SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
reuters.com
reuters.com
You have to be rich for class to be a major advantage when starting a startup, middle class isn't enough unless you're willing to expose yourself to a lot of personal risk. For various reasons middle class Black people with the skills to start a startup are more risk averse than white counterparts. For other reasons those same Black people get less funding than counterparts of other races.
I say this as a Black engineer from a middle class background that has been a founder, worked at FAANG and personally knows many Black founders that tried to bootstrap and failed to raise, even with strong pitches and profitable products. It's possible that these companies are fundamentally worse than all white founded companies that raise, but I rarely see Black people given a chance to fail. Class is not the only issue and it's not the main barrier for most Black people.
Neither Rajeev Misra nor Masayoshi Son sound like “white” names. I find it fascinating how Asians in general are excluded from the term “people of color”.
Of course its now its just virtue signalling to describe some imagined unified faction of the rest of the planet opposing white people.
IMHO, it will end once American-born Chinese and Indian mothers realise they aren't part of it and that their kids bear the largest brunt of the interventions.
> Named the “Opportunity Growth Fund” and focused on African Americans and Latinos in the U.S. it is, SoftBank says, the largest fund of its kind.
Kind of implied there.
Asians used to face a lot of discrimination in the US and very institutionalized one, not just of the "making fun of them by calling them Ching Chong" variety. There is a long and storied history, but it is never brought up because it provides some rather uncomfortable cognitive dissonances when trying to explain how Asian-Americans today are so much better off but other discriminated-against groups aren't. So you see the common trope where Asian-Americans and Indian-Americans are just passed over when talking about historical injustices because they don't fit the narrative.
The link below has a full history but, one of many points—
In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only United States Iaw to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race—which restricted Chinese immigration for the next sixty years. The "Chinese Must Go" movement was so strong that Chinese immigration to the United States declined from 39,500 in 1882 to only 10 in 1887.
https://asiasociety.org/education/asian-americans-then-and-n...
They were pretty abused and stereotypes in the 1800’s. The transcontinental railway was built in large parts by Chinese workers, but if you look at the famous photo when the two lines come together and are joined by the Golden spike, there are not present. Also, there were some pretty racist cartoons about Asians in popular periodicals. Not to mention the interning of Japanese Americans during WWII.
So I think it would be incorrect to say that Asians do not have a historical baggage in the USA.
This is simply not true. Though we associate lynchings with blacks, the first mass lynchings in the US was of asians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_massacre_of_1871
The first non-native pogrom was of asians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Springs_massacre
> Do they face similar racism/bias in general (ignore temporary surge like now by Corona)?
They were denied citizenship and the right to own land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Alien_Land_Law_of_1...
They were banned from immigrating to the US - the first and only national and racial group to have ever been banned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
Dumped into concentration camps - once again the first and only ethnic/racial group to have been put into concentration camps in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
All non-whites faced racial abuse and discrimination. Even white people faced racial abuse and discrimination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_14,_1891_New_Orleans_lyn...
I'm sick of the hypocrisy of people saying "Black people aren't more likely/less likely to x, it's their education/family/etc. that affects them" ... and then immediately turning around and giving help to people based on their skin color, rather than these other traits.
EDIT: What about somebody who is black, and comes from (yes, one of the rare unfortunately) a rich family or well off family? While not a majority, many POC work for FAANG companies. Are they eligible for this money purely because of their skin color, but disadvantaged people of any color are not?
No, or at least, not exclusively. There's tons of social science research in which, for example, two identical fabricated resumes were submitted for a battery of jobs, differing only by, say, a headshot of a black vs. white person, or a stereotypically-African-American name vs. a stereotypically white (or not-obviously-race-signaling) one. In these studies there are huge differences in response rates and callbacks, even when everything else about the resumes (educational attainment, experience, etc.). is identical.
It's true that many black people suffer structural disadvantages because of systemic lack of access to resources, etc. But they also suffer disadvantages because they're black.
I've seen a bunch of studies on things like "stereotypically-african-american-name" vs "stereotypically-white-name", which are good evidence as to why a good hiring process should remove personally-identifying details from resumes.
Not just the name of the applicant, either -- school names and locations can also introduce unfair biases. Company names are unavoidable, I think: there are only so many companies that fit the description of "Social Network, Global, >10k employees, uses lots of Javascript" or "Privatized Intelligence Service, Global, >100k employees, uses lots of Go".
Buuuuuuut... is there research on what happens when you expand the number of dimensions?
E.g., add in a mix of broad cultural backgrounds (Pan-European, Latin, Arab, Chinese, African, etc.), test different raraties ("Smith" is common, "Chaucer" is rare, both are Anglo)
Does "Victoria Henderson" garner a statistically different response to "Vitalija Herrera" (Anglo vs Lithuanian)? What about "Nyala Aregawi" vs "Nadya Ahane" (Mixed Russian-Japanese)?
What happens when we mix in popular fictional names?
Solid bet there are boys out there named "Thor" and "Bilbo" by parents that are fans of Star Wars.
No idea what actual outcomes might be, the data could yield interesting results on hiring biases.
But primarily, right? Bias plays a role, so everything else being equal, a black applicant will receive fewer callbacks than a white or asian one, but (and that's a big but) the primary issue is that usually not all other things are equal.
The average black person comes from a different socioeconomic background than the average white or asian person, so they'll usually not have the same level of education, but less so because of being discriminated against because of their race, but because of their class. More single-parent households, lower household income, their parents can't simply afford to hire tutors and put them through college etc etc.
That's what makes these things somewhat weird. Yeah, sure, a black guy from a rich family that attended MIT will have a harder time finding funding than his white or asian friends from the same background ... but he'll have a much easier time than some white kid from a broken home.
I believe two things to be true: class is the primary factor, not race. And it's more convenient to focus on race because it's much easier and feels less threatening to the (usually upper middle class and beyond) proponents. "We (as white people) need to share more" puts them in a group with (for the US) 60% of the population and is pretty abstract. Great for virtue signalling, terrible for concrete actions. "We (as rich people) need to share more" puts them in a much, much smaller group and suggests they could actually do something besides yelling at people to check their privilege: share some of the money they inherit. Great for doing something, terrible for virtue signalling because "well, put your money where your mouth is" is so obvious.
Even if your claims are supported by evidence, why is it a bad thing to want to correct that disparity? The fact that there also exist other disparities in the world doesn’t seem like a good reason to oppose correcting one particular disparity.
It's not "bad" as in "omg don't do that", it's just focusing on a less significant problem instead of the large problem, which it conveniently shifts focus from.
I don't think that it's intentional, but I'm absolutely sure that addressing the lacking social mobility in the US would benefit minorities much more than racism, because they are much, much more affected by it.
In your imaginary world we should stop considering race all together. Logically that'd be "fair" right? But what about the million of POC who have been denied jobs, education, houses, etc who exist NOW today and have been set back from centuries of disenfranchisement. Is it fair to them? We don't get to turn back time, so initiatives like this at least attempt to help a group of people who've sorely been needed from the evolution of startups. This is a GOOD thing. More diverse folks means change. If you feel like it's "taking away" from your opportunity, maybe you should examine that a bit.
> While not a majority, many POC work for FAANG companies. Are they eligible for this money purely because of their skin color, but disadvantaged people of any color are not?
oh no, you found an edge case - better throw in the towel. If it can't be simplified into a single test then the whole thing shouldn't exist right? /s
Consider how hard you have to work to justify your line of thinking. Maybe the simplest answer is that you're wrong.
They should have policies that address every fund they manage, not some 100m, which is peanuts for them.
I really like how YC does it. Yes, there are problems with YC, but their main program is really good at taking people from different economic/social/racial backgrounds.
Have tonnes of friends from disadvantaged backgrounds and developing countries that got in. I don't understand why every fund can't do it.
So much of the policies from the left on race are examples of the shirky principle in action:
https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
This is a great article from Shelby Steele, an African-American senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute on the issue:
Just because it would be ideal to have programs for all disadvantaged backgrounds doesn't make one specifically for POC bad imo.
And what happens when a black-founder VC fund underperforms an Asian-founder VC fund?
Will we need another level of VC funds to fix that?
Systematic racism is very much real in the United States, putting minorities at a disadvantage exactly because of the color of their skin - socioeconomic background and upbringing aside. Affirmative action, and presumably this effort by SoftBank, is intended to address that.
Bluntly: there's probably a lot that you can't see.
When the James Damore essay swept google, I briefly asked my female friends if they could simply tell me what discrimination they experience. But they were too worn out from every male colleague asking them the same thing to explain it all to each one.
What I realized I needed to do was start listening to women's stories more, and start believing things even when they don't make sense to me. I needed to be curious and look for problems that I had previously been blissfully unaware of. And with that change in mindset I started to see them.
We have to do the same with people of color. We need to listen to their stories and believe them. It's hard to give you a bulleted list which would clearly explain discrimination just as it was hard (and tiring) for women to explain their discrimination to me. But if you take "there are things you are not seeing about racism at the workplace" to be true, you can begin to cultivate a mindset that allows you to learn what is happening.
Great read, there is several chapters explaining the parents comment
So perhaps you do not see racism because you've assumed its not happening, and because it's not happening to you? From what I know about racism (as a white person), it must be impossible that the tech world is simply free of racism. It's just hard to see when you are not the victim. The answer I've found is to listen to people of color when they say they experience racism. Don't challenge each assertion, take it to be true and then look further for corroborating stories. You will find them.
Regardless if they get in the pipeline an issue a disadvantaged minority will have will be getting railroaded by say, an engineer who doesn't like said minority regardless of his competence level.
I think that your making assumption based on a lifestyle you don't live. You in the response a being flippant in saying well its not that bad. The fact is I doubt you have any idea. The fact is no is plenty of evidence that say with the same financial/education level a minority is disadvantaged and even with a greater financial/education level they are more disadvantaged.
I think your living in a reality of how you think the world should be instead of the one that exists.
For founders dealing with VC, it's a different equation, so your intuition about "the tech world" doesn't exactly apply. Still, I agree with you. There isn't some untapped vein of black and latino American founders that other VC's are currently missing out on.
But is the solution “we will only consider people of specific racial backgrounds. We will reject you on the sole basis of your race”? Affirmative action has been firmly grounded in policies for decades. At what point do we do away with it, or decide that it needs to be rebalanced for groups that had potential reduced because of the results of affirmative actions good intentions? It’s made getting into college and many positions as an Asian American pure hell, despite being minorities and many coming from poverty.
The fund isn't pointing out that "Only Black Founders Matter", it's saying that that group of people require attention at this point in time, and we're going to focus on them now and correct the systemic problems that have given them a disadvantage until this point in time.
We'll get to everyone else next. The principle of using the water wagon to save the house that's currently burning applies. The people starting this fund have decided that focusing on this group is a good start, other groups will come later after the problem is clear enough.
Rest of the causes need to be looked upon at various stages of life and via various support measures, this particular caters to racial bias.
Not when it comes to raising VC money, no. Typically people who manage to raise a round come from good backgrounds, middle-class families and have a high level of education. There are exceptions but that's a good general heuristic for a founder who has successfully raised money. If you're from a broken home, didn't finish school, or you were abused as a child you're much less likely to be raising money from a VC fund for a litany of reasons that all need to be addressed by society as a whole.
However, even though practically all the people who pitch to VCs are well-educated, relatively wealthy, middle-class people regardless of what color they are, it's still the case that more than 3/4 of deals go to white men[1]. It's extremely hard to raise, and even harder if you're in a minority group. VCs are systemically averse of doing deals outside of their comfort zone.
For Softbank to ring fence the equivalent of 0.1% of their Vision Fund as "this money is only for minorities" that's fine. To be honest it's not really enough.
I don't look at this news as a VC company going 'positive discrimination' but more as a VC company realising that it has a problem turning down deals that could make them money, eg minority-led startups, and doing something to fix that.
[1] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/untapped-opportunity-minori...
I think you'll get a lot of flak for this sentiment. But I used to feel the same way as you. What helped me change my mind was to realize that no one is taking away opportunities from me by giving them to someone else. "Opportunity" isn't a fixed pie. If we believe that wealth isn't a fixed pie, why not apply that same logic to opportunities and initiatives like this? It's worth thinking about, and deeply reflecting on.
And, you know, if someone was giving out special opportunities to certain people while denying them to us, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Parents have been doing that for their own children since people were people. It's their money; they can put it toward whatever causes they want.
I think this was the stance of the segregationists in the Jim Crow South. They called it “separate but equal”
“So what if someone is getting to drink from a certain water fountain based on their skin color, or their gender? There are plenty of water fountains to go around for all of us.”
I find both statements morally reprehensible.
Because it’s racist.
e.g. https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genet...
A black man and an Asian man rob a bank together. They are caught, charged, and found guilty of the same crime.
The black man is set free because his race is over-represented at the local jail, but the Asian man serves 8 years in prison.
Because nobody is saying someone is superior to another person here, the above example is not racist and totally fine, in your definition of racism. Even though it is obviously deeply unethical and unfair.
By definition this isn't true.
I would expect that what this helps to do is encourage participation from ethnic minorities in the US.
And to your point on white people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Sure it is good to lift all people up in society, but they certainly don’t have to face racial discrimination in the workplace or admissions pipeline. Failing to acknowledge that race is a factor in many people’s lives experiences is a failure to acknowledge systemic racism. This is an attempt to recognize that and correct that. And as other commentators have said, this by no means implies that other initiatives have to be mutually exclusive l.
White families have ten times the average wealth versus black families. Putting aside the significant mountain of evidence racial bias in hiring, in tech, in basically every facet of life, that single statistic should be evidence enough that more funding is necessary for minorities.
And what hypocrisy? You can say that black people are not inherently different but face different circumstances due to societal problems. That's not hypocrisy. That's simply acknowledging that race plays a factor in nurture but maybe not nature.
But I also understand what you mean about people ignoring socioeconomic status or other issues when they are not at the center of the spotlight. I think it's quite clear most companies doing this just for PR. BLM movement has been going on for years, yet these companies never care to actively support it, until now that they've seen "oh shit, people actually care - better get on it now." Let's see whether this is truly a wake-up call for people to address injustices of all kind, starting with racial problem, or simply a 'trend'.
No. This comment is similar to responding to “black lives matter” with “all lives matter”.
Helping a subset of those who need help is acceptable too.
Put aside your hardwired, human-as-social-animal unfairness alert criticism, and recognize that this is a good thing, and it is better that this exists than the case where it does not.
Affirmative action isn’t fair either, but it is still a good thing that it exists.
Once everyone in society is treated equally and has equal opportunities, then and only then can we start criticizing equality improvement efforts on fairness.
There is no requirement that helping people who need help be done so fairly or evenly. Abandon that concept.
I think we all know that all lives matter, but the point is that black lives are in danger thats why were saying black lives matter
Ignoring specific subsets of systematic issues are synonymous with tone deafness
If you discount a subset of a systematic issue and paint it in a broader light, it doesn't portray an accurate picture.
I am an immigrant where I live, so i will take the liberty to ask:
- Do the behaviors we have been seeing on television from law enforcement in the US extend to offline business relationships in the US in more subtle ways? For example would a minority with a new product be given a lower preference to demo their stuff at a technology meetup? Would they be passed up for a promotion at work because the boss preferred someone who looked like him?
- Is there a systemic variation in the quality and accessability of human relationships for some groups? (vital for recruiting, selling, partnering, fund raising, launching, ecosystem and user community building). For example would it be harder to sign up beta users for an enterprise product?
Those are the core issues they could face, and they are very real in some places in the UK.
If this is a case, perhaps it is warranted or you will have capable people unable to contribute.
The HN title should be changed though, it says 'minorities' while the original article says 'people of colour'. I assumed it would be targeting Asians from the HN title.
I love watching the market in action. Wonder if it will pay off.
Maybe the blind guy did not want to be patronizingly helped with crossing the road. Maybe he would have asked for help if needed it and could have done without a sighted knight.
If these arguments sound perverse just swap out some other 'issue' and they will start sounding familiar.
Supporting BLM seems like a net positive for companies, there’s no marketing downside. It’s perceived as The Right Thing. I’m sure more companies will follow.
But companies do this because they know it works, so I guess I can’t say it’s a dumb financial move.
I've never understood this argument in the context of investing. If there was an opportunity to get outsized returns by investing in the people this targets, then investors would already be going after these opportunities, motivated by the returns alone. They wouldn't even need the social signaling aspect of announcing a fund like this. If anything, they'd probably keep such details of these good deals to themselves to avoid having too much money chase after such deals and raise the price of the deals and make their investing terms worse.
That thesis makes sense in some markets such as lifestyle products and services catering to a market segment. Fashion and entertainment are a perfect examples.
In the context of technology however, there's nothing about building the next platform as a service for example that would lend itself to be more successful if it were built by a specific demographic. If that were the case, investors would already be chasing those opportunities.
The root cause of the problem of poverty for minorities, is far beyond the scope that this idea can even solve.
We effectively need a reset in our capitalistic system.
For far too long, we have used GDP as the measure of wealth of a country. But we now live in a world, where money essentially has no bounds to reality anymore. It is tied to nothing, but it is the driver of everything.
The Fed and other central banks, are used to print money out of thin air, and give it to banks, to lend out, or to buy back loans from corporations.
People blindly believe that this will not cause inflation, but instead, it drives up asset inflation, which drives up the cost of everything else. This is the hidden inflation, that takes money out of your pocket, and is beyond your control.
This is where the government needs to step in and put in policies to protect the people.
Instead of GDP, we need to measure QOL, or the Quality of Life.
This is the measure of how well the median person’s quality of life is, in terms of how much they earn, and how much their rent and mortgage is. As well as other factors like, access to modern basic necessities: electricity, shelter, clothing, healthcare, transportation, communication, and food.
No person, should be required to spend over 50% of their income on housing. There is just no money left over afterwards to pay for anything else. You will forever be, bound to a life of poverty and destitution, as well as your children.
Additionally, we need to remove housing as an investment vehicle. Instead of creating wealth for all, this has become the driver of massive inequality.
Housing needs to be for people to live in, and not for speculation. The government should mandate the building of more housing, to increase availability, and to drive down costs. And people should be able to afford and own their own homes. And maybe to kickstart a post-industrial society, the government should back the mortgage, where you just need to work a meaningful job in society, for 20 years, and the house is yours. The government will pick up the remaining tab on the house afterwards.
This will give you a home, and the security you need to be safe and whole. You can raise your family and your children, without the fear of poverty, or crime, or a lifetime servitude of debt.
And for things like food, the vegetables and fruits, can be grown in massive automated vertical farms. And one day, tended to by robots, for monitoring and harvesting. No more need for back breaking labor performed by humans. Let the robots do all the work. The software for it will be developed by programmers, and the fruits and vegetables will be monitored by using adaptive machine learning software.
These are bold challenges, and we need bold leaders to think beyond their myopic economic view of the world, where they only think of enriching themselves and their cronies, and actually do their job to govern, and to lead and guide the people.