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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

#131

Post by graeme »

dlivingston wrote: post #48
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…

The US reviews are very peculiar: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-bright-app/id1471800945?ls... 101 ratings with all but two being 5-stars. I hesitate to say that the positive reviews are largely fake, but it sure seems like it. Broken English and vague praise for the app characterize most of the reviews. For example: "My friend recommended to me for experiencing this app. At the fist time, I didn't know this appli…

Ah that’s almost exactly the same timeframe as the Android reviews.

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

#132

Post by zentiggr »

daseiner1 wrote: post #59
huffmsa wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're vetting out black women because they haven't had the necessary experience, because hiring and funding is biased against them, particularly because they haven't had the necessary experience. See the problem here?

it’s not VCs responsibilities to cultivate people worthy of VC-level funding. and from all the college outreach i’ve seen in the past several years, FAANGs are absolutely desperate for women and minority engineers. companies are doing plenty

Maybe its VCs responsibility to respect what they say in public and give disadvantaged founders the extra support and consideration they said out loud in public?

Companies can't be doing plenty if they say 'we will help this imbalance' and then don't.

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

#133

Post by graeme »

graeme wrote: post #12
madballster wrote: post #7

If there is VC racism, doesn't that also mean there is a market opportunity for VC money to focus exclusively on African American tech startups. Even if there aren't many, there appears to be zero competition selecting investments. The author is rightfully frustrated. But instead of focussing on lack of interest in their app, maybe there's a bigger opportunity here.

In principle yes. I can think of a few possible problems though: 1. You’re focussing on a much smaller subset of the market. It may be hard to find enough investments 2. It is probably illegal. 3. You may not get the best VC’s. The best VC’s will focus on total return and probably fund from a wide pool to find rare outliers that may grow huge. So founders may have worse VC experiences. VC includes mentorship, network…

Someone in the thread linked a Tim O’Reilly interview where his partner pursued the “invest more in women and people of color” strategy and it seems to be working for him.

In addition to diversity, he also selected different types of businesses. More medium size, not the rocketships.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/26/tim-oreilly-makes-a-persua...

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

#134

Post by jbay808 »

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…

The author's point about VC firms providing no contact information disproportionately impacting minority founders who don't have network connections is also a good one, and fixable.

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

#135

Post by causality0 »

nyczomg wrote: post #92
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…

"in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler." If that was her main point, fair. But she's out there naming names and strongly implying that they didn't help her due to their racism and/or sexism. That's a pretty nasty accusation to throw at someone. And the names she named were the people who bothered to reply to her at all - they just didn't spend an adequate amount of effort on h…

I have zero business experience whatsoever. That said, I wouldn't have invested in her business for the simple reason she made it too easy to cut out the middleman. She intends to make money by hooking people up with personal trainers but there's nothing stopping said trainers and clients from just doing business themselves after she's done the work of connecting them.

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

#136

Post by SamReidHughes »

amb23 wrote: post #119

I don't know how to flag this thread to the mods, but--hey mods, can we lock these comments? It's disheartening to see threads on women/minorities in tech on Hacker News get strong, negative reactions from the community like some of what's written here. I would hope the forum can hold itself to higher standards than what I'm reading here.

You mean you want to be in charge of what people say on the basis of how you feel, instead of on the basis of what's true (or not).

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

#137

Post by adrr »

localcrisis wrote: post #107
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…

had the same experience with Aileen. Many VCs, founders, and DNI leaders have echoed that All Raise is primarily a way for VCs to improve their personal brand around women in tech. They don't make investments, don't run substantial programs, and spend much of their time/money on PR. If these VCs were serious, they would commit X% of investments or X% of investment dollars to the groups they publicly support in panel…

Curious why would VC ever agree to do that unless it was mandated in the prospectus of the fund and the LPs were onboard. VCs serve the LPs not the general public.

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

#138

Post by jiveturkey »

anon102010 wrote: post #41

She asks why her husband gets more of a response (a sign of the racism she is facing). - Her linkedin doesn't show what her major was as an undergrad. - After 4 years of working she was a powerlifting coach. - Then boom, in 2017/2018 she is an owner of two gyms and in 2019 she is trying to get benchmark to invest in her app. Her Husband: Google Engineer Masters in CS from Berkeley / Undergrad in CS Started companies…

> So it's a bit of a confusing set of messages.

Yup. She isn't wrong, but her argument is poorly framed.

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

#139

Post by thereisnospork »

avilay wrote: post #86
m0zg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And given that a majority of "Ex-Google" engineers are males, where does that leave a woman (or any under-represented group) founder? She is not asking for money "just because" she is a woman. She is asking for a fair chance. And we need to give folks from under-represented communities a more than fair chance to combat inherent selection bias.

> And given that a majority of "Ex-Google" engineers are males, where does that leave a woman (or any under-represented group) founder?

It leaves them as a statistical someone with an objectively poor resume.

If you want more women founded companies, you need more women engineers. If you want more women engineers, you need more women cs majors. If you want more women cs majors, you need more women interested in and excelling at math in high school.

It may not be 'fair' that the statistical woman has a 'worse' resume, nor is it 'fair' that the statistical rich kid has a 'better' one, but its asinine to address fairness at the narrow end of the funnel.

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