variables: her husband is male and Asian and an ex-Google engineer, while she is none of those. So it's not possible to draw the conclusion that the difference in response comes only from race. (To be clear, I personally believe that race & gender do have an impact in the response from VCs, I just don't think her experience proves it.)

But if there are hurdles to black women getting hired at places like Google, isn’t your explanation just passing the buck? People aren’t happy with the status quo, where one of our most important and creative industries is nearly devoid of people who make up more than 1 in 10 Americans. In view of that, I don’t think it passes muster to say that “we don’t discriminate against black women, we just look for Founders in…

Did you mean "status quota"?

For some, equality may appear to be a fat baby banging on a highchair at times (when displeased usually).

If we had an unadulterated version of equality, do you think we would have found our natural stride by 2020 on the issue?

Racial neutral is a tough line to walk, but the talk on the other hand....

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#78

Post by m0zg »

anotherfounder wrote: post #75

I'm so glad she wrote this, and that she named names! As a female founder (not black though), we went through a similarly congnitively dissonant process. A-List investors who would publicly talk about supporting female founders would behave the worst (esp. female investors, Hi Aileen!), investors whose entire brand was around supporting ethical startups (or insert any similar alternative movement) would be the least…

VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash.

What's your track record?

Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.

Re: VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

#80

Post by anotherfounder »

Kednicma wrote: post #10

The part about Nguyen was frustrating. It's hard to imagine a more honest hypocrisy than explicitly saying, on the record, that one will be forthcoming and helpful towards the marginalized, and ending up being just as dismissive and unengaged as everybody else.

FWIW, we had the same experience with the other Spero VC: Shripriya Mahesh. She has a lot of blogposts around investing in startups that level the playing field, and not once did that topic come up in our conversations. And she isn't the only investor. A general rule of thumb we learnt: more an investor talks about a topic, less likely is that they care.

There is a hidden asterisk: *as long as you are ex-FAANG doing a SAAS startup, in a competitive round. SWM? Hidden bonus bingo!

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