Gee, why aren't a predominantly economically unfortunate demographic majorly present in an area requiring capital or higher education?
*economically sabotaged
Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
11–20 of 79 posts
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#12I didn't think about it before but just thinking now - I know more Indian origin tech founders in the US than Black tech founders in the US. I find that a bit surprising suddenly. I'm an Indian who has never been to the US so I can not imagine the ground reality. But it's odd when I think of this. And I follow a good chunk of tech stuff online from various founders.
There are ~1.4 billion people in India. The subset of those who are able to afford to immigrate to the US is a small fraction of that - a fraction that by definition has either the financial means to do so or extreme motivation and persistence.
In light of that, it’s not at all surprising to me that people of Indian descent in America are disproportionately successful.
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#13Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#14Posting anonymous for obvious reasons. I'm not black, but I am a minority. The racism in tech is so obvious, my eyes bleed sometimes. At my workplace, they will consistently take an average white worker (no special degrees, no special schools) and promote them over and over until they are multiple levels higher than others. Its all BLM woo haa on slack but what really matters is promotions, raises, projects, opportun…
Who are some 25yr old directors and VPs? Not counting "CTO" of a 10 person startup where the title is obviously bogus.
If you have linked-in premium, do a search of "Director" and "VP" and try to back out age by year of undergraduate graduation and you'll find plenty in tech. Good point about small companies. In my case, we're a tad about 100 employees. This would be a great great great investigative journalist piece that is data-driven for someone who wants to earn the ire of tech decision makers. That will not be me.
In my company of 100, we have 4! Once is 27 now, but was promoted at 25.
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#15This article seems to solely focus on venture-backed startups. It would be interesting to understand how the venture world does in terms of inclusivity versus more traditional entrepreneurship like starting a restaurant or other small local business.
According to surveys from US Census data in 2017 (1), it seems pretty similar. This points to not VCs as the source of the problem but more to the general racism that exists. Starting a business in any sense is perhaps the largest financial risk any individual can take. Being able to afford that risk is a huge privilege accessible to only a few. I'm glad there's a focus on creating more opportunities for minorities in the VC but ultimately this reflective of the structural racism that seeps through every part of American society.
(1) https://blackdemographics.com/economics/black-owned-business...
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#16Like mentioned in the article, only 13% of Americans are black[0].
Secondly, nearly 30% of that 13% are living in poverty[1].
So really you only have ~8% of Americans who are both black and not in poverty. From there it gets whittled down further for cultural reasons. You could similarly ask "where are there so few white rappers?" or "why are there so few male nurses?" and find cultural reasons and pressures involved for that.
[0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
[1] http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/index.html%3Fp=4193.htm...
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#17I didn't think about it before but just thinking now - I know more Indian origin tech founders in the US than Black tech founders in the US. I find that a bit surprising suddenly. I'm an Indian who has never been to the US so I can not imagine the ground reality. But it's odd when I think of this. And I follow a good chunk of tech stuff online from various founders.
I don't know if it's a general cultural trait, but my feeling is that Indians in Western countries tend to invest massively in education and point their children towards 'practical subjects: tech, medicine, law, business.
I think that they are over-represented in all these subjects compared to their demographic weight in the general population.
On top of that, there is a significant migration of Indian engineers to the US/UK/etc.
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#18Posting anonymous for obvious reasons. I'm not black, but I am a minority. The racism in tech is so obvious, my eyes bleed sometimes. At my workplace, they will consistently take an average white worker (no special degrees, no special schools) and promote them over and over until they are multiple levels higher than others. Its all BLM woo haa on slack but what really matters is promotions, raises, projects, opportun…
> At my workplace, they will consistently take an average white worker (no special degrees, no special schools) and promote them over and over until they are multiple levels higher than others.
Are you saying that they also discriminate against above-average white workers in favor of average white workers?
> The entire c-suite has a single person of color.
How many people are in the C-suite, and what's the ratio of PoC to total number of employees in your company? I'm not trying to disprove you, it's just that a single number (1 PoC in the C-suite) doesn't provide any insight into your situation.
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#19While bias in hiring is certainly an issue, I don’t believe that its the primary factor. Most of this disparity is due to differences in opportunity. Blacks in the US are less likely to have the resources at their disposal to enter our field. They are less likely to have two parents at home, to be able to afford college on their own, to have the familial financial and emotional support system necessary to have the re…
> the only way to solve that problem is the address the root causes: stable families, educational opportunities, easier access to decent wages, and lower housing costs.
That first one seems much more difficult than the others. How do you go from pervasive single-parent households to consistent two parent households? You can't simply throw money at the problem and expect the next generation to bootstrap itself into stable marriages. A lot of these single parent families start in middle/high school.
And you can't just say "teach it in school" either, because truancy is rampant among black impoverished youth. So even if you have the best school in the world, it does no good if the kids aren't attending.
Re: Why are there so few black tech entrepreneurs?
#20I didn't think about it before but just thinking now - I know more Indian origin tech founders in the US than Black tech founders in the US. I find that a bit surprising suddenly. I'm an Indian who has never been to the US so I can not imagine the ground reality. But it's odd when I think of this. And I follow a good chunk of tech stuff online from various founders.
I don't know if it's a general cultural trait, but my feeling is that Indians in Western countries tend to invest massively in education and point their children towards 'practical subjects: tech, medicine, law, business. I think that they are over-represented in all these subjects compared to their demographic weight in the general population. On top of that, there is a significant migration of Indian engineers to t…
Right, but do you think we would have continued that if, like other commenters here are sharing, Indians could not succeed - if they were systematically stopped from succeeding?