VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by throwaway94894 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #8

This post would be a lot more persuasive with the pitch deck, or some growth numbers, or something indicating the app is in fact on a success track and is the type of app that is potentially VC scale. I found no mentions on reddit. On google there is a single review on Capterra, no other results. The Canadian ios app has no reviews, can’t check US on my phone. The Google play version has 88 reviews, but all but 3-4 o…

This isn't very acceptable to say at the moment (hence the throwaway account), but it seems like it would make a lot more sense for preferential treatment to come earlier in the pipeline. That is, instead of VCs using race as a major factor in determining who to fund (especially 1M+ rounds), race and other similar factors can be used to help provide training, networking, and other opportunities that help give historically under-served populations more of a fighting chance to someday be in a position to raise funding.

This is even more unacceptable to say right now, but many of us white males get ignored by VCs and we know it isn't because of our race or gender. It's because VCs won't fund you if they don't think you'll make a 50-100x or more return for their LPs.

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

#122

Post by genoapol » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

s4n1ty wrote: post #84

digitaltrees wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much evidence would ever convince you? How much evidence of racism do you need? How about red lining that continued until the 90s which locked black families out of home ownership? There is so much evidence available that demanding evidence at this point is more a sign of willful blindness than intellectual rigor.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "red lining" in the 1990s and how this constitutes evidence of bias by Google against hiring black women in 2020? You seem irritated by a simple request to support a claim with evidence, which is strange.

I suspect it's being pointed out that racial discrimination doesn't just start at age 30 when applying for a job at Google, it impacts many key points of development and opportunity along the way. Perhaps true support of black founders takes this truth into consideration, especially if a business idea is solid.

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

#123

Post by cowpig » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

My experience in trying to raise capital is pretty similar to the author's, and I'm a white guy. However, I don't think that detracts from her point.

If the system were more meritocratic, the demographics of people being funded would more closely match the demographics of the world. But it's actually a game of personal connections, theater, and psychological manipulation that has little relation to competence in most business domains.

I think VC (and financial) culture in general is totally broken and far from meritocratic, unless you feel that getting good at the wealthy-capitalist-image-of-success-signaling metagame is a measure of some kind of merit.

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

#124

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

anon102010 wrote: post #114

sahaskatta wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add a counterpoint. I raised a $2M seed for Smartcar. I had no college degree as I had dropped out. I had no prior work experience. I had no team. The product was still an early prototype. MANY of the founders I know who've also raised similar sized rounds from top VCs have stories quite like mine.

Her point is that her husband got more responses. My guess - her husband would get more responses than you as well. As someone who also took time off (and built apps) from college, the fact that I'd built some apps (that got write-ups) was a big positive for my early career, even if just prototypes. But I was at a top education org before taking time off so I'd already proven I could get into a reasonable place. No n…

> An awesome scenario would be if someone focused on black led businesses in terms of VC and made a killing.

This is what Tim O'Reilly was talking about funding:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23657403

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

#125

Post by s4n1ty » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #113

s4n1ty wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "red lining" in the 1990s and how this constitutes evidence of bias by Google against hiring black women in 2020? You seem irritated by a simple request to support a claim with evidence, which is strange.

I grew up in a wealthy white neighborhood in the 1990s. My neighbor was a Caltech/Stanford grad that needed help building some RF measurement equipment, which I did as a summer job during high school. That evolved into a job programming a driver for spectrum analyzers, which evolved into a job developing software for embedded systems. By the time I graduated college, I had a guaranteed engineering job and a bunch of…

There are unquestionably advantages to growing up wealthy, but that's a question of class, not race.

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

#126

Post by tomp » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #104

BobbyJo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google, and if racism is present in the hiring process, it's to the benefit of minorities. Google would (at least during my time there) jump through a lot of hoops give POCs and women on-site interviews, and the review process was scrubbed of racial information. Many employees took it upon themselves to avoid using gendered language in their reviews as well, to avoid that possibly playing a role. That bei…

So VCs pass the buck to Google, and Google passes the buck to universities. And universities presumably pass the buck to K-12 education, and the whole thing circles back to an abstract debate about “fixing the educational system” (which we have been trying to do for decades with zero results). Do you see why people are mad?

> Do you see why people are mad?

Because it's an extremely hard problem, and it's easier to be abstractly mad and hope someone else solves it, than to come up with concrete practical effective solutions?

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

#127

Post by JangoSteve » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

anticonformist wrote: post #103

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…

Many white male founders have had the exact same story with VCs. If they were black or women they might have assumed it was a matter of VCs being racist or sexist. But this is probably wrong. Because of these three attributes, one is not like the others. "I’m a Black woman, mom of three, and I don’t have an Ivy League degree." Because, regardless of their own race or gender, VCs are highly connected members of the Iv…

That is exactly part of the problem, though. The thing about systemic racism and sexism, versus just regular racism and sexism, is that they're entangled (or worse, encoded) into the existing systems. You can't really solve the issues without unraveling the systems.

Regular racism and sexism is when the reason you're not given a chance is because of direct racial or gender-based bias. Systemic racism and sexism can additionally include scenarios where the systems in place (such as the private Ivy League club) might not necessarily be intentionally racist or sexist, but rather just incidentally racist or sexist.

From the article, when a venture fund hides their email or contact information, that's not directly racist or sexist. However, if it prevents people outside of your existing network from contacting you, and your existing network happens to be underrepresented on the basis of color or gender, then it's certainly going to help perpetuate the already-existing under-representation in your network, regardless of whatever the root cause of it may be.

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

#128

Post by graeme » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #43

The nature of VC being what it is, it's extremely difficult to prove racism at the level of proof that most HN readers seem to need. 99.99% of all startup ideas are bad, 99.99% of all apps are terrible, so how can we know if she was rejected for being black, or for just being another supplicant denied by the VC gods? The email thing is the strongest evidence she provides, but obviously, a doubting mind can find other…

I had one of the responses questioning the story (I wrote it would be more persuasive with the pitch deck or an explanation for why the app was in VC territory)

But I completely agree with you about the hypocrisy of asking for emails from black founders and then ignoring them.

And also agree that requiring a warm intro as the only way to reach a VC is a real barrier. It may be a good test (“Can you hustle enough to reach me”), but is objectively harder if you’re not in a certain set.

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

#129

Post by tmpz22 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #78

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.

Like the team that built the Iowa Caucasus app?

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

#130

Post by tomp » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #43

The nature of VC being what it is, it's extremely difficult to prove racism at the level of proof that most HN readers seem to need. 99.99% of all startup ideas are bad, 99.99% of all apps are terrible, so how can we know if she was rejected for being black, or for just being another supplicant denied by the VC gods? The email thing is the strongest evidence she provides, but obviously, a doubting mind can find other…

Of all the possible explanations, "racism" seems especially unlikely, given that so many in tech are Asians. Or is this some new kind of racism, where in tech it's "pro-Asian anti-black" racism while in sports (in particular basketball) it's "anti-Asian pro-black"? Occam's Razor says it's not racism.