MC Hammer To Minority Entrepreneurs: “Let’s Get It Started”

I'm insinuating that black people are funded in disproportionately low numbers and it's not a coincidence. Even MIT, the finest computer science program in the world, graduates many black students every year. The fact that Y Combinator can barely name three black people it's funded is nothing short of a disgrace.

In aggregate, the fact that VCs mostly ignore black people is not purposeful, it's systemic. Sure, some of the reticence to fund black founders likely comes from deliberate, overt racism, but let's assume that's rare.

One big factor is that most angels and VCs only fund people "in their network" ... in other words, friends of friends. If most VCs tend not to have many black friends and colleagues, the effect compounds over time.

For one to believe that this effect does not exist, one has to also believe that the contrapositive does not either. The contrapositive effect here is the "mafia" effect, which is well observed.

As Sarah Lacy notes:

You can trace a whole lineage of mafias coming out of mafias. Facebook had its roots in the PayPal mafia, which had its roots in the early University of Illinois days along with Netscape and Mosiac. And Netscape grew out of Silicon Graphics. [1]

This is one of the reasons why I think that even small efforts to boost successful minority representation in the industry are important.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/13/inside-the-dna-of-the-faceb...