Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
Chum-tactic: the first filter applied to you, for press or investment or anything, is "Who sent you to me?" Some people think "Silicon Valley is a meritocracy" implies that the first filter would be merit. Ahem. Be meritorious, but make sure being meritorious makes an impression on someone who routinely has dinner with the people whose cooperation you need. (Hint: this happens spontaneously sometimes but that isn't the way to bet.)
P.S. Lots of the world and lots of situations work like this, with wide variations in local etiquette for what counts as an intro and what warrants one. "Who sent you?" is also the first filter for Chicago government contracting and Nagoya job offers.
Moneyball deals with inefficiencies in antiquated markets, and fits well into Lewis's oeuvre (see Big Short, Liar's Poker for examples of how to take advantage of credit default swaps or the bond market). It has much less to do with "merit," as one can observe a player's true merit over a sufficient sample in baseball. If the guy's a bum, he'll live in Single A for the rest of his career.
tl;dr: baseball statistics are much better at quantifying a player's skills. See "WAR" and the recent Red Sox and Yankees teams for examples.
Anna Kournikova was never a very successful tennis player but her earnings never reflected that.
Ferrari have a good F1 team, sure, but not necessarily the best; pre-Schumacher, their win rate was dwarfed by both Williams and McLaren. Yet their brand is strong enough that they uniquely can sell old cars to enthusiasts and run them at a profit, were able to get higher payments from the governing body and can license a new circuit (Yas Marina) to include a Ferrari-themed amusement park. All of which gives them a substantially higher baseline income from which to develop their cars.
Professional sports is as much about building and exploiting a brand as anything else in life.
Depending on how you define success, Kournikova was successful. You can't qualify routinely for grand slam tournaments unless you're a top tennis player - you get there purely on merit.
F1 is a different matter entirely. For all the love I have for it, it's hardly a pure sport. But even then, the top drivers do win the top drives. I remember telling my Spanish friend that Alonso was going to win the championship some day, after seeing him routinely out-qualify and out-race his teammate, and drivers in better cars.
If I had to put a bunch of rich people on a chart with three axises of merit, luck, and inheritance, I still think professional athletes lie the closest to the pure merit line.
I'd assume at some level finance is like this; the algorithmic trading parts, not the "we went to Yale together and you have compromising pictures of me with that nun, so I'll give you this business" parts.
There are lots of roles in finance where connections and likability are probably primary (once you pass a certain level of competence), though.
Though baseball (and other American sports) aren't generally a good example. With only 20-30 world class teams, it's easy to get contaminated by groupthink. Soccer is a better example. It's easy for all 32 NFL teams to have the exact same ideas about how to measure playing ability. It's hard for thousands of clubs in hundreds of countries to all have the same ideas. Even if English or American teams focus too heavily on size and strength, a Spanish team might take a chance on an undersized kid with a lot of speed and technical ability.
That's a brilliant way to put it.
Sarcasm aside, let me tell you why there are so few black tech entrepreneurs. Fact 1: Most successful tech founders in the Valley are themselves technical. Fact 2: Go to your favorite college, how many black people there studying math or computer science ? how many white or asians?
If there are very small percentage of black studying math and computer science, of course, the number of the black tech entrepreneurs would be small.
To all the black people out there, please don't turn venture capitalism into philanthropy. You will destroy Silicon Vally.
The whole sport (e.g basketball) industry is dominated by black people. Do you see asian people crying around shouting 'racism'? If you are really good (like in sports), you gain success. If you are not good, you're not (like making tech companies). It's simple.
When it comes to sports, it's easy to claim they are a meritocracy because the players don't always look like the coaches or GMs. If the players and coaches always looked the same, people might question it.
People are generally blind to their biases, and some biases are wrong. For example you mentioned most founders being technical, but some VCs have promoted picking startups run by designers.
Let's not pretend venture capital is a completely neutral meritocracy. There are plenty of VCs who speak about the herd mentality within their profession and how many social factors like "who's already invested" have an effect on where money goes.
I thought venture capital would be full of strictly analytical decisions, but the more you listen to VCs talk about themselves the more you realize that they use many social factors to try to mitigate their perceived risk. It's possible things could be overlooked. It's not just complaining. How else could a person bring attention to something without talking about it? Edit: I don't see a difference between this argument and the belief that most of the startup talent is in Silicon Valley. Convincing and generally accepted, but not necessarily true.
edit: Don't just vote me down because you disagree. Please respond.
That aside - I believe the premise of Hank's post is that it's not a meritocracy in Silicon Valley. It's hard to know for sure whether this is true because there's no way to test this hypothesis. But I think it's safe to assume that VC's are still human, and like every other human, they all have biases, including racial biases. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. However, if they're not aware of that bias - perhaps, mentally, they reject that they have any racial bias because they think that will make them a bad person - then they won't take any conscious steps to correct it. The result would be that fewer black entrepreneurs get funded.
You should realize that being black in America is not like being fat. For most of our country's history, black people have been treated as less than human. It wasn't even until fairly recently in our country's history that blacks gained the legal right, throughout the country, to use the same restrooms and water fountains. Can you imagine that? If you think that that kind of institutionalized racism has completely evaporated, you are wrong.
I think it would benefit you to read the book "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin. It will probably change your apparent opinion that black people are a bunch of whiners demanding charity.
Like you said, black people have been mistreated for hundreds of years. So even today, not many black students go to college (comparatively), and when they are in college, not many of them choose engineering(cultural?). The reason why there are few black tech entrepreneurs is because there is a small selection pool to begin with.
I think it's more productive to try to solve these root causes than to blame Valley meritocracy which i think is working ok.
No.
But I do see them start fights with black people when they get beat by them. You should see it ... it's hilarious ->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmG9G-ZwDDc
I think the PHYSICAL fighting you see on the part of the Chinese teams is a manifestation of the same frustration that blacks show towards their own under representation in tech fields.
Just my take.
It's men (or women) competing against one another. I suppose you think its also a manifestation of some deep frustration when two white hockey players fight on the ice? Or when two black players fight in the NBA? Or when a black guy fights a white guy, etc. etc.
I've played them ... NCAA Div 1 Track and Basketball.
Anyone fighting in Track and Basketball is fighting because they are getting beat. And because they are generally a whiny Beeyotch. And that was true even back in my day, (early 90's).
Never played other sports, (hockey), so I can't say. But if you are fighting in Track or Basketball ... I can guarantee it is because you are a beeyotch. Now you couple this fact with the fact that the CBA gets into fights with nearly every visitor that beats them...and you have to think there are some frustrated players over there. Google China vs. Brazil or China vs US or China vs Australia or China vs anyone really.
I question whether you have played sport at a sufficiently high level if you believe that fighting is just a part of it. Or if you have ... your coaches failed miserably in getting the point of athletics across to you.
I think your statements are pretty bigoted and assuming. I took a look at some of your examples:
"Yesterday, a friendly game between men's national basketball teams from China and Brazil turned into a melee when Zhang Qingpeng was fouled hard by a Brazilian player less than a minute into the game."
"You can see the tiny Aussie guy in red swipe at the ball not once, but twice at 0:36-0:37. The ball is being held up high by the Chinese player (rightfully so), and the short Aussie looks like he's swiping (or could be throwing punches - hard to tell) high near the Chinese player's face, which is not going to be taken so kindly by the Chinese rebounder.
At that point, the Chinese rebounder is intimidating the short Aussie, then the Aussie teammates runs in (from the bottom right of the screen) and push the Chinese rebounder. That's when the Chinese bench clears and the brawl breaks loose."
I really don't see how you come to any conclusion that fighting = racial frustration. A cuban tae kwon do competitor lost his temper, kicked a ref and got banned from the Olympics. Ron Artest jumped into the stands. Team Canada once had a bench brawl with the Soviets in hockey.
Race really has nothing to do with anything in these instances.
see:
http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/should-the-nba-assist-white-p...
I see parallels, it's a cultural thing, generally speaking in the African American community tech startups are not valued like playing basketball/football or being singer/rapper/actor.
The startups that are popular in the African American community is the record label.
I also thought this was interesting as well: http://deadspin.com/kyle-mcalarney/
I think Marc Andreesen (not exactly sure if it was him) wrote about how companies that provide entertainment (YouTube, Twitter etc) end up being worth much more than others.
I have wondered about this and think the core problem lies with two cognitive short cuts. The availability heuristic and the belief that other groups (predicated on culture) are much less varied in individuals than yours (out-group homogeneity bias). And everyone suffers from it. Black, white and every shade between. That is, even blacks will assign the same stereotype backed attempt at a conditional distribution to various outcomes and the only difference is blacks will not lump it into the its just cause they is black bucket. But even that alone is damaging to the cultural self image.
The effects are subtle. Ignoring socio-economic crippling effects, there is a very strong hostile affect against book learning in black culture. And I do not mean the standard antigeek treatment. I inhabited the intersection and can tell you there is a striking difference in the type of hostility, the other one actually creates feelings of real guilt and self questioning. And the underlying cause is not due to a hatred of knowledge but a chronic unacknowledged buried belief of lesser intelligence due to inferences made against the cultural Zeitgeist peppered with lingering traces of an oppressed past and a lack of many examples to counteract the claim.
This results in a defeatist attitude. See, if you try to study you nudge the insecurities of those around you which leads to a "so you think you are better than the rest of us" effect. There is a pressure to not try too hard and an almost pride in ignorance and keeping it real. And if you do press on you will still have this imposter effect suggesting that you struggle against your genes. I succumbed to this pressure in my school years. The cycle maintains a fixed point for the continued apathy towards knowledge in black culture, resulting in a dearth of intellectual achievement. So we think the only way forward is in sports or entertainment. This is the inward problem, why so little of us study math and computer science.
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Personally, I have not met with much overt racism in any culturally diverse setting. Outside diverse settings though and the rapid degradation of the quality of broad-mindedness can be quite cumbersome.
I am much more subjected to the subtle effects of the availability heuristic. I am not offended but sometimes disheartened. Where nice people meaning no offence will cross over to the other sidewalk and back, especially at night (useful when I wish to be left in peace). Or people feel the need to dumb things down and are surprised I am interested in certain subjects cause you know, you people typically don't - well no offence. Or that I am searched more often than my nonblack friends (0 vs twice a year or so) and on days when I say absolutely nothing have to end up being hauled to the station while they look up that my record is as spotless as a cleanroom.
This is the real problem. Well meaning people will say things meaning no offence and which only the most righteously uptight, persecution complex suffering person would take as such. Benign and small indvdually but in aggregate they give away beliefs that end up being real roadblocks when attempting to initiate an interaction. The tragedy is they do it without even being aware that they are doing it. When pointed out the more enlightened will mention some nonsense about statistics and time savings. But this is useless to tell the individual and such beliefs are self perpetuating or confounded by low iodine and magnesium diets - poisoning the well of general knowledge with effects leading to what i mention in my third block of text.
Ah well, I seem to have lost the point of what I was trying to say. but basically the number of dimensions underlying the manifold of this problem is far more vast than the simplistic picture you have painted using only one color.
Interestingly, the prejudice against "acting white" is much lower in black schools, and very high in schools with 20% blacks.
Also, Hispanics are much worse off - African Americans are respected for a GPA of 3.5, but start losing friends if they get anything more. Hispanics seem to lose friends once their GPA goes over 2.5.
see http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/fryer_t...
But part of what you say is a symptom of the chronic heuristic I spoke of. To perpetuate ignorance just because those who do not appreciate it will leave? makes no sense. Why, leaving is almost part of the job description of a sports or entertainment job and they don't get ostracized. Plus part of the problem is a lack of availability of models. The more that achieve the more it becomes okay to try an intellectual avenue as a way out and the less and less notable it becomes to be interested in say math. Plus as a matter of numbers some of them will come back to try and better things, the spaces in entertainment are much more limited than in technology.
Finally, "acting white" exactly exemplifies what I mean. Just because I am not fluent in ebonics, like music with guitars in it, like to read scifi by Egan and books on information theory does not mean I am acting white. Nor does my like of chicken, basketball, funk, hiphop and bboying mean I am acting black. It is a cultural and personal lifestyle choice not predicated on color in deciding what I wish to identify with.
"Where nice people meaning no offense will cross over to the other sidewalk and back, especially at night". I agree that this does happen. I'm guilty of that. But only when I see a group of black teenagers at night, and I might cross over and back without even thinking much about it. I don't know how to solve this problem. One of my black friend who went to Havard Law told me he is guilty of the same irrational fear when he is walking at night.
Not until it is common knowledge that ignanance is not a symptom of race will the problem be solved.
I see this argument made a lot. But this argument has a huge hole in it - Chinese and Indians are also not "like them". And yet, Chinese/Indians are not underrepresented. If Hank William's theory were correct, they should be.
Any theory concerning the underrepresentation of blacks which does not distinguish between blacks and Indians is flawed.
In actuality, a landmark Supreme Court case was of an Indian man who wanted to own US property but couldn't and his defense was that he was related to Aryans and therefore could be considered White.
Black isn't so much a color, it's both an individual and collective experience, and the experiences of Blacks in America in relations to Whites is what makes race-relations and social, political, economic progress unique to Blacks as opposed to other ethnic groups who have faced discrimination and even oppression but not to the degree of Blacks.
The closest comparison I would make to Blacks and Indians is of the higher Indian castes and the Dalits (Untouchables). So, yes, Black and Indians can be distinguished from one another and at the same time learn from one another.
> Black isn't so much a color, it's both an individual and collective experience,
> and the experiences of Blacks in America in relations to Whites is what makes
> race-relations and social, political, economic progress unique to Blacks as
> opposed to other ethnic groups who have faced discrimination and even
> oppression but not to the degree of Blacks.
[I know the original Indian referred too, I was disputing the "unique" part]
Like I said, I was rather unhappy with the "unique" comment. I would bet there are far fewer tribal members in Silicon Valley startups compared to other ethnic groups.
Then you shouldn't use the word "unique" in a context of "had it worse" then other groups.
"Dept. of Indian Affairs"
Are you out of Canada or at one of the states? The Federal level is called "Bureau of Indian Affairs".
If you apply for a computer security job, make sure to not list "Dept of Interior" in the context of tribes. They had some serious data loss issues (as in whole Dept of Interior (parent org of BIA) being taken off the internet. I still want to talk to the damn judge since he removed the tribal college access to the internet at the same time (including those schools not getting their internet from the BIA). The bricks just keep on being stacked.
Let me flesh it out for you. I said, "The European colonies in America joined the African slave trade because the supply of American Indian slaves was being exhausted, as a matter of fact." Which means I'm not only aware of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but I even outlined the specific reason why slavery of American Indians wasn't sustainable and why the North American colonies had to engage in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to begin with. The fact is, west Africa had more slaves to sell.
Speaking of Brazil, if you start at the end of the second paragraph of Wikipedia's article about slavery in Brazil, it says the exact same thing happened in Brazil:
Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade
enslaved Africans due to two main reasons:
* The unenculturated indigenous peoples deteriorated
rapidly, and became increasingly wary of the
Portuguese, thus, obtaining new indigenous slaves was
becoming harder and harder.
Chinese and Indians fall into "model minority" stereotypes, which have their own set of evils (you are X so you must be good at Y is it's own kind of dehumanization). So someone making a gut call might have underlying prejudices for Asians and against blacks.
In other words, when is the last time a white person has crossed the street to avoid a Chinese/Indian person walking towards them. Ask a black guy when the last time that happened.
I think there are also many cultural differences at play, as well as people's perceptions of those cultural differences.
Startups take their own kind of crazy, and it really helps to be surrounded by people that tell you its ok to be crazy or are at least as crazy as you. And if you are going to be around crazy people, you will probably want to know that they are the same kind of cazy :) Being from different cultures (or assuming you are) will make it harder to sense this.
Edit: I'll answer my own question, in 2008 alone African immigrants only accounted for 3% Asian immigrants (which includes India) accounted for 53%. I'm sure that's not a recent trend.
In a more general form, it would be nice to hsve some reference to the statistics on this since it's very interesting.
I focused on "like them" because that's a lower entropy theory than "fit a pattern" - it's a claim that VC's thought process is x -> cultural_distance(self, x).
"Fit a pattern" is basically just an assertion that VC's have a table of values in their mind, { "asian" : +1, "white" : 0, "black" : -1 } without explaining either where it came from or how we even know it exists. It's certainly very difficult to disprove, but only because it tells us very little.
Ask a black guy when the last time that happened.
Well, I'm a white guy, and the last time it happened to me was Tues. This happens to me fairly frequently when I'm in the US.
History: without it, life is confusing.
On the other hand, other non-European minorities were excluded from the US all together, leaving less time for stereotypes to calcify. The IT industry itself has a strong presence in India and China, so cross-pollination is logical. It has not had a similar expansion into Africa, or we might see similar growth of African entrepreneurs.
‡Maybe you mean black Africans, but blacks are not the only Africans -there are south Asians, whites, Chinese, Arab, etc.
This is not a subject where we have to rely on speculation or personal experience. We know widespread racial bias exists because of solid scientific evidence accumulated over years of study. An example and some history: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617142120.ht... . There is no reason to assume VCs are immune.
> In that case, why do Indians/Chinese "fit a pattern that appeals to them" and Blacks do not?
Because the stereotype of "acting black" is so pervasive and negative.
The black hipster who knows Python and doesn't wear a dew-rag probably needn't worry. Essentially he may be black but he doesn't "act black".
Also, if he's one guy in the startup that's ok -- it fits the pattern. If the whole startup is black, maybe you wonder if they're ghetto. Doesn't fit the pattern because you haven't seen it before.
The bro who shows up with a noticeable accent and stereotypical behaviours is at a disadvantage.
Successful blacks become invisible because they don't "act black" because the old stereotype is that you can't be really black and successful (except in sports, or entertainment).
Someone once said to me: "So these guys were real niggers, you know, not like you -- I mean trash."
On the one hand, I was offended. On the other hand, I knew what he meant.
Yes, they often are. One of the biggest names in the VC world is Vinod Khosla. Kleiner Perkins has a whole team dedicated to China. Accel has multiple Chinese and Indians on their US team (and dedicated China and India teams).
Every major SV VC firm looks like this. White (US), White (European), White (Israeli), Indian, and Chinese.
The "them" isn't just Caucasians, but it includes Chinese and Indians.
Similarly, would an Indian founder be at a disadvantage applying to Fred Wilson? Somehow, I suspect any disadvantage would be minor, if it existed at all.
In any case, your theory of who "them" is now drawn quite broadly. It's not so much people looking for others "like them", it's more like looking for people from within an arbitrary subset that includes widely disparate and dissimilar groups (White and Asian Americans, Chinese, Indians, Israelis, Europeans).
[1] Ignore for the sake of argument that I'm the only non-Indian in my company.
This is not a very strong claim. It's been shown repeatedly with resumes and in loan applications that a black name/photo/applicant is less likely to move forward than a white photo/applicant with identical qualifications. It shouldn't be shocking that this exists in VC financing.
On the other hand, there isn't a "Black IIT" to bootstrap the tech reputation of blacks.
Most Black Americans also tend to have a higher quality primary education than the typical Indian student - their teachers tend to show up for work and their schools tend to have toilets with > 2 nines of uptime.
As for "very serious about trying to export their own tech workers", their efforts have made it considerably easier for Indian/Chinese workers to get an H1B. I guess you are right - Black Americans would probably have a hard time getting an H1B.
Most Americans, however, already have a conception of who Blacks and Hispanics "are" and it's not quite positive. They have a deficit initial position, where Indians and Chinese have a more-or-less neutral position. Moderately educated, well dressed Whites are generally neutral or positive. This may be in part due to the general American dislike of poor people -- immigrants who come to this country are usually educated and well off compared to the population of their country of origin, so the American over here only ever sees educated people from that place. However, that same American sees Black and Hispanic people all across the social spectrum, and can't help but have his opinion of that group lowered.
In my experience, the white guy who graduated from state college starts off -- in the mind of the person assessing him -- as well or better than the brown guy who went to a top tier school.
You're welcome to disagree, I'm sure you will object to some degree. This is only what I've observed.
I agree. In a sense it's like a negative brand association. I would add that we could also discuss the positive association of blacks with sports or entertainment vs. some other minorities or even whites.
But Jewish and sports? No.
Jewish and Medicine? Yes.
The terms "white" and "black" when applied to race are not objective measures of skin-pigmentation. They're proxies for other traits. They are used differently in different cultures. For instance "black" in the U.S. may not be "black" in Brazil.
For example a light-skinned European from Spain would be considered white in the U.S. A person with the same appearance, but from Mexico would be considered Hispanic.
In my part of Canada, we generally don't refer to people as Hispanic. They'd just be white or maybe brown. Unless maybe they're poor and don't speak English or French.
I once heard an older, well-known investor and entrepreneur in the Boston area tell a room full of students that a startup he's most likely to invest in is one whose founding team includes an IIT graduate. Earlier this month, Foundry Group VC Seth Levine said he felt "surprised" being pitched by a group of guys in their late 40s and 50s (http://www.sethlevine.com/wp/2011/10/is-there-age-bias-in-vc...). Hank described the Sequoia VC saying that they're biased toward younger people.
These types of biases come from people who have established patterns of personality traits and other characteristics of what makes for a successful startup and who they like to deal with. I would further posit that they have established norms for dealing with such people (including building networks which support such connections) which makes it easier for both parties to move the relationship forward.
If, however, a startup founder doesn't fit the molds of age, ethnicity, education, background, or whatever, his or her chances of being taken seriously and/or accomplishing something together are much less.
People who play the slot machines or invest in the stock market are notoriously superstitious. I don't think VCs are much different.
I don't think VCs accurately keep track of which founders they reject and end up successful anyway, and adjust their metrics based on that data. I think they have hunches and some founders become successful and then they filter more aggressively on those character traits and confirmation bias takes care of the rest.
The bias could be that a person who is in their 40's and 50's could be considered "stale" in the same way that a house that sits on the market is if it hasn't sold.
There is a belief somehow that something just out there is potentially something to snap up. It's easier to believe that something great is possible with the 20 year old since they have no track record of not doing anything great yet. They feel they know the older person isn't a hot shot but they don't know for sure that the younger person isn't a hot shot. (Of course this doesn't apply to older entrepreneurs who have a success or even a (high profile) failure in their past.)
(Note: I am from New York, so I actually don't know the answer)
The researchers have found that our minds make subconscious judgements of people base on their appearance. No shock here, of course. It turns out that they can measure the effects of this with simple experiments, and can thus measure how a person subconsciously response to images of people from all different races. It is absolutely fascinating, rigorously scientific work, and if you are at all interested in race you should read about it:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/
Here is a mainstream article about the project:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27067-2005Jan...
This seems to be the original Implicit Association Test or IAT paper (from 1998). It's quite accessible and should provide a better justification for why this research is rigorous and novel.
http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/burke_b/Senior/BLINK%20replicat...
Are you suggesting Milgram's experiments are somehow unsound?
His problem is two-fold. First, he sued his previous investors (and lost). A lot of people had their companies fail in 2001, but dragging his investors through a 5-year battle made him a minor legend. Ultimately, he was suing them in retaliation for firing him from Clickradio, which is what they did to try to save the company. Second, he has at least three ex-employees of his current venture whom he's tried to retroactively cut out of the company after they left. One of them is owed over a hundred thousand. If that comes out in due diligence, and it will because half the Valley already knows it, he's a goner.
There are a number of black people in technology I would fund in a heartbeat. Hank is not one of them.
Before you comment, please read about the Just World fallacy (thanks irahul) and ask yourself whether you may be subject to it. And answer honestly.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallac...
So the two alternative are that one can either work within the current status quo (e.g. be pragmatic about it) or, if the situation is presumed by many as unbearable, actively work together to change the situation.
But both of these have the same underlying cause, both of these groups are under-represented in the software development profession as a whole.
Those minorities who are well represented in the software development profession are those that are well represented in the startup community.
Being a successful startup founder means that you're an outlier, and bigger populations have more outliers. It's as simple as that.
Taking part in a race-selected accelerator, instead of a quality-selected accelerator, reflects badly. "If their product is so good, why couldn't they get into YC or TechStars?".
1) that a "race-selected" accelerator is not a "quality-selected" one and 2) that the NewME companies are all YC and TechStars rejects
Curious what led you to them.
Step 1) Throw out 87% of applications randomly. Step 2) Select based on quality. Step 3) Profit?
Compare that to a quality-selected accelerator:
Step 1) Select based on quality. Step 2) Profit!
A race-based accelerator will only outperform a quality-selected accelerator if there's a race that inherently, innately outperforms all other races. Science has pretty well debunked that one.
As to #2, you'd have to be really, really, really stupid to go with a niche accelerator that no one's ever heard of IF given the option of going with YC or TS.
NewMe could barely get a mention in TechCrunch, and, when they did, the social entrepreneurship side story beat out the "here are our awesome companies!" story.
"Merit" has different meanings in different contexts. In the startup world, merit means whoever will likely bring in the most return on investment. He's betting that the overlooked black startups fit the bill. That's a 100% business calculation.
This is very true. I'm half-black and I've avoided such programs and clubs to avoid being labeled.
This is part of a larger issue: "black" is not a culture. What we call "black culture" is more like US-poor-uneducated-black-ghetto-post-slavery-culture.
So, if you happen to be black and aren't poor and aren't living in a ghetto, you don't really identify strongly with what most people call "black culture".
This means that successful, main-stream blacks (speaking of Canada, here) are dis-inclined to live with or be particularly helpful to struggling blacks. Compound this with other cultural divides like high religiosity of uneducated blacks vs. lower religiosity of educated people in general, and there really is a sense of "those losers are embarrassing us."
Contrast this to other minority groups that have strong cultural ties. If Jews are shunned in a country, they tend to set up their own parallel social structures. Chinese help Chinese, etc.
Kenyans help Kenyans, and Somalis help Somalis, but blacks (in general) don't really help blacks, because "black" is not a well-defined cultural group. It's only a well-defined cultural stereotype.
Chris Rock has a famous rant about this: "There are black people and there are n!!!ers, and the n!!!ers have got to go"
There's a recent tendency to equate "nigger" with "white trash". White people don't call white trash niggers.
Innocent whites weren't hung from trees in living memory with crowds of blacks shouting "white trash!". The word "nigger" is more offensive (for now) because of the history of its use. It's an ugly word.
By analogy, ask an Irish Catholic which is more offensive: "white trash" or "dogan". Actually, don't ask, unless you know the person really well.
I'm not sure the white trash equivalency is really gaining momentum, though.
Whites never deeply disliked their poorer and less-educated brethren despite looking down on them, and there has been a spate of "white trash is cool" with the popularity of the Cable Guy and Redneck comedy tours.
Oh, I wasn't intending to criticize you. Yeah, I agree.
a) a stale conversation because people get afraid of coming off racist
b) ad hominem and actually racist ignorantly spouting stereotypes of different races without any factual basis
but I feel like at times its good for me to add my perspective for people who really wouldn't have any idea without it
I am a black ( african-american whatever you like) person who works for a, albeit later stage, startup. With aspirations of one day starting my own.
I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood of the city in the US with the highest percentage black population...
Those things said this issue is both an educational and more importantly a multi generational wealth problem.
I previously discussed at this article here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2438411
Most black kids don't learn much about computers or computing at an early age and secondly don't have family who can afford for them to have one at home to learn on. They don't have friends who are curious about these things to take from and share with either.
In many of my favorite stories about the most successful tech companies in their infancy you hear about this basically band of brothers with (Steve and Woz, Bill and Paul, Zuckerburg and his roomates) alot of under represented in tech minorites don't have this.
I was fortunate that my family could afford for me to have a computer to learn on. But I didn't start learning to program until midway through high school and many times without any help of anyone knowledgeable in my own area town.
Not to mention the things they chose to do were what many people would consider very risky (all of them dropped out of school at one point or another)
I'll close with this part of my comment from that earlier thread
" Even if its not that risk taking is discouraged, risk averse or more conservative routes are certainly encouraged more. There is also the pressure of not having multi generational wealth to fall back on. Not having previously successful family to lean on in times of need or if things don't go right is a strong precursor to risk aversion "
To do that instead of something with much more strongly defined career path (ie doctor, lawyer, dentist, etc.) is tough for many minorities when they have to worry about whether or not their family will be financially sound
Edit: - Another important reason I generally avoid these conversations is because I too strongly believe that Silicon Valley and the Tech Industry as a whole are meritocracies.
But that is why I chose to comment. To help explain that the issues aren't that blacks and other under represented minorities aren't excluded for racism reasons but for circumstances that leave them uninformed, underprepared, or completely without the ability to compete.
Your arguments almost all apply to poor people in general (and I believe them to be absolutely true). In fact I'd argue it's more true than people know. When hearing the legend of Microsoft rarely do people include the fact that his Mom was on the United Way Board with the CEO of IBM and it was she who pointed IBM in Microsoft's direction.
But that's different from the argument he's making. You're making the point that it's hard to get to the startup level he's arguing that once you get there you're at a disadvantage because the Valley has a subconscious racism in it. That I honestly don't believe.
He says...
"To be clear, I am not saying any VC says at a partner meeting, “you know I really like this company’s product but did you notice he’s a negro?” Never Happens"
The problem with that logic is I've been in meetings where the exact opposite is true. Where people have said "I'm not completely sold on the company but I'd really like to see more minorities in our investment portfolio". So in my experience I've seen the color of someone's skin actually help people a lot.
So while there's certainly some subconscious discrimination there's also some very conscious actions being taken to seek out minorities and I don't think anyone can say how frequently either of these phenomenons are happening.
These points may be more related than you think. "Getting to the startup level" is not so simple a concept as "either you get there or you don't." People arrive at this destination with widely varying amounts of skill, preparation, connections, and credentials. Not all entrepreneurs are equally attractive.
So wh-uws' point makes a lot of sense. If it seems that disadvantaged-group-X is having more trouble securing funding than other groups, it doesn't necessarily mean investors are to blame. It could very easily be the case that X is running into issues earlier in life that, generally, make it much harder for its members to become great entrepreneurs. When trying to answer the question, "Why do so few females run funded tech companies?", it might make sense to take a few steps back and ask, "Why do so few females study computer science", or hell, "Why do girls play with dolls while boys play with legos?"
BUT: If I were a founder that would feel being discriminated against in any form (sex, gender, color, your name it) why should I not pare up with a co-founder whom I regard as being not discriminated? If I have no biases within my own friend circle this should be not problem at all. Or would it?
One way is to come across an Arrington, but as not all guys are like Arrington...you would be well advised to have a front man.
I would like to read more about these experiences of his.
"In fact some people get far more support than others. For example, I’m not going to name any names, but when a top tier VC writes a five million dollar check to a 19 year-old with a barely-beyond-napkin-stage idea, no customers and a fragile technology because they “present well” then clearly something else is at work."
And yet there is plenty of evidence to show that they are. This http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/ASR_pager_etal09.pdf for example
In other words, why look for a lottery ticket when there are a bevy of other ways to make money conventionally? I get the arguments lodged here, but it just comes off as whining because the people involved don't give a shit and the people watching on TV will perceive it as whining. The problems go back to education, there is pervasive and systemic bias that gets demonstrated throughout our society for a bevy of reasons. Problem is, the tide has turned and people aren't as sympathetic to these causes when you compare them with state sponsored discrimination. In the absence of that, there's just not a whole lot people can expect other than to look for their wormhorm towards what they want.
Math and science are a good place to start.
"I wholeheartedly agree with what Hank Williams, a participant in NewME this summer recently wrote (Note: Hank has seen the doc)[...] Please read Hank’s full commentary, it’s a great read."
When I see a white rapper I usually am already biased against them. Sorry, I have associated rap with black people. However the color test doesn't go past 10 seconds into listening to a record. Life isn't easier for a black rapper who sucks. Being shot 10 times won't help either.
So is it hard to be a white rapper? Maybe. But remember, Eminem is one of the greatest rapper to ever touch the mic, and Mac Miller, though a bit childish, is going to be great.
Yup, I'm offended now :)