I don't think that is a problem with venture funding in itself, more a symptom of deeper underlying problems.
A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
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Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#12Only 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised $1MM or more in outside funding since 2012. Twelve is now "zero"?
12/10000 is noise.
The margin of error is too high to say what the true value is (or should be), but in no way does that imply that the true value should be ZERO. A small number does not automatically mean zero.
You could make up similar lies and say that "statistically, the amount of lead in your drinking water is zero", and have it be well less than 12 parts in 10,000, and it's still non-zero, and at neurologically toxic levels. Just because a number is small does not mean that we cannot accurately measure it, nor does it mean that the expected value is zero. Claiming that the expected value is zero when there are twelve in your (large) sample is a horrible misuse of statistics.
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#13>DID found that even the WORST Startups led by white males raise more than the Best Startups led by Black Women. This was big and in bold, but I didn't see any links to how they calculated this. Anyone else see how they found this?
The worst startups have raised no money at all, so that means the best startups led by black women have also raised no money at all.
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#14Please change the article title to "A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women". That is an accurate way of phrasing the facts. The current title is breaking my brain.
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#15Only 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised $1MM or more in outside funding since 2012. Twelve is now "zero"?
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Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#16statistically zero rabbit-founded companies ever received funding. stop discrimination against rabbits now.
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
12/10000 is noise.
The number of black women is 12, not 0. I don't understand what you wish to gain by egregiously twisting the numbers. Yes, it's a low percentage. No, it's not zero.
What do you wish to gain by being painfully pedantic? Black women are 5-6% of the population, but 0.01% of funded founders. That is a rounding error, effectively zero. Why not focus on the actual point of the post instead?
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#18Only 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised $1MM or more in outside funding since 2012. Twelve is now "zero"?
Are you people high? "Statistically" doesn't mean "12 == 0". It means "Effectively zero"
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#19Some thoughts and questions here.
Should we in the tech industry feel obligated to spend energy on these social movements? Are we wrong and selfish to not?
Honestly, I'd rather not. I'd rather get technical things done, and let policy makers and influencers focus on those issues. If you're in on something with me, great AWESOME, I honestly don't care who you are. Things like race and gender don't matter to me as long as you can get work done. However, I do understand that being able to get work done in this industry is stemmed from a privileged advantage. -- Yes that sucks and is unfair, but how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus on getting work done?
Re: A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
#20It's the social graph. If the mainstream does not notice, do what countless immigrant groups have done in countries the world over, group together form your own interest group and serve your group. You also see this behavior with industry groups, or worker groups. Content producers group, telecoms group, so they can advance themselves and self interest. Why do Nigerians do relatively well, they'll find other Nigerian…
That will work with Africans and other groups who have a strong sense of ongoing ethnic identity. American blacks descended from slaves have a lot of problems doing that for all sorts of reasons.
My guess is that a lot of African immigrants have raised money, just not via traditional routes, hence they don't show up in the numbers.
The important thing to recognize is that you can't easily analogize the experience of people who were enslaved 150 years ago and then faced systematic oppression after that for at least another 100 years to the experience of immigrants migrating to make a new start.
My bet is that we will see a lot more success from African immigrants before we see success from American slave-descended blacks.
Indeed, it's unsurprising the first black president is the son of an immigrant and not descended from slaves.