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A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women
- wmeredith 11y agoYes, and? Did any try? If so, what happened? If not, why not? I need more information for this to be interesting.
- sbierwagen 11y agoSecond paragraph. Only 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised $1MM or more in outside funding since 2012.
- pluma 11y agoOut of how many? When were they founded? When did they raise the money? What's the trend (founded/total, funded/total and funded/founded)? It's nonsense to talk about this kind of thing without the correct frame of reference. At least if you're trying to argue that not enough black women led startups get funded (which seems to be what the headline is getting at). Also, what about other ethnicities? What about black men? What about white women? What about social backgrounds? Was their ethnicity the distinguishing factor at that point or were they preselected prior to becoming entrepreneurs? The first step to finding out how to solve the problem is to find out where the problem actually stems from. The 5 Whys apply to social problems as much as to technical ones.
- muddyrivers 11y agoI don't understand why this gets down-voted. Maybe I missed some very subtle tone? I do agree that we need more information. When I see an article with "statistically" in the title, I want to see some data and some robust analysis, not a PR piece.
- sbierwagen 11y agoOnly 12 Black women led startups (yes only 12) have raised $1MM or more in outside funding since 2012. Twelve is now "zero"?
- acveilleux 11y ago12/10000 is noise.
- andrepd 11y agoThe number of black women is 12, not 0. I don't understand what you wish to gain by egregiously twisting the numbers. Yes, it's a low percentage. No, it's not zero.
- aristus 11y agoWhat do you wish to gain by being painfully pedantic? Black women are 5-6% of the population, but 0.01% of funded founders. That is a rounding error, effectively zero. Why not focus on the actual point of the post instead?
- CydeWeys 11y agoBecause the title primed me to expect one thing, and then the post body rapidly contradicted it by providing twelve vetted examples of the class that the title claimed should not exist. My mind does not get over being misled and confused like that easily, especially when the fix to improve it is so trivial (like saying "virtually none" instead of "statistically zero").
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago>DID found that even the WORST Startups led by white males raise more than the Best Startups led by Black Women. This was big and in bold, but I didn't see any links to how they calculated this. Anyone else see how they found this?
- ll123 11y agoThe worst startups have raised no money at all, so that means the best startups led by black women have also raised no money at all.
- mc32 11y agoIt's the social graph. If the mainstream does not notice, do what countless immigrant groups have done in countries the world over, group together form your own interest group and serve your group. You also see this behavior with industry groups, or worker groups. Content producers group, telecoms group, so they can advance themselves and self interest. Why do Nigerians do relatively well, they'll find other Nigerians, help each other and steadily climb. Or Russians or Chinese immigrants, etc. Help from the mainstream helps, and it'd be good to get even footing, but lacking that, create a self interest group. It's not as though there are no rich people who are minorities who are also interested in investing in startups. Pursue the issue in a multi pronged fashion. Don't count on anyone in particular.
- tryitnow 11y agoThat will work with Africans and other groups who have a strong sense of ongoing ethnic identity. American blacks descended from slaves have a lot of problems doing that for all sorts of reasons. My guess is that a lot of African immigrants have raised money, just not via traditional routes, hence they don't show up in the numbers. The important thing to recognize is that you can't easily analogize the experience of people who were enslaved 150 years ago and then faced systematic oppression after that for at least another 100 years to the experience of immigrants migrating to make a new start. My bet is that we will see a lot more success from African immigrants before we see success from American slave-descended blacks. Indeed, it's unsurprising the first black president is the son of an immigrant and not descended from slaves.
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoNigerians and American blacks are worlds apart in terms of emphasis on education and work ethic. I say this as someone who has lived in Nigeria as well as in predominantly black neighborhoods in the US.
- jacobush 11y agoI don't disagree with you at all. Just a side note - don't you find it intriguing that Barack Obama is "black" and not "white"? Thinking about "one drop of blood" and all that. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule )
- andrepd 11y agoI don't think that is a problem with venture funding in itself, more a symptom of deeper underlying problems.
- CydeWeys 11y agoPlease change the article title to "A vanishingly small percentage of venture funding has been raised by black women". That is an accurate way of phrasing the facts. The current title is breaking my brain.
- timwaagh 11y agostatistically zero rabbit-founded companies ever received funding. stop discrimination against rabbits now.
- rambos 11y agoSome thoughts and questions here. Should we in the tech industry feel obligated to spend energy on these social movements? Are we wrong and selfish to not? Honestly, I'd rather not. I'd rather get technical things done, and let policy makers and influencers focus on those issues. If you're in on something with me, great AWESOME, I honestly don't care who you are. Things like race and gender don't matter to me as long as you can get work done. However, I do understand that being able to get work done in this industry is stemmed from a privileged advantage. -- Yes that sucks and is unfair, but how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus on getting work done?
- aristus 11y agoIt's your choice to ignore it. More precisely, it's your privilege to ignore it. "...how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus..." The point of startups is not blindly attacking the biggest pile of work at hand. It's to find blindspots and exploit them. If every single one of your competitors is systematically undervaluing entire classes of potential workers, dontcha think that just maybe there's an opportunity to be had there? But no. For all the talk of merit, getting shit done, hustle, etc, it's mostly about connections. You can't hold onto the meritocratic myth and ignore completely obvious evidence to the contrary forever. But damn, so many rich white guys around here love to try.
- jaksdhkj 11y ago> If every single one of your competitors is systematically undervaluing entire classes of potential workers, dontcha think that just maybe there's an opportunity to be had there? This is a common line of thought that I find myself having. I suspect it's a common fallacy, although I've never heard a name for it. I call it "being too clever again by half". The idea that when others zig, I should zag. Or that any status quo structure has inefficiencies. My reality is that zig/zag concept only works in certain situations. It'd be interesting to think more about the conditions for those situations, because then I could readily identify them. In this situation, it's possible that your competitors are undervaluing an entire class of workers simply because that class of workers does not have value to them. If there are no technical, talented, black female engineers in the Valley, maybe the market isn't intentionally ignoring them -- it's just unable to find them. Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes the status quo is an efficiency shortcut as well as being efficient.
- kelukelugames 11y agoI clicked around and couldn't find the actual report. I want to read that instead of an infographic or blog post. Does anyone have a link to the report?
- colmvp 11y agoI know that the narrative is that there isn't diversity in tech, but I'm curious about the numbers of Asians who managed to get funding for their startups.
- CydeWeys 11y agoIt would be interesting to see a breakdown by all races and country of origin, I will grant you that. That would be in addition to this article, not in opposition to it, however. The lack of success of black people and women in tech is PROOF that there isn't diversity, at least not for those groups; it isn't just some narrative. Even if, say, Southeast Asians are doing well, that doesn't change the fact that the groups that the article is talking about aren't. 0.12% for a group that you would expect to have about 6.50% in based on overall population is indicative of a problem.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoBut it would be nice to know where the problem is at. If 6.5% of applicants were black women and only .12% were accepted, especially if the ideas were rated as average in a found blind rating... that would indicate a huge problem. If .06% of those applying were black women, but .12% of those accepted were, it would show the problem has nothing to do after the application and is all about getting people to apply to begin with, which is a different problem with a different solution needed.
- CydeWeys 11y agoYes, that would be very useful info to have indeed.
- sharemywin 11y agoit's not what you know, but who you know. or as they say in SV it's no the idea but execution.
- omonra 11y agoI guess I'm supposed to care? I'm afraid I don't. Nope - don't care. If the author instead showed how there were all these superb startups led by black women that failed to get funding - I would. I guess the difference stems from the unshared assumption that if black women represent 6% of US population, they should get 6% of VC funding.
- owens99 11y agoYou should care if you agree there is discrimination in tech. If you are part of a minority and have never faced discrimination in tech, that might give credibility against such a claim.
- omonra 11y agoI don't agree because I fail to see examples of said discrimination. Maybe it's there - what evidence points to it? How many black women got 5 on AP CS test?
- rmxt 11y agoIs the AP CS test supposed to be some sort of impartial arbiter of talent and ability? What does the AP test have to do with anything?
- omonra 11y agoYes it is - it's a measure of interest in computers and drive/intelligence. If you don't like AP CS test - pick some other parameter that indicates that this population that should (absent discrimination on part of money-bag holders) produce a number of startup founders.
- rhallie15 11y agoMost schools don't even offer AP CS. Especially not public schools that primarily serve low-income students (which black people are disproportionately more likely to be). The course/exam is not equally accessible to people across racial demographics, and is, therefore, not a logical metric to measure potential (unless you're maybe looking at percentage of people getting 5s out of the total number of people of that demographic taking it).
- tobiaswright 11y agoHere's a little more background on projectdiane for those that are interested: https://medium.com/@KathrynFinney/projectdiane-breaking-tech-s-diversity-catch-22-d06555ea2e52#.f5oxi85xo https://medium.com/@KathrynFinney/projectdiane-breaking-tech...