Why do Nigerians do relatively well, they'll find other Nigerians, help each other and steadily climb. Or Russians or Chinese immigrants, etc. Help from the mainstream helps, and it'd be good to get even footing, but lacking that, create a self interest group. It's not as though there are no rich people who are minorities who are also interested in investing in startups. Pursue the issue in a multi pronged fashion. Don't count on anyone in particular.
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.
Only 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised
$1MM or more in outside funding since 2012.
So, translation:
"I'm intentionally trying to deceive you when I say, NO (Meaning Zero) Black Women Have Raised Venture Funding. Definitely zero, not 12...shutup, math is hard, OK?"
Still, these attempts to slice and dice demographics in order to prove one class is held down for the sake of another is pointless and meaningless. It proves nothing. Attempts to use them to enforce draconian measures to elevate a class in the name of equality could just as easily backfire.
The other day, I saw a FB post from an old acquaintance about how racial economic equality needs to be mandated by law for minorities. To which I replied, "Yeah, Asians and Jews have it rough these days".
Astonishingly I was told Asians and Jews are not minorities (news to me). Apparently, minority is code word for being black (also news to me). To which I responded, "yeah Jay Z really has it rough these days".
Unfortunately, my point was lost on this poor soul. In his attempt to "recognize his white privilege" he fell into the Black == Poor trap and when Black != Poor it's just an anomaly. Sorry, but I call that racist.
The fact that Asians are generally a successful minority in the US has no bearing on a poor Asian person.
We need to elevate all the down trodden. Why do we have arbitrarily slice them by race and gender?
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.
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?
We all, even founders, benefit from diversity of founders. If start-ups predominantly get started by similar types of people you're missing out on competition and innovative ideas. I think this applies not only to general business concepts but especially to domain areas. One of the things that infrequently crops up on here is how much money there is to be made in Spanish language Christian apps, as a WASP I'm less likely to have the domain knowledge to break into that market. So it does seem rather odd that VCs might be missing out on being able to profit from a market of ~23m.
Then there are more social good focused start-ups that might emerge. Given all the problems the US has with racism and sexism I'd posit that a black female founder might be a good bet if they had an idea to try and improve things.
I was interviewing a white university student the other day who had managed to get through 2.5 years of a Computing degree before realising she was capable of being just a good developer as a man. Not that she was as good, just that she actually could be a developer, rather than being assumed to be the management / documentation type. I'm nowhere near Jon Skeet on the feminist scale but it really made me think about how under represented groups can be put off.
And that is the point of the article. The top thread on here can be arguing about whether 0.1% is "statistically zero" because what matters is perception. If a potential black female founder perceives an industry as being unwelcoming they're less likely to enter it. There is a massive opportunity cost to get to the point where you look for VC funding, it isn't an experiment you can just run on a whim. It is quite possible that the calibre of black women who could be founders are looking at the startup world and heading in another direction where there are much stronger social signals that they are likely to be accepted.
It's a tricky balance to get right.
"...how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus..."
The point of startups is not blindly attacking the biggest pile of work at hand. It's to find blindspots and exploit them. If every single one of your competitors is systematically undervaluing entire classes of potential workers, dontcha think that just maybe there's an opportunity to be had there?
But no. For all the talk of merit, getting shit done, hustle, etc, it's mostly about connections. You can't hold onto the meritocratic myth and ignore completely obvious evidence to the contrary forever. But damn, so many rich white guys around here love to try.
This is a common line of thought that I find myself having. I suspect it's a common fallacy, although I've never heard a name for it.
I call it "being too clever again by half". The idea that when others zig, I should zag. Or that any status quo structure has inefficiencies.
My reality is that zig/zag concept only works in certain situations. It'd be interesting to think more about the conditions for those situations, because then I could readily identify them.
In this situation, it's possible that your competitors are undervaluing an entire class of workers simply because that class of workers does not have value to them. If there are no technical, talented, black female engineers in the Valley, maybe the market isn't intentionally ignoring them -- it's just unable to find them.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes the status quo is an efficiency shortcut as well as being efficient.
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?
That would be in addition to this article, not in opposition to it, however. The lack of success of black people and women in tech is PROOF that there isn't diversity, at least not for those groups; it isn't just some narrative. Even if, say, Southeast Asians are doing well, that doesn't change the fact that the groups that the article is talking about aren't.
0.12% for a group that you would expect to have about 6.50% in based on overall population is indicative of a problem.
If .06% of those applying were black women, but .12% of those accepted were, it would show the problem has nothing to do after the application and is all about getting people to apply to begin with, which is a different problem with a different solution needed.
When I see an article with "statistically" in the title, I want to see some data and some robust analysis, not a PR piece.
Only 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised
$1MM or more in outside funding since 2012.It's nonsense to talk about this kind of thing without the correct frame of reference. At least if you're trying to argue that not enough black women led startups get funded (which seems to be what the headline is getting at).
Also, what about other ethnicities? What about black men? What about white women? What about social backgrounds? Was their ethnicity the distinguishing factor at that point or were they preselected prior to becoming entrepreneurs?
The first step to finding out how to solve the problem is to find out where the problem actually stems from. The 5 Whys apply to social problems as much as to technical ones.
If the author instead showed how there were all these superb startups led by black women that failed to get funding - I would.
I guess the difference stems from the unshared assumption that if black women represent 6% of US population, they should get 6% of VC funding.
How many of the superb startups that are led by white men would be obviously superb if they hadn't received funding? How many of their founders would have been put off even trying without the role models, with the levels of doubt and likely lack of support that many others are suffering.
Plus if it is wrong you should care, that doesn't mean that you are necessarily in position to help but you can at least try to avoid being part of the problem and you may at some stage be in a position where you can help.
How many black women got 5 on AP CS test?