5 ms·

Every underrepresented group represents an opportunity to start a company, hire some great people from that group, and succeed together. A single company, perha

by tlb 9y ago

Every underrepresented group represents an opportunity to start a company, hire some great people from that group, and succeed together. A single company, perhaps one you start this year, can make a huge impact. YC funding applications are due today. https://www.ycombinator.com/apply https://www.ycombinator.com/apply

marindez 9y ago
What this means is that someone should start a company and become completely racist about who they hire.
- outand_up 9y ago
  Thank you! What are these people smoking? Fight (assumed) racism! With (actual) racism!
- hypersoar 9y ago
  If by "racism", you mean making decisions based on race only in a literal, overt sense, then sure. If by "racism" you mean structural, large-scale, societal oppression of disadvantaged groups, then no, that's not something a lone startup, or even a bunch of startups, can replicate. The latter is typically what people actually mean. The over-arching problem is that structural racism is subtle. It doesn't come from managers saying that don't want any [insert racial slur]s on their team. It comes from people making connections through their kids' schools in mostly-white neighborhoods, or getting along because they like the same music or share the same hobby. People like people who seem familiar, and it's harder from someone with a different cultural background to break through. And this is before we factor in the fact disadvantaged groups tend to grow up with fewer opportunities. Being "neutral" isn't a solution. If you don't try to actively correct for these things, you just end up favoring the status quo. It's not avoiding a choice. It's just choosing the path of least resistance.
- zghst 9y ago
  It is getting tough these days to decipher intentions of those who wish to combat racism with racism, however was definitely not the intention of OP. One could start a business with their family, friends (who are likely to be the same race), or even other interested people in their community. Finding good founders is quite hard, to narrow it by race is even harder, but that shouldn't discourage underrepresented people who share similar values to organize.
noxToken 9y ago
That's such a big, intimidating risk. I don't mean that to be snarky; starting a business for means of primary income is prohibitively scary to me. I have a few ideas that I could probably implement to make some passive income. It wouldn't be crazy initially, but it also wouldn't be an amount to scoff at. I think they all have the potential to grow or be bought. The thought of taking that giant risk and failing... Aside from the ramifications of selectively hiring from my minority group, starting a business makes me shudder.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
It's not a very plausible assumption that your competitors are racially biased but your investors and customers aren't.
- geofft 9y ago
  Not only that, it's much more legal to be racially biased in who you choose as your customers. The laws in the US that require nondiscrimination in hiring, regardless of how effective they may or may not be, don't apply at all to choosing a NoSQL vendor or whatever.
- tlb 9y ago
  Which part isn't plausible? There's plenty of evidence that competitors are biased in various ways. For tech startups, customers and investors are rarely aware of the racial mix of employees, unless maybe they're in the news for not being diverse enough.
geofft 9y ago
Underrepresented groups tend to have less financial security. (That's part of why they're underrepresented in the first place; the term means that there's less of them in some particular space than their fraction in society as a whole, not that they are a minority in terms of underrepresented numbers.) Venture capital is great for taking someone who has some amount of financial security, but not quite enough to entirely bootstrap their venture, and giving them enough more. But it's not particularly effective at helping someone who really needs a low-risk (even if low-reward) option because they have no fallback if their company fails. (To be absolutely clear, this isn't the fault of any venture capitalist, nor is it a thing I think a venture capitalist can reasonably solve in the short term, so this is not a complaint about venture capitalists, just a statement about how the world is. Perhaps in the long term, YC's experiments with UBI might help, but that's an experiment and it won't become a reliable source of financial security for anyone for many many years.) Race doesn't line up perfectly with financial security, and it certainly does not determine financial security. But in the US, today, it's pretty strongly correlated.

by tlb 9y ago

marindez 9y ago

What this means is that someone should start a company and become completely racist about who they hire.

outand_up 9y ago
Thank you! What are these people smoking? Fight (assumed) racism! With (actual) racism!
hypersoar 9y ago
If by "racism", you mean making decisions based on race only in a literal, overt sense, then sure. If by "racism" you mean structural, large-scale, societal oppression of disadvantaged groups, then no, that's not something a lone startup, or even a bunch of startups, can replicate. The latter is typically what people actually mean. The over-arching problem is that structural racism is subtle. It doesn't come from managers saying that don't want any [insert racial slur]s on their team. It comes from people making connections through their kids' schools in mostly-white neighborhoods, or getting along because they like the same music or share the same hobby. People like people who seem familiar, and it's harder from someone with a different cultural background to break through. And this is before we factor in the fact disadvantaged groups tend to grow up with fewer opportunities. Being "neutral" isn't a solution. If you don't try to actively correct for these things, you just end up favoring the status quo. It's not avoiding a choice. It's just choosing the path of least resistance.
zghst 9y ago
It is getting tough these days to decipher intentions of those who wish to combat racism with racism, however was definitely not the intention of OP. One could start a business with their family, friends (who are likely to be the same race), or even other interested people in their community. Finding good founders is quite hard, to narrow it by race is even harder, but that shouldn't discourage underrepresented people who share similar values to organize.

noxToken 9y ago

That's such a big, intimidating risk. I don't mean that to be snarky; starting a business for means of primary income is prohibitively scary to me. I have a few ideas that I could probably implement to make some passive income. It wouldn't be crazy initially, but it also wouldn't be an amount to scoff at. I think they all have the potential to grow or be bought. The thought of taking that giant risk and failing... Aside from the ramifications of selectively hiring from my minority group, starting a business makes me shudder.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

It's not a very plausible assumption that your competitors are racially biased but your investors and customers aren't.

geofft 9y ago
Not only that, it's much more legal to be racially biased in who you choose as your customers. The laws in the US that require nondiscrimination in hiring, regardless of how effective they may or may not be, don't apply at all to choosing a NoSQL vendor or whatever.
tlb 9y ago
Which part isn't plausible? There's plenty of evidence that competitors are biased in various ways. For tech startups, customers and investors are rarely aware of the racial mix of employees, unless maybe they're in the news for not being diverse enough.

geofft 9y ago

Underrepresented groups tend to have less financial security. (That's part of why they're underrepresented in the first place; the term means that there's less of them in some particular space than their fraction in society as a whole, not that they are a minority in terms of underrepresented numbers.) Venture capital is great for taking someone who has some amount of financial security, but not quite enough to entirely bootstrap their venture, and giving them enough more. But it's not particularly effective at helping someone who really needs a low-risk (even if low-reward) option because they have no fallback if their company fails. (To be absolutely clear, this isn't the fault of any venture capitalist, nor is it a thing I think a venture capitalist can reasonably solve in the short term, so this is not a complaint about venture capitalists, just a statement about how the world is. Perhaps in the long term, YC's experiments with UBI might help, but that's an experiment and it won't become a reliable source of financial security for anyone for many many years.) Race doesn't line up perfectly with financial security, and it certainly does not determine financial security. But in the US, today, it's pretty strongly correlated.