Author here. I think you missed the point of the essay; my startup at the time didn’t get funded because the idea wasn’t a good fit for venture capital. We still ended up up making close to half a million in revenue, pivoted, and have raised over $5M to date while grossing close to $10M last year in revenue.

Having experienced actual racism I can infer when someone is making a comment from a place of privilege vs. being malicious. The entire point of that section was to frame things.