Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by moorhosj | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

moorhosj

>It's a tricky problem to really make sense of though just because investors are so diverse.

Are they? I think it could be argued that investors are one of the least diverse groups.

Analysis of 1,500 investors:

==70% are white

==40% of venture investors have attended Stanford or Harvard

==One percent of venture capitalists are Latinx and only three percent are black.

-https://blog.usejournal.com/where-did-you-go-to-school-bde54...

View on HN

For what it's worth, something like 75% of the US is phenotypically white (including white Americans with Hispanic or Latin heritage), so perhaps that one metric is tracking more favorably than you're giving it credit for.

70% are white

Assuming these are American numbers, wouldn't you expect it? Wikipedia says 60% of Americans are White, and the number is higher if you include Hispanic people - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans

So it would make sense for white people to be the majority in any group, isn't it? Maybe there are exceptions, like certain sports.

Just to be clear, I am not white. I am only wondering about the numbers, not about any group's behavior.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted; it's entirely relevant. Sexual harassment is abuse of power. Power is disproportionately in the hands of certain historically favored groups, so a) people in those groups will be able to get away with more, and b) people growing up in those groups will be used to getting away with more.

It's getting downvoted because people don't like it when other people point out that the groups they belong to contain abusive people. It's typical tribal behavior.

I doubt many VC angels are reading and voting on HN.

Many people include aspirational targets (wildly successful tech folks who went on to be VCs/angels) in their mental notion of "tribe".

See also the quote about the American poor viewing themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and voting to support the interest of actual millionaires.

Or maybe it's getting downvoted because it's trying to counter an argument about diversity of past life experiences with an argument about diversity of class membership, which is quite reductionist.

Class membership can be useful as a proxy for e.g. power structures, but if you're already looking at investors, the most important factor influencing power structures is that they have a lot of money. Maybe there are differences in the ways white and black people with lots of money abuse their power, but that'd surprise me.

Nobody made an argument about class membership. I simply presented some demographic data of VC investors.

Meanwhile, you completely ignore the data about investors being heavily skewed towards two specific universities. Isn’t that a past life experience? Isn’t VC investor a “class” in itself?

Please don't break the guidelines by going on about downvoting. Instead, if you see an unfairly downvoted comment, simply give it a corrective upvote and move on. Other users will typically do so too, leaving comments like this one orphaned and inaccurate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Did you really need to bring race into the topic? The word 'diversity' has an actual meaning, you know.

The comment you're replying to was very clear in that they were talking about career and background diversity -- as in, VCs have their money for diverse reasons.

There were like 5 bullet points about it, making it crystal clear what kind of diversity was being discussed.

One person's diverse group is another's monoculture.

The only people who don’t like race bring “brought into” a topic are white.

For the rest of us, race is already here.

Bullshit. My large extended family is mostly "the rest of us" and doesn't like race being brought into a topic.

> The only people

There is at least one exception in me.

I also brought educational background into the argument (40% from Harvard or Stanford). Why didn’t you comment on that data point and instead focus on the race data?

It’s understandable that you want to focus on the diversity of outcomes, just know that others might be interested in the inputs that led to those outcomes.

The way I see it, your metrics and your parent's metrics for diversity are different. I guess your point is that the 70% white investors think as a block and can be generalized?

==I guess your point is that the 70% white investors think as a block and can be generalized?==

I’m not sure how you arrived at that assumption. The point is that this is the data (as pulled by one person), you have chosen to take the giant leap that somehow those people “think as a block and can be generalized.” Why no mention of the other data points and focus solely on this one?

Don't forget ==82% are male

And, apparently, women are in a position to change that if they want to.

https://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-women-control-th...

I guarantee if you follow the links they cite as 'sources', they will just cite other infographics or news articles.

It's not that, they're just not explaining the reasons.

For example, women control a majority of assets in large part because they statistically live longer than men. This makes them a higher percentage of the population in general, but a much higher percentage of the population of retirees with retirement savings. And they do most consumer spending because they're typically the ones who do the shopping for the family, even if on average half or more of the money is from the husband. The numbers are largely accurate.

Though it's not clear how many 80 year old widows are inclined to invest their nest egg in a startup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com