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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

#181

Post by towaytie4567 »

Why is it that African-Americans (not including Black Africans in this) tend to seek acceptance into White institutions and power structures, instead of building parallel ones? For instance, TiE[1] (The Indus Entrepreneurs) was specifically set up to fund Indian founders. At the time, there was pervasive bias (not that it doesn't exist today) against Indians as being good enough only as rank-and-file engineers, but not as founders or leaders [2]. TiE was instrumental in funding some of the earliest Indian founders many of whom are successful VCs today. They effectively forced the White VC power structure to sit up and take notice. Today, there is a flourishing ecosystem of Indian VCs and founders.

On a related note, as an Indian, I'm envious of what China is doing today - they realized pretty early that the Western world order would never have a place for China as equals. Hence, they began to develop viable alternatives to Western technology and institutions. Those efforts are beginning to bear fruit today. The borderline insanity and paranoia that the West has developed [3] about China is justification enough for those efforts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE(https://en.wikipedia.org/w... [2] [https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

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

#182

Post by dumpsterdiver »

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…

Unethical Life Pro Tip (takeaway): Pay people to submit five star reviews about your competitor’s product that obviously look fake. Bonus points if they're all submitted on the same day.

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

#183

Post by whakim »

throwaway94894 wrote: post #121
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 histori…

This is just another way of saying there's a "pipeline problem" (myth/fallacy/etc.)

You might feel ignored, but statistically you'd be even more likely to be ignored if you were from an underrepresented group.

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

#184

Post by s4n1ty »

zbentley wrote: post #141
s4n1ty wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the reason a majority of engineers are male is that men are more likely to be interested in engineering. This is a very insightful paper exploring the subject, written by a Google engineer: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

Not only has that particular piece been debunked, shredded, put back together, debunked, shredded again, and (metaphorically) left in the dumpster, but it's totally irrelevant to this thread. Interest in running a company or technology is not at issue. You have a bunch of founders in this thread with demonstrable (as in: they have founded companies) interest in doing these things, and they're having trouble getting o…

> Not only has that particular piece been debunked, shredded, put back together, debunked, shredded again, and (metaphorically) left in the dumpster

Not at all. Damore's memo was reasonable, accurate, and the criticism of it has been, like yours, entirely without substance.

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

#185

Post by s4n1ty »

tptacek wrote: post #177
s4n1ty wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, the disadvantage is racialized. White households at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile of income live in neighborhoods where the median income is a double digits percentile higher than black households at the same income level , and the effect amplifies the lower your household income is.

What is the source of the data you're citing, and how does it establish that race is a causal factor?

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

bhupy wrote: post #143
s4n1ty wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In this case, it appears as though you can draw a straight line from racial redlining policies to the current status quo elite profession pipeline. While you're correct that it's a question of class — class is unfortunately downstream of racial policies the long term effects of which we've never quite fixed.

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by danenania »

jbay808 wrote: post #134
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.

Whether or not they publish contact details, someone without a 'pedigree' or serious traction is far more likely to end up in meetings with VCs by applying to well-known accelerators like YC than by reaching out directly to VCs. This is the primary way that founders without a network get plugged in.

There can obviously be bias issues at the accelerator level too, so I'm not saying it's a solution, but you can be sure that someone will at least take a look at your application.

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

#188

Post by tptacek »

s4n1ty wrote: post #185
tptacek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the disadvantage is racialized. White households at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile of income live in neighborhoods where the median income is a double digits percentile higher than black households at the same income level , and the effect amplifies the lower your household income is.

What is the source of the data you're citing, and how does it establish that race is a causal factor?

The Reardon, Fox, Townsend paper. You can just go read it. If you come back with rebuttals to the paper, I'd appreciate if you'd source them comparably. Thanks!

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

#189

Post by s4n1ty »

rayiner wrote: post #145
s4n1ty wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Questions of class are questions of race because in America, the median wealth of black households is 1/8 that of white households. Apart from that, even upper middle class black people tend to be excluded from these opportunities because tech entrepreneurs live in upper middle class white neighborhoods instead of upper middle class black neighborhoods. It’s a chicken and egg problem.

If you control for whether a child grows up with two parents then race becomes virtually irrelevant in predicting a child's life prospects.

So why is race the focus?

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

s4n1ty wrote: post #185
tptacek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the disadvantage is racialized. White households at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile of income live in neighborhoods where the median income is a double digits percentile higher than black households at the same income level , and the effect amplifies the lower your household income is.

What is the source of the data you're citing, and how does it establish that race is a causal factor?

[deleted]
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