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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

#161

Post by digitaltrees »

BobbyJo wrote: post #94
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.

I think he's asking for evidence of Google's racism, not racism in general. Google can't 'fix racism' to hire more African Americans, they can only prevent it in their hiring process.

That’s the thing about systematic racism, each individual actor or firm can claim their actions aren’t racist and yet in the aggregate the effects exist and emerge.

Then we get VCs pledging to take deliberate steps to address the problem and they turn out to be vaporware.

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

#162

Post by anticonformist »

JangoSteve wrote: post #127
anticonformist wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

More rich women and rich black people joining the VC network would not solve the problem. And yet that's the conclusion this thinking leads to. It's the author's solution as well and doesn't address the real problem at all.

What portion of non-rich people make up the VC network? It's definitely lower than the percentage of women or black people. No one is more "underrepresented" than non-rich people.

VCs are the 1%. Their target of exclusion is the 99%. Most don't care about race or gender. They will overlook almost any attribute if they see dollar signs, race, gender, and even someone's poor background. Because their primary concern is money.

And since VCs hate poor people. And they know this about each other. Even those VCs that don't hate poor people will be more reluctant to fund poor people because they know other VCs are assholes. If other VCs will discriminate then the company may have trouble raising money and is more likely to fail. This is one of the major the systemic problem.

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

#163

Post by perseusmandate »

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.

Alphabet has 120K employees right now.

Ex-Google was a meaningful distinction 15 years ago. Today it does not remotely entitle you to being funded.

Many VCs today recognize that Google is an extremely bureaucratic place that does not resemble a startup and I know more than a few who view Google experience as a negative signal.

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

#164

Post by bagacrap »

digitaltrees wrote: post #64
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…

1. You think people are actually looking at her LinkedIn before the racial email filtering kicks in? You could easily test that, I suspect the implicit bias kick in right at the name and email stage. About 20 years ago, before LinkedIn, my dad sent resumes with his Brazilian name and an anglicized version. It was like 10:1 greater response to the Anglo version, and he changed our family name shortly after. 2. If the…

How would they know she's black from an email? Does her name sound African American to you?

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

#165

Post by bagacrap »

phonon wrote: post #112
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #45

> Black women are the most educated group when you look at the number of associate and bachelor’s degrees earned within each demographic. Can anyone confirm this? When I follow the links, I get to this source: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72 That bar chart doesn't say anything to me about inter-demographic data. It looks confined to each demographic; i.e. women earn more degrees than men within each d…

https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/no-black-w...

this. tldr, undergrad degrees awarded to Blacks are highly skewed towards women. Somehow this has been misinterpreted across the web as Black women being the most educated group.

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

#166

Post by bagacrap »

cowpig wrote: post #123

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…

Structural racism ensures that whites have better access to education/experience from an early age. By the time VCs get involved, it may well be meritocratic.

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

#167

Post by pluto9 »

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.

> She is asking for a fair chance.

Where is the evidence that she didn't get one? A fair chance is not a guarantee of funding.

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

#168

Post by anotherfounder »

anticonformist wrote: post #153
anotherfounder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where intersectionality comes in. Her experience is especially worse because she is Black woman AND because she doesn't have an Ivy league degree AND she doesn't have a FAANG experience. Believe me, it is much worse when after every negative interaction, you have to check if it was because you are female, or black or X. White male founders will not have to worry about that additional male tax.

Her experience is the same. Zero funding is zero funding. Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome. She's receiving equal treatment. But she's expecting and explicitly asking for preferential treatment based on the her belief that VCs have promised it. It could be that these VCs were never intending to offer preferential treatment. Or that they me…

> . Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome.

Oh, but it can. That's kinda one of the points.

> Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising.

Not surprising but inconsistent with the talk.

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

#169

Post by callalex »

digitaltrees wrote: post #71
adam wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you arguing for equality, or affirmative action? (I am not going to take a stance on which one is the right choice, but I do think you are conflating the two.)

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

#170

Post by anotherfounder »

perseusmandate wrote: post #159
henriquez wrote: post #28

It seems like the author could search and replace “racism” with “sexism” and put out an otherwise similar article based on her experience having to use her husband’s LinkedIn rolodex to reach these people. I think it’s shameful that VCs make empty promises to support black founders - but it’s also not surprising. Most of the people paying lip service to racial equity now didn’t give a shit six weeks ago before it was…

The reality is that VCs are genuinely inclined to fund black founders since their funds are overwhelmingly old white men. This is an industry that cares a lot about not generating controversy. VCs got hit hard by Me Too- Lightspeed, Kleiner, Binary, Sherpa, 500 Startups, and others all imploded or let people go due to allegations of sexism. It's a Partner based business where, in general, they rarely hire a new senio…

I think it isn't just as simple as wanting to fund black founders. If you do not understand how systems work and actively fix them, you are unlikely to be helpful to black founders.
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