Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
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Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#2I found the title to be phrased very weakly compared to the abstract.
> We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions.
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#3I found the title to be phrased very weakly compared to the abstract. > We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs rece…
>Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails...
Are they implying that investors do discriminate against non-Asian males? Why write it the other way around.
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#4I found the title to be phrased very weakly compared to the abstract. > We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs rece…
My question would be why don’t they do a cursory ‘bg’ check on who these people are before replying?
With so much scamming and the different phishing attacks, do you respond to random inquiries? That would seem rather naive, if true.
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#5I found the title to be phrased very weakly compared to the abstract. > We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs rece…
>Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails... Are they implying that investors do discriminate against non-Asian males? Why write it the other way around.
> Why write it the other way around.
Maybe that's how the hypothesis under test was phrased?
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#6I found the title to be phrased very weakly compared to the abstract. > We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs rece…
>Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails... Are they implying that investors do discriminate against non-Asian males? Why write it the other way around.
The whole thing is written from the assumption that investors discriminate against women and nonwhites, and that the purpose of research is to confirm this pre-existing belief, rather than find out the objective truth.
> [..] future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions.
Read: the results contradicted our hypothesis, so rather than update our hypothesis, let's shift the focus of research in hopes that we find evidence to support it.
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#7I found the title to be phrased very weakly compared to the abstract. > We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs rece…
>Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails... Are they implying that investors do discriminate against non-Asian males? Why write it the other way around.
From omission it seems they reply less to black and white men. But these groups are large, however, sadly I don’t think it’d be easy to test on feigned education/class, so we won’t know what causes the bias.
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails... Are they implying that investors do discriminate against non-Asian males? Why write it the other way around.
The whole thing is written from the assumption that investors discriminate against women and nonwhites, and that the purpose of research is to confirm this pre-existing belief, rather than find out the objective truth. > [..] future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions. Read: the results contradicted our hypothesis, so rather than update our hypothesis, let's shift the focus…
This is exactly how science should work. You can't perform a study, look at the data and pick a result that suits your bias. You're supposed to suggest a hypothesis, and conduct your experiment. If the results contradict your hypothesis, it doesn't mean the opposite of your hypothesis is true, simply that your hypothrsis was false, and that's ok.
It's also more impressive that they have simply published their results, rather than burying them and running another experiment.
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole thing is written from the assumption that investors discriminate against women and nonwhites, and that the purpose of research is to confirm this pre-existing belief, rather than find out the objective truth. > [..] future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions. Read: the results contradicted our hypothesis, so rather than update our hypothesis, let's shift the focus…
This is exactly how science should work. You can't perform a study, look at the data and pick a result that suits your bias. You're supposed to suggest a hypothesis, and conduct your experiment. If the results contradict your hypothesis, it doesn't mean the opposite of your hypothesis is true, simply that your hypothrsis was false, and that's ok. It's also more impressive that they have simply published their results…
So what if they had found bias, do they say “look we found bias!” Or do they do additional studies to make sure it’s not an aberration or improper methods?
Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors
#10Same thing with job applications:
"In an attempt to increase workplace diversity, the Australian public service implemented a .. trial removing all mention of gender and ethnicity from applications.
It was found that removing gender from thousands of applications made women less likely to advance through the recruitment process compared to cases where gender was visible.
The trial found that a woman's name on an application made the candidate 2.9% more likely to get job interviews.
Leaders have now been told pause the trials"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...
Its counter-productive to institute gender and diversity requirements at (tech) companies, where the core problem is at the fundamental immigration level.
For example, 74.5% of H1B migrants to the USA are from India, and 78.4% of them are male:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b...
If we instituted gender and equality quotas at the migration level - ie. maximum 10% of the total yearly intake from any one country, and maximum 49% males from any one country, then we would a create a much more diverse talent pipeline.