Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thebolditalic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 261 posts

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

#231

Post by jjeaff »

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…

The people who did reply are the same ones that did not reply when they received the exact same pitch from his email instead of hers. The ex-googler CTO was on both pitches.

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

#232

Post by jjeaff »

pluto9 wrote: post #158
anotherfounder wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see that naming those who didn't even respond could be more appropriate. My takeaway is that you feel let down the most by those who have the most talk, hence higher expectations, which, it seems to me is the gist of the article.

Both strategies are inappropriate because they assume that anything less than funding her startup is an act of bigotry. I wouldn't have responded to her because I don't think her startup is particularly interesting or likely to be profitable. It's a low-effort idea. Easy to replicate, easy to cut the middle man out of, and has been done multiple times before. "Naming names" of people who declined to waste their money…

Ok, so you wouldn't respond. But then would you respond when a man sent you the exact same idea? Because that's exactly what happened here.

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

#233

Post by lightgreen »

jjeaff wrote: post #229
Jommi wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mistaking the forest for the trees. You could go look at a handful of other funded apps and evaluate their reviews. You're going to find similar things. My point was that you don't need to get into a more subjective, personal quip, as the arguments brought by others (eg. The CV) here are already strong enough to dismiss the racism claim.

I think you are also missing the forest for the trees. The point of her post is that she submitted the exact same proposal to the exact same VCs from her husband's email instead of her own and actually started getting responses for the first time.

Or maybe that’s because her husband has a LinkedIn page which is easily googleable and mentions three years of working in Google, and she has zero relevant experience.

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

#234

Post by jjeaff »

m0zg wrote: post #90
avilay wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not asking for money "just because" she is a woman. That's why I asked to see the track record. You won't get anywhere in this business without a track record. Moreover, if you do have a track record being a woman is an advantage these days, not a disadvantage. There are a lot of VCs chomping at the bit to invest into women- and minority-led startups. But they won't give you money if they don't have some deg…

If they were champing at the bit, you'd think they would at the very least respond to all pitches from female founders.

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

#236

Post by jjeaff »

zentiggr wrote: post #100
m0zg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why "condescending"? It's true. VCs are driven by ROI. ROI is driven largely by whether the person taking investment can do the job.

So first time leaders are out of luck, or have to be stellar. Gotcha. And women even more so, not because of any inherent differences in anything but the selection process biases. Women of color even more so, not because of any inherent differences in anything but selection bias. Just watch the biases and the whole process even out to an actual chance for all the ideas floating around. Doesn't have anything to do wit…

It all just boils down to the reality of the VC world and that is that none of them have a clue what they are doing.

They might as well bring in a psychic to pick their investments. But they can't let their LPs know that. They've got to justify their fee and so they will do it the safest way possible which is to be copycats or at most choose the most defensible options.

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

#237

Post by lightgreen »

PeterisP wrote: post #151
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not their private capital - most VCs are investing the funds of 'limited partners' such as pension funds, university endowments, etc. So in essence VCs are gatekeepers which make decisions regarding startups who will or wil not get access to someone else's money.

Pension funds are not allowed to invest in VC.

But anyway, it does not change the fact that it’s not public money, it’s money belonging to someone and that someone trusted VC to make decisions be motivated by capital gain not by social justice and fairness.

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

#238

Post by Apocryphon »

pnako wrote: post #211
tomp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Here's a concrete, practical solution: Radical affirmative action. Not radical in the rioting / revolution understanding of the word, but in its application. So, if the issue with systematic racism is such that it endangers the foundational core of American society, it's time to take a big risk: literally pull random people to sit on VC and companies boards, in skilled jobs, etc. (a bit like the Diversity Visa Lotter…

That's sortition, baby!

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

#239

Post by pluto9 »

jjeaff wrote: post #232
pluto9 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both strategies are inappropriate because they assume that anything less than funding her startup is an act of bigotry. I wouldn't have responded to her because I don't think her startup is particularly interesting or likely to be profitable. It's a low-effort idea. Easy to replicate, easy to cut the middle man out of, and has been done multiple times before. "Naming names" of people who declined to waste their money…

Ok, so you wouldn't respond. But then would you respond when a man sent you the exact same idea? Because that's exactly what happened here.

An unknown man with her qualifications? No.

A man, woman, or rhinoceros with a stellar résumé like her husband's, who I may also know personally, considering that I was on their contact list? Maybe.

Let us please stop pretending that the glaring difference between these two people is their race or gender and not a vast gulf of experience and credibility.

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

#240

Post by bleah1000 »

jjeaff wrote: post #230
EB66 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underestimating the impact of being an ex-Googler. VCs are inundated with mobile app pitch decks from all kinds of random people with no relevant experience. Receiving a pitch deck from an ex-engineer of a highly respected software firm is going to make that pitch stand out. It lends instant credibility. EDIT: looking at his LinkedIn, it's clear that he has way more experience and an established track…

The ex googler husband was on the front page of both pitch decks with the same title as CTO in both cases. The only difference was that it came from his email account the second time.

But that assumes that people looked at the deck. You can't make that assumption, they might look only at the person sending them the deck, then decide to look at the deck.

In fact, she said she sent out the deck from her own e-mail and linked-in account. So, that means it was probably easy to get her husband's linked-in when he sent it out.

You could make the case that people claiming to want to help minorities, should at least spend time reading the deck, but that doesn't mean that anyone was racist/sexist in this particular instance. It seems like even after sending it out by the husband, nobody was very interested.

Post reply on HN