The Best Entrepreneur I Know

Great article. Thank you for sharing your experience. I had to do the "I got something in my eye" move so those around me would not think I was crying :)

This made me smile, but it would've been nice to read more about what he and Dennis actually talked about.

Thanks! This past weekend, I was able to tell Dennis how much he means to me, and I had to catch myself because I was beginning to choke up. It ended up being the inspiration behind this post.

I'm happy to see there's been a lot more discussion lately in Silicon Valley and entrepreneurial communities, in general, about the importance of role models who are people of color and women. This article only covers one side of that (not that it is less interesting or touching for not covering the other side)...the other side is that until white folks in our industry, or in other industries, are regularly seeing and interacting with people of color and women in leadership roles, we will likely continue to allow unintentional biases to affect our decisions and our workplaces, probably to the detriment of all (but mostly to the detriment of people of color and women).

There have been a number of studies showing the unintentional white supremacist thinking that even folks who think of themselves as progressive and anti-racist exhibit (and even people of color and women can fall prey to these same biases against their own race or gender). That perpetuates a cycle that can only be broken by visible disruption of the cycle. i.e. people who aren't historically in leadership roles, who aren't historically in tech roles, being empowered and successful in those roles.

Note that I'm not making governmental policy suggestions here. I'm making cultural and systemic observations. I don't know the solutions, really, but awareness and acknowledgment of the problem is certainly one of the early steps.

Anyway, I loved having a good barber shop. I haven't found a good one since moving back to Texas, but it really is a nice thing to have a regular barber who does a nice job, and knows and cares about his community. It's unfortunate that there are so few barbers left...they've been replaced by the chain haircutter places that hire people straight out of beauty school; those businesses are rarely worker-owned (they rent the chairs, or are part-time employees), and rarely have any significant ties to the community (though they are often franchises, possibly owned by someone in the same city or, at least, the same state).

It's important for people to have role models they can identify with. And role models are selected by those who are looking for them, not by the government.