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VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality

156 points by gammarator 6y ago

eevilspock 6y ago
Wow. This post was marked dead within a minute of it being posted. I "vouched" for it, though given my pariah status on HN for calling out SV on social issues (such as racism), I'm surprised my "vouch" had any affect. I have a lot more to say but HN doesn't really welcome my point of view, so...
- dang 6y ago
  That site has been banned on HN for 7 years, for whatever reason. Posts get autokilled when a site is banned. You're certainly not a pariah on HN. But would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments? You've done it a lot, and those comments usually get downvoted, which is a correct use of downvotes. Your point of view is as welcome as anyone else's, if you'd express it more substantively.
  - manaman 6y ago
    Hello Dang, Could you please share more details on sites getting banned? I did a quick glance of the site in question, doesn't see much to get banned. Thanks
    - dang 6y ago
      There are lots of reasons why a site might get banned, but the main ones are when they are spam or consistently a source of off-topic or low-quality articles. In this case it's hard to say because 2013 was a long time ago. It might have been because someone was oversubmitting or trying to promote the site on HN. That's another reason why we might ban a site. This site looks like an online magazine focused on the SF Bay Area. When I look at the submissions I see a penchant for sensational titles and a lot of articles that aren't on topic for HN, but also a few articles that would make good HN submissions, except possibly for the titles. Two examples of good ones: https://thebolditalic.com/the-remarkable-story-of-the-golden-gate-bridge-b126070998d8 https://thebolditalic.com/the-remarkable-story-of-the-golden... https://thebolditalic.com/how-tech-is-deciding-who-gets-to-go-camping-7481c587d94 https://thebolditalic.com/how-tech-is-deciding-who-gets-to-g... (good article, bad title) For that category of site, we generally don't ban the domain, but rather downweight it to countervail the sensationalism. I'll switch this one over.
xibalba 6y ago
The author of this article cites as evidence of racism higher response to her husband's solicitations of VCs than her own. However, comparing their resumés, its pretty easy to see that this is unlikely to be attributable to racism. Husband has founded multiple start-ups that were acquired, is technical, and worked at Google and YouTube. Meanwhile, the author has personal trainer and gym owner as experience.
- dhosek 6y ago
  The VCs said that they want to fund more black-founded startups. But, if we assume you are correct about why they responded to the queries from the husband's e-mail, that means that they'll consider a proposal from someone with startup experience while rejecting that same proposal from someone without startup experience. Which, given that they've not been funding black people, means they're going to continue not funding black people, which means that their claim to want to fund more black-founded startups is just words and not actions.
- adam 6y ago
  I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc. One might argue that without the special consideration these VC's rushed to say they would give, how would someone like the author ever have an established track record of starting/selling their businesses in the first place? I'm frankly still expecting VC's to make decisions on what they think is going to be most profitable for them, full-stop. But plenty of other firms like large consulting firms, do set aside people and resources to work with non-profits for example. Why couldn't VC's do the same to try and level the playing field and eliminate some of these inherent advantages the well connected/well credentialed have? A "no" is potentially fine, but how you deliver that "no" can make all the difference.
  - racl101 6y ago
    > I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc. I think that's the mistake all these companies are making. They need to make it clear if it's their intent to help black founders, provided, all other things are equal / held constant. That is if two people have the same or similar background and qualifications but they just happened to be different race then to not always pick the white guy cause, hey, we look alike or belonged to the same frat. It should leave no room for interpretation as: "hey, you're black, let me throw some money at you cause you happen to be black."
s4n1ty 6y ago
Does she offer any actual evidence that she was rejected due to racism? She just seems to assume it.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post flamebait or snark to Hacker News. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? Both of those are deprecated, and there's this, too: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - s4n1ty 6y ago
    Edited to be less provocative.
- Geoffhk 6y ago
  The part where she doesn't get a response when using her email but does when using her partner's email is pretty convincing. There are many studies that gauge racism in hiring by sending out resumes that only differ in candidate's name.
  - xibalba 6y ago
    I don't think so. The husband's resumé is dramatically more qualified that the author's. He has multiple startups/exits and was a FAANG engineer.
  - anon102010 6y ago
    Is she similarly qualified? I never realized these racism studies were done using such different resumes. This is a bit shocking if so. You have a multi-exit google engineer vs a trainer? She doesn't share her deck? A quick look - did she buy reviews (the block of 5 star reviews)?
madballster 6y ago
If there is VC racism, doesn't that also mean there is a market opportunity for VC money to focus exclusively on African American tech startups. Even if there aren't many, there appears to be zero competition selecting investments. The author is rightfully frustrated. But instead of focussing on lack of interest in their app, maybe there's a bigger opportunity here.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  Hopefully there's more, but here's a few: Backstage Capital (https://backstagecapital.com/ https://backstagecapital.com/) TxO (https://a16z.com/2020/06/03/talent-x-opportunity/ https://a16z.com/2020/06/03/talent-x-opportunity/)
  - atlasunshrugged 6y ago
    I'd add Harlem Capital there https://harlem.capital/ https://harlem.capital/
- graeme 6y ago
  In principle yes. I can think of a few possible problems though: 1. You’re focussing on a much smaller subset of the market. It may be hard to find enough investments 2. It is probably illegal. 3. You may not get the best VC’s. The best VC’s will focus on total return and probably fund from a wide pool to find rare outliers that may grow huge. So founders may have worse VC experiences. VC includes mentorship, network etc, so this could hamper startup success. 4. You may also not get the best African American startups. The very best will be able to get attention from the top VC firms. So, there will be an adverse selection problem for any VC specializing in African American startups #2 is probably the main reason no one has tried. But #3 and #4 in combination are also deadly. But, if discrimination is a factor in startup funding, there would certainly be a market opportunity for VC’s to focus more attention on underserved groups. Edit: Another poster points out backstage capital is doing this. So, maybe it doesn’t violate any laws? I’ll be very interested to see how their returns are over time. They fund women and people of color. They may well have hit on a market opportunity. Found this article when I searched Backstage capital on HN. They’re a startup too it seems: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/founders-arent-giving-up-on-backstage-capital/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/founders-arent-giving-up-on...
graeme 6y ago
This post would be a lot more persuasive with the pitch deck, or some growth numbers, or something indicating the app is in fact on a success track and is the type of app that is potentially VC scale. I found no mentions on reddit. On google there is a single review on Capterra, no other results. The Canadian ios app has no reviews, can’t check US on my phone. The Google play version has 88 reviews, but all but 3-4 of them are from Jan 26-Feb 2, with only one since, in May. So some evidence of traction, product market fit, growth, or the general idea behind the app (pitch deck) would help with the argument. The author does highlight an issue of how to get funded if you don’t have an existing network though. Network based introductions seems to be the norm for VC from what I’ve heard. And to be clear, there may be racism involved: my point is it’s hard to tell without knowing more about the app’s and whether it seems plausibly a fit for VC. Once an app has been around for a year you need more evidence of traction. Edit: I should mention that if the app is indeed somewhere between “can be bootstrapped” and “needs VC investment” then there are are new options like Tinyseed aimed at this middle ground of company. Another commented pointed out that a competing app has 1-10 employees, which is not VC scale.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  Traction etc don't matter to the point she's making. Her husband sent the same info as her and got response. She got radio silence. That's the point. Not whether or not the content was good.
  - sib 6y ago
    Except that her experiment changed three variables: her husband is male and Asian and an ex-Google engineer, while she is none of those. So it's not possible to draw the conclusion that the difference in response comes only from race. (To be clear, I personally believe that race & gender do have an impact in the response from VCs, I just don't think her experience proves it.)
    - huffmsa 6y ago
      Of course she isn't, but that's the point. Black women are extremely underrepresented, hired and funded. You can't say "well we're not going to fund you without a good track record, even though it's damn near impossible for you to build a track record because we won't fund or hire you. Good luck". You can't say "we're going to fund more black founders, but only those who've already been proven a safe, reliable commodity."
Kednicma 6y ago
The part about Nguyen was frustrating. It's hard to imagine a more honest hypocrisy than explicitly saying, on the record, that one will be forthcoming and helpful towards the marginalized, and ending up being just as dismissive and unengaged as everybody else.
- neonate 6y ago
  I felt similarly. There are a lot of things one could do to help, short of funding. Even taking the time to write a longer and more personal email would not be nothing. On the other hand, the article says she did schedule a meeting with the author ("albeit a month out"). It doesn't say what happened at the meeting.
- jchonphoenix 6y ago
  I get the sentiment, but Ha was more helpful than she realized. I've been in this game from both sides the table. From this post, it's pretty clear she does lack basic knowledge. She needs to understand how VCs are evaluating her business, what metrics and data she needs to show, and what types of businesses are even a match for the VC model. Ha's post covers much of that. And having been in VC, the fact Ha even spent time giving advice is more than 90% of cold reachouts to VC can expect with a Google resume or not. VCs write these 101 posts because they want founders to know when it's time to come to them and how to present the info. That's very much what she makes it seem she needed.
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  FWIW, we had the same experience with the other Spero VC: Shripriya Mahesh. She has a lot of blogposts around investing in startups that level the playing field, and not once did that topic come up in our conversations. And she isn't the only investor. A general rule of thumb we learnt: more an investor talks about a topic, less likely is that they care. There is a hidden asterisk: *as long as you are ex-FAANG doing a SAAS startup, in a competitive round. SWM? Hidden bonus bingo!
mrnobody_67 6y ago
Sequoia is primarily a Series A investor, without seeing the deck and traction/usage/retention/revenue metrics, it's really hard to make definitive conclusions at least with regards to that one example. In the context of wrong stage/check size, Alfred's response was reasonable.
Animats 6y ago
It's an app for personal trainers to help them organize their business. Not a big niche, and there are other apps in that space.[1] That one is from Fitii, which has software for trainers, customers, and gyms, talking to each other. Crunchbase shows Fitii as being from Melbourne, AU, with "1-10 employees". In that situation, VC funding seems unlikely. [1] https://www.mypthub.net/ https://www.mypthub.net/
gnicholas 6y ago
Seems like the most compelling evidence of racially-disparate treatment is that she got no responses when reaching out via her own email address, but received some responses when reaching out via her husband's (he is an Asian-American man with a recognizably Asian name). Assuming the emails sent were identical, this would be pretty solid evidence of bias. One potential confounding issue is that her husband is a former Google engineer, and she doesn't mention having any similar experience. It wouldn't be surprising if a VC's vetting process involved checking linkedin to see what experience the person had, and giving points to former FAANG engineers (note: I am not in this category). Regardless, it's still pretty lousy that VCs that claim to want to help certain types of founders don't even respond to inbound inquiries.
- bigpumpkin 6y ago
  Any particular instance is not proof of racism. But I suspect VCs as an industry is biased against Black people because of its closed network nature and the lack of black founders in general for the VCs to pattern match. This should be especially acute for early stage investing when much relied on intuition and the "quality of the team".
- phnofive 6y ago
  I’m curious about the email thing too. If she was using the ceo@bright email in the blogpost, I can see that getting filtered before any human read the contents, otherwise it’d be foolish to not give the time of day to a person who fits their advocacy profile, regardless of the business’ viability.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Her name is "Nerissa Zhang" - unless they are looking through for profile pictures of her or something, wouldn't they assume she is Asian as well? At least for me, "Nerissa" is a name of unknown origin, maybe Greek. Zhang is clearly Chinese. I would assume the person was Chinese or at least 50% Chinese if I was forced to guess about their race/ethnicity.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
phnofive 6y ago
I think the argument here is suffering as the business is questionable, though I wholeheartedly agree that pointing a founder to a blog post and pretending that counts as mentorship is bullshit. > none of the VCs I contacted even tried downloading my app (I use Intercom daily to see all the new users trying our app). They dismissed its worth without even giving it a shot. Fair, but I just had a look at the app store - this had two reviews since late January (when about ninety-five 5* reviews were posted over a few days), and neither were positive. Additionally, a cursory search for personal trainer apps will turn up dozens of well-rated alternatives. Putting myself in the mind of a VC, I would be hard-pressed to invest or advise the founder of such a company. Would love to learn more about why the VCs wouldn’t respond to her emails, though - seems like another failure to meet the commitment.
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  As far as why VCs wouldn't respond to emails, from my brief time working at a VC firm I think the logic was either 1) We don't want to start a conversation and give them false hope and 2) Not replying makes it seem like we're too busy and important to respond to everyone (and also there was some thought process of we don't owe anyone anything in the same way the average person doesn't feel obligated to respond to spam emails)
  - huffmsa 6y ago
    But they responded to her husband, but not her. Supposedly the same content, same info. Just the sender was different. Unless of course you think she's not being entirely truthful.
    - callalex 6y ago
      “Same content, same info. Just the sender was different” When it comes to early-stage investment and company building, the sender is a huge part of the contents of the message.
areoform 6y ago
Venture Capital started out as high-risk, high-reward high technology investments. Genentech, LSI, Teradyne, BTU International, and Apple. As Sam Altman, Thiel et al, and others have noted, VC lost its way since the late 80s and started focusing on widgets and "blitzkrieg" capital. The point of differentiation shifted from proprietary semiconductor or recombinant DNA technology to the ability to deploy large amounts of capital at scale, quickly. What has mattered has also shifted. Uber's ride hailing solution was a revolution, of sorts, but it was an incrementalist one. The breakthrough that led to the production of synthetic insulin was a transformative one. Uber isn't a sustainable business. Genentech is still alive and kicking. The personality types that are chosen for to create a business where the only metric of "innovation" is growth and genentech are different. In one, Steve Woz is a viable co-founder. In the other, he simply isn't, and is filtered out actively and implicitly. There is discrimination in Venture Capital, that much is clear. But this issue makes it far worse. As it creates an ineffable bar that is vague and entirely defined in the VC's head. It is easier to answer the question if someone is a genius. Because genius is genius no matter the gender identity or race. A scientific or technological breakthrough is a breakthrough. No matter the origin. But the ability to "blitzkrieg" a business? Who knows. When the only metric for success is rapid growth, and the only way for rapid growth to be predicted is for it to happen, it creates a murky set of rubrics and metrics where the number of bad companies by white/asian, cis-male founders who went to Stanford outnumber the number of great ones by people who don't qualify for those checkmarks. The new system delivers sub-par returns and it is obvious that an alternative is needed. Despite great work being done by people like 1517 fund, Sam Altman's new firm, YC, Founder's Fund, Lux Capital etc, the industry isn't actively seeking out people with potential breakthroughs. It is creating artificial barriers to their success. Personally, the most significant sign that something is wrong with the ecosystem is that a potential breakthrough in phenotypic screening of pharmaceutical molecules wasn't sought out https://www.daphnia-labs.com https://www.daphnia-labs.com , but the "Uber for X" by Template Stanford Founder Y will be. It is also apparent that an alternate financing system is needed for companies that aren't technologically innovative, such as Nerissa's but aren't quite small businesses either. Companies that do fall under the "high-growth potential" label, while lacking the other qualities. The blurring between VC, traditional PE, and small business banking have led to sub-par outcomes for all involved.
henriquez 6y ago
It seems like the author could search and replace “racism” with “sexism” and put out an otherwise similar article based on her experience having to use her husband’s LinkedIn rolodex to reach these people. I think it’s shameful that VCs make empty promises to support black founders - but it’s also not surprising. Most of the people paying lip service to racial equity now didn’t give a shit six weeks ago before it was fashionable to do so. But empty promises are par for the course as they’ve been for decades. My experience living in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered is that the same people suddenly promising to fix the problem are the ones who created it. VCs only want to make money. The author raised insufficient evidence that she was a victim of racism. If any unfair discrimination occurred it’s more likely sexism. But the simplest explanation is also the most likely: the VCs just weren’t interested in her pitch.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  > the VCs just weren’t interested in her pitch Why not? Not even 5-10 minutes of their day? I guess all the noise coming out of VCs the last few weeks is all just virtue signaling and hot air.
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    Would you not be equally incensed if they cut her off after 5-10 minutes? She sent out a pitch deck and they weren't interested.
- glitcher 6y ago
  The author seems clear to me that she is considering both racism and sexism. > Curiously, when I used my husband’s email to send our pitch, that’s when I started getting some responses. Do VCs only read pitches submitted by men? Do they prefer to hear from someone who is Asian rather than Black?
  - henriquez 6y ago
    So she assumes bad faith but isn’t sure of the exact nature of that bad faith, meanwhile the merits of her pitch or business idea are not even a factor in her discussion of why she could have been rejected. (Let’s see, a personal trainer app when people are quarantined ...) I’ve seen numerous other founders here on HN handle rejection with more humility and constructive resolve. I don’t think the author is doing herself - or her husband - any favors with this kind of response.
hckr_news 6y ago
VCs shouldn’t be the gatekeepers to capital. The game is rigged. Who gets funding is decided by arbitrary metrics, inherent biases, and already established networks. Personally I’m planning on bootstrapping my own business and don’t plan on asking a VC for a hand.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  If it's their private capital, why shouldn't they be their own gatekeepers?
  - manaman 6y ago
    Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics etc.?
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      Yes, I did. But that does not mean they will invest in startups which they believe will bring negative returns or that don't otherwise suit their portfolio.
  - cowpig 6y ago
    I think the comment you replied to was probably framed from different perspectives: Parent assumes "we should do what is best for the common good" Your reply assumes "we should do whatever best protects individual liberties"
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    It's not their private capital - most VCs are investing the funds of 'limited partners' such as pension funds, university endowments, etc. So in essence VCs are gatekeepers which make decisions regarding startups who will or wil not get access to someone else's money.
    - lightgreen 6y ago
oh_sigh 6y ago
An insidious effect of racism is that one can explain any negative interaction through that lens if one is inclined. Based on her post, I don't actually see racism, I see someone with a stronger background and more bona fides being more successful at pitching than someone with less of those things. In most other situations, HN commenters would be saying something like 'anecdotes are not data'. I think it's hard to draw large scale conclusions of a 'different reality' from this.
- manaman 6y ago
  Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics which founder belongs to?
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    Yes, and?
anon102010 6y ago
She asks why her husband gets more of a response (a sign of the racism she is facing). - Her linkedin doesn't show what her major was as an undergrad. - After 4 years of working she was a powerlifting coach. - Then boom, in 2017/2018 she is an owner of two gyms and in 2019 she is trying to get benchmark to invest in her app. Her Husband: Google Engineer Masters in CS from Berkeley / Undergrad in CS Started companies and managed employees. 15 years experience - 40 apps developed. Top 10 apps Multiple successful exists (to zynga then another one to google). Talking about being successful as a gym owner etc she says folks can assume its because black folks were helped out. "They assume it’s because they’re somehow lucky or exceptional or that they gained success because of help from white people. This—of course—isn’t true, but it’s an idea that continues to spread, sending the message that Black professionals require help from white people to build their careers." "We need to put an end to the lie that Black people are still in need of white folks’ help,” she continues. “What we need is the freedom to live, work, and act without white people and white institutions disproportionately targeting us and stopping us from building the success we are already capable of building on our own." So it's a bit of a confusing set of messages.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  Ah, so they meant they're only going to invest in and help black founders who've already had some other VC take a chance on and are safe investments. Got it. Someone else needs to actually "venture" and take a risk. You'll just sit back and tweet about how you'd love to help, but your LPs say it's too risky.
  - anon102010 6y ago
    Many vc's do like past success (even white on white candidates, if you have had multiple successful exists you are much more likely to be funded). VCs arguably are taking less risk. Now sometimes it stuff like capital domination (I think super stupid) They like seeing what you've done yourself. You've built x / y / z - delivered this and that - great. This can be big if you don't have an exit yet. Or proof in pudding - good traction already, good pitch deck etc. etc. It's not clear what she's done herself. Even her gym ownership success is complicated by potential involvement of her husband even though she goes to some lengths to say it's racist to assume the ownership was result of some help. And her philosophy is that she doesn't want help from white folks, just for them to get out of the way. Then she's applying to benchmark vs Harlem capital? Its confusing.
sonofaplum 6y ago
The nature of VC being what it is, it's extremely difficult to prove racism at the level of proof that most HN readers seem to need. 99.99% of all startup ideas are bad, 99.99% of all apps are terrible, so how can we know if she was rejected for being black, or for just being another supplicant denied by the VC gods? The email thing is the strongest evidence she provides, but obviously, a doubting mind can find other reasons that her husbands email would get responses but hers wouldn't. We do know, however, that African Americans are greatly under represented in tech, in startups and in VC. There are many interlocking reasons for this, and its not unreasonable to expect that racism, whether conscious or unconscious, is one of them. (Why should tech, uniquely in American society, be immune from racism?). Because there are so many interlocking reasons, it's easy for each individual link in the chain of tech to deflect blame to the other links (business can blame the pipeline, colleges can blame the high schools, high schools can blame the financial structures etc etc etc). So, is it reasonable to expect individual VCs to make a stand against racism instead of doing what comes naturally to them? (trying desperately to make money). Not really! However, I do think it's reasonable to expect, that VC's who make big pronouncements about what their firm is going to do to combat racism should be expected to follow through with it! And guess what, given all the interlocking problems that prevent black people from founding companies, VC's probably aren't going to be able to follow through on that mission by relying on business as usual of warm intros only, five minute pitch reviews, blow off emails. Just level with us. We are all adults. Just say, I'm not actually that interested in explicitly helping black founders, I just want to keep trying to make money the way I've been doing it. Conversely, if you do give juicy quotes to the press, then be prepared to walk the walk.
- graeme 6y ago
  I had one of the responses questioning the story (I wrote it would be more persuasive with the pitch deck or an explanation for why the app was in VC territory) But I completely agree with you about the hypocrisy of asking for emails from black founders and then ignoring them. And also agree that requiring a warm intro as the only way to reach a VC is a real barrier. It may be a good test (“Can you hustle enough to reach me”), but is objectively harder if you’re not in a certain set.
- tomp 6y ago
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> Black women are the most educated group when you look at the number of associate and bachelor’s degrees earned within each demographic. Can anyone confirm this? When I follow the links, I get to this source: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72 That bar chart doesn't say anything to me about inter-demographic data. It looks confined to each demographic; i.e. women earn more degrees than men within each demographic, but that doesn't say anything about Black women vs. White men vs. Hispanic men vs. White women
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  That bar chart does link to another report breaking down the share of degrees awarded by race. e.g. we see that for academic year 2015-2016, whites earned 65% of bachelor's degrees and blacks earned 11%. The estimate of the US population for 2019 [note, 2019 is not 2015] currently visible in Wikipedia says that whites are 60.4% of the population and blacks are 13.4%. Throwing in another assumption, we'll just say that of whites and blacks, each group is exactly half male and half female. Thus, in our population of 60400 whites and 13400 blacks, with 20,000 degrees earned between them: - The whites earned 17,105 degrees. - The blacks earned 2,895 degrees. - Of the black degrees, 1,853 went to black women, and 1,042 went to black men. - Of the white degrees, 9,579 went to white women, and 7,526 went to white men. - There are 30200 white men, 30200 white women, 6700 black men, and 6700 black women. - The rate of earning a bachelor's degree is 31.7% [note: we made this number up. It is useful only for comparing to the other three groups] for white women, 24.9% for white men, 27.7% for black women, and 15.6% for black men. White women are noticeably more educated than black women are. The original claim lumped in associate degrees along with bachelor's degrees. This might make that claim true. However, it would be hard to blame someone for viewing an associate degree as a negative rather than a positive signal. (Final note: population share of the United States is not the same thing as population share of those of college age in the United States.)
- phonon 6y ago
  https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/no-black-women-are-not-the-most-educated-group-in-the-us/ https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/no-black-w...
deleted 6y ago
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pl0x 6y ago
Most of the comments are trying to disprove the racism that this black female founder is facing. Microsoft has put out a great unconscious bias course that this mostly cismale dominated forum can benefit from. https://www.mslearning.microsoft.com/course/72169/launch https://www.mslearning.microsoft.com/course/72169/launch Why downvote this comment?
- s4n1ty 6y ago
  What is a "cismale", and what makes you think they dominate this forum?
  - anotherfounder 6y ago
    Bot?
  - tpxl 6y ago
    Cis = non-trans, ie a biological male, and they probably do dominate this forum.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
cowpig 6y ago
My experience in trying to raise capital is pretty similar to the author's, and I'm a white guy. However, I don't think that detracts from her point. If the system were more meritocratic, the demographics of people being funded would more closely match the demographics of the world. But it's actually a game of personal connections, theater, and psychological manipulation that has little relation to competence in most business domains. I think VC (and financial) culture in general is totally broken and far from meritocratic, unless you feel that getting good at the wealthy-capitalist-image-of-success-signaling metagame is a measure of some kind of merit.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  Structural racism ensures that whites have better access to education/experience from an early age. By the time VCs get involved, it may well be meritocratic.
anotherfounder 6y ago
I'm so glad she wrote this, and that she named names! As a female founder (not black though), we went through a similarly congnitively dissonant process. A-List investors who would publicly talk about supporting female founders would behave the worst (esp. female investors, Hi Aileen!), investors whose entire brand was around supporting ethical startups (or insert any similar alternative movement) would be the least interested in that aspect (Hi Spero Ventures!) All of that, along with a healthy dose of rudeness. In our experience, those at the very very top of the totem pole gave us the fairest chance, and those below them, were the very worst. In the end, it was hard no to feel that an investor's Twitter persona was a sham, in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler. FWIW, I know my experience was not alone. There are tons of now well-funded female founders who will echo this sentiment. I just wish there was a way to have a public list of those who walk the talk and those who just tweet the walk.. EDIT: Adding something from thread below to focus more on solutions, and providing perspective on why what is happening is not enough. >...What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG? > Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.
- m0zg 6y ago
  VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash. What's your track record? Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.
  - anotherfounder 6y ago
    Ah, the classic condescending first response. > VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash. > Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone. Who knew, thanks for enlightening me. Let's just say that I have VCs emailing me now.
avilay 6y ago
Even if her business idea was bad, or her app didn't have traction, or her LI profile was not impressive enough, she deserved, at the very least, the following: * Access to VCs, she had to use her husband's email to get access. * Some constructive and personalized feedback. This does not have to be very detailed, a couple of no-BS sentences will do the trick. I get that VCs are too busy to respond to each and every email they get, but they, and every one of us in the tech sector who is in a position to do so, needs to walk the extra mile to pull in people from under-represented communities who are trying to get in.
- anon102010 6y ago
  Anyone who interacted with her got called out by name as racist.
blargmaster33 6y ago
The fact that she writes this tells my that not funding her was the right choice.
amb23 6y ago
I don't know how to flag this thread to the mods, but--hey mods, can we lock these comments? It's disheartening to see threads on women/minorities in tech on Hacker News get strong, negative reactions from the community like some of what's written here. I would hope the forum can hold itself to higher standards than what I'm reading here.
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  You mean you want to be in charge of what people say on the basis of how you feel, instead of on the basis of what's true (or not).
  - amb23 6y ago
    In order for internet communities to thrive, you need to install some sense of "psychological safety." I'm using this term in the same vein that Google uses when they say that psychological safety is the foundation needed to build highly effective, high-performing teams. (It has nothing to do with "safe spaces" and whatnot.) On this thread, a female founder made the top comment with a personal experience relating to the article, only to get inundated by comments telling her she was wrong (from one commenter in particular). Similar reactions were found to the article itself. Yet someone's lived experience is just that; it's their perspective on their own, true personal experience. Calling perspective "untrue" right off the bat is like a form of internet gaslighting; it stifles open dialogue. If we want have good conversations online--something that's incredibly hard to do, yes--we need to give space to the people who share their experiences. I'm disheartened because I look to Hacker News for open commentary on issues and problems in the tech industry, and it's sad to see that dialogue overrun with people who just want to tell others they're wrong. If it takes locking a thread to improve the overall conversation, and get back a sense of "psychological safety" needed for those good conversations--so be it.
krak12 6y ago
Please upvote this! We need to expose them and work on alternatives that are inclusive to everyone. VC elites era is going to be over soon, borderless capital is unstoppable.
AMerePotato 6y ago
I'm not sure why this article is so controversial. Whether her app deserved funding or not wasn't what the main point of the article was. No one is saying they are obligated to fund a startup because a person is black. If VCs want to claim to put effort into supporting black founders, then they should follow through on that with their actions. They had committed to meeting and helping black founders. Ignoring emails and generic responses is in no way helping. They could have still said no and been more accommodating as they claimed they would do.
anotherfounder 6y ago
It is amazing to me if that the entire conversation on the thread is about her credibility, and not at all towards the systems that lead to blogposts such as these. It isn't one interaction, or one round or one app, these are system issues! I think it is more interesting to discuss how all of the investor assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG? Maybe YC can take the lead here? @mwseibel?
- areoform 6y ago
  Just wondering if we could talk over email. I feel your frustrations and I'm wondering if there's something that could be done.
towaytie4567 6y ago
Why is it that African-Americans (not including Black Africans in this) tend to seek acceptance into White institutions and power structures, instead of building parallel ones? For instance, TiE[1] (The Indus Entrepreneurs) was specifically set up to fund Indian founders. At the time, there was pervasive bias (not that it doesn't exist today) against Indians as being good enough only as rank-and-file engineers, but not as founders or leaders [2]. TiE was instrumental in funding some of the earliest Indian founders many of whom are successful VCs today. They effectively forced the White VC power structure to sit up and take notice. Today, there is a flourishing ecosystem of Indian VCs and founders. On a related note, as an Indian, I'm envious of what China is doing today - they realized pretty early that the Western world order would never have a place for China as equals. Hence, they began to develop viable alternatives to Western technology and institutions. Those efforts are beginning to bear fruit today. The borderline insanity and paranoia that the West has developed [3] about China is justification enough for those efforts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE(https://en.wikipedia.org/w... [2] [https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/05/15/279748/index.htm](https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/05/15/279748/index.htm) https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  This has been attempted; it was a piece of Louis Farrakhan's policy platform. African-Americans haven't made it work (and are unlikely to in the future); they can't outcompete the institutions of the general culture.
danenania 6y ago
I'm on easy mode (white and male), but I had no network and no prestigious previous employers or schools to point to when starting on my company a few years ago. There were many points when I felt like raising money would be impossible, but I eventually did so. In case it might help someone who's feeling hopeless and has it much harder than I did due to their background, here are a few things I've learned about how the game is played: - Talking to investors is a waste of time in the beginning. It's much better to focus on getting into an accelerator first. - Never talk to one investor at a time. That gives them all the leverage. It's better to schedule many meetings with many different investors all in a one or two week period. - Timing is everything. Don't talk to investors before you're ready to even if they say it's "just a casual coffee". They are looking for reasons to rule you out. Try to only talk to investors at inflection points where a graph of some important metric is going steeply up and to the right. - Move on quickly. Unless an investor is obviously enthusiastic by the end of the first pitch, they are highly, highly unlikely to invest. Don't waste time answering their questions or getting their "feedback" or giving them additional meetings if they seem skeptical. Just move on to the next one. - Don't ask for introductions from investors who turned you down. These are actually anti-endorsements that significantly decrease your chances with the investors you get introduced to this way.
- anon102010 6y ago
  excellent advice!
jrsj 6y ago
Capitalists only pretending to care about an issue to improve their image while continuing to only optimize purely for profit instead of taking additional risk to do the right thing? Shocking. /s
atdrummond 6y ago
I’ve seen this with a firm I advise; I get far better responses to outbound fundraising than the founder, who has a distinctively African name.
twayback 6y ago
This is the problem with all of these "diversity" pushes --- people have started feeling they should be "helped" and even funded. Top VCs reject thousands of pitches every year, you are one. Black or white does not matter, deal with it.
latte 6y ago
VCs' duty is to act in the interests of their limited partners, so they have to make investments that they think will generate the highest returns, within the fund's investment mandate. It may make sense for the activists to apply pressure on the limited partners (many of these being institutions with some social / public angle, such as pension funds, university endowments or sovereign and municipal funds) to demand higher diversity of founders from the venture funds they invest in. Some large-scale investors have a history of adopting a social or environmental based elements in their investment strategy (for example, Norway's SWF divesting from coal and oil companies) - probably similar moves (but aimed at equal opportunities for all backgrounds) can be demanded from major US based asset management institutions - I don't see why, just to take an example, Harvard's board of trustees can't agree to that - even if that change is not directly aimed at generating the highest return on investment, it may be the right move from the longer term societal development perspective and for the university's brand value.

156 points by gammarator 6y ago

Wow. This post was marked dead within a minute of it being posted. I "vouched" for it, though given my pariah status on HN for calling out SV on social issues (such as racism), I'm surprised my "vouch" had any affect. I have a lot more to say but HN doesn't really welcome my point of view, so...

dang 6y ago
That site has been banned on HN for 7 years, for whatever reason. Posts get autokilled when a site is banned. You're certainly not a pariah on HN. But would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments? You've done it a lot, and those comments usually get downvoted, which is a correct use of downvotes. Your point of view is as welcome as anyone else's, if you'd express it more substantively.
- manaman 6y ago
  Hello Dang, Could you please share more details on sites getting banned? I did a quick glance of the site in question, doesn't see much to get banned. Thanks
  - dang 6y ago
    There are lots of reasons why a site might get banned, but the main ones are when they are spam or consistently a source of off-topic or low-quality articles. In this case it's hard to say because 2013 was a long time ago. It might have been because someone was oversubmitting or trying to promote the site on HN. That's another reason why we might ban a site. This site looks like an online magazine focused on the SF Bay Area. When I look at the submissions I see a penchant for sensational titles and a lot of articles that aren't on topic for HN, but also a few articles that would make good HN submissions, except possibly for the titles. Two examples of good ones: https://thebolditalic.com/the-remarkable-story-of-the-golden-gate-bridge-b126070998d8 https://thebolditalic.com/the-remarkable-story-of-the-golden... https://thebolditalic.com/how-tech-is-deciding-who-gets-to-go-camping-7481c587d94 https://thebolditalic.com/how-tech-is-deciding-who-gets-to-g... (good article, bad title) For that category of site, we generally don't ban the domain, but rather downweight it to countervail the sensationalism. I'll switch this one over.

xibalba 6y ago

The author of this article cites as evidence of racism higher response to her husband's solicitations of VCs than her own. However, comparing their resumés, its pretty easy to see that this is unlikely to be attributable to racism. Husband has founded multiple start-ups that were acquired, is technical, and worked at Google and YouTube. Meanwhile, the author has personal trainer and gym owner as experience.

dhosek 6y ago
The VCs said that they want to fund more black-founded startups. But, if we assume you are correct about why they responded to the queries from the husband's e-mail, that means that they'll consider a proposal from someone with startup experience while rejecting that same proposal from someone without startup experience. Which, given that they've not been funding black people, means they're going to continue not funding black people, which means that their claim to want to fund more black-founded startups is just words and not actions.
adam 6y ago
I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc. One might argue that without the special consideration these VC's rushed to say they would give, how would someone like the author ever have an established track record of starting/selling their businesses in the first place? I'm frankly still expecting VC's to make decisions on what they think is going to be most profitable for them, full-stop. But plenty of other firms like large consulting firms, do set aside people and resources to work with non-profits for example. Why couldn't VC's do the same to try and level the playing field and eliminate some of these inherent advantages the well connected/well credentialed have? A "no" is potentially fine, but how you deliver that "no" can make all the difference.
- racl101 6y ago
  > I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc. I think that's the mistake all these companies are making. They need to make it clear if it's their intent to help black founders, provided, all other things are equal / held constant. That is if two people have the same or similar background and qualifications but they just happened to be different race then to not always pick the white guy cause, hey, we look alike or belonged to the same frat. It should leave no room for interpretation as: "hey, you're black, let me throw some money at you cause you happen to be black."

s4n1ty 6y ago

Does she offer any actual evidence that she was rejected due to racism? She just seems to assume it.

dang 6y ago
Please don't post flamebait or snark to Hacker News. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? Both of those are deprecated, and there's this, too: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s4n1ty 6y ago
  Edited to be less provocative.
Geoffhk 6y ago
The part where she doesn't get a response when using her email but does when using her partner's email is pretty convincing. There are many studies that gauge racism in hiring by sending out resumes that only differ in candidate's name.
- xibalba 6y ago
  I don't think so. The husband's resumé is dramatically more qualified that the author's. He has multiple startups/exits and was a FAANG engineer.
- anon102010 6y ago
  Is she similarly qualified? I never realized these racism studies were done using such different resumes. This is a bit shocking if so. You have a multi-exit google engineer vs a trainer? She doesn't share her deck? A quick look - did she buy reviews (the block of 5 star reviews)?

madballster 6y ago

If there is VC racism, doesn't that also mean there is a market opportunity for VC money to focus exclusively on African American tech startups. Even if there aren't many, there appears to be zero competition selecting investments. The author is rightfully frustrated. But instead of focussing on lack of interest in their app, maybe there's a bigger opportunity here.

gkoberger 6y ago
Hopefully there's more, but here's a few: Backstage Capital (https://backstagecapital.com/ https://backstagecapital.com/) TxO (https://a16z.com/2020/06/03/talent-x-opportunity/ https://a16z.com/2020/06/03/talent-x-opportunity/)
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  I'd add Harlem Capital there https://harlem.capital/ https://harlem.capital/
graeme 6y ago
In principle yes. I can think of a few possible problems though: 1. You’re focussing on a much smaller subset of the market. It may be hard to find enough investments 2. It is probably illegal. 3. You may not get the best VC’s. The best VC’s will focus on total return and probably fund from a wide pool to find rare outliers that may grow huge. So founders may have worse VC experiences. VC includes mentorship, network etc, so this could hamper startup success. 4. You may also not get the best African American startups. The very best will be able to get attention from the top VC firms. So, there will be an adverse selection problem for any VC specializing in African American startups #2 is probably the main reason no one has tried. But #3 and #4 in combination are also deadly. But, if discrimination is a factor in startup funding, there would certainly be a market opportunity for VC’s to focus more attention on underserved groups. Edit: Another poster points out backstage capital is doing this. So, maybe it doesn’t violate any laws? I’ll be very interested to see how their returns are over time. They fund women and people of color. They may well have hit on a market opportunity. Found this article when I searched Backstage capital on HN. They’re a startup too it seems: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/founders-arent-giving-up-on-backstage-capital/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/founders-arent-giving-up-on...

graeme 6y ago

This post would be a lot more persuasive with the pitch deck, or some growth numbers, or something indicating the app is in fact on a success track and is the type of app that is potentially VC scale. I found no mentions on reddit. On google there is a single review on Capterra, no other results. The Canadian ios app has no reviews, can’t check US on my phone. The Google play version has 88 reviews, but all but 3-4 of them are from Jan 26-Feb 2, with only one since, in May. So some evidence of traction, product market fit, growth, or the general idea behind the app (pitch deck) would help with the argument. The author does highlight an issue of how to get funded if you don’t have an existing network though. Network based introductions seems to be the norm for VC from what I’ve heard. And to be clear, there may be racism involved: my point is it’s hard to tell without knowing more about the app’s and whether it seems plausibly a fit for VC. Once an app has been around for a year you need more evidence of traction. Edit: I should mention that if the app is indeed somewhere between “can be bootstrapped” and “needs VC investment” then there are are new options like Tinyseed aimed at this middle ground of company. Another commented pointed out that a competing app has 1-10 employees, which is not VC scale.

huffmsa 6y ago
Traction etc don't matter to the point she's making. Her husband sent the same info as her and got response. She got radio silence. That's the point. Not whether or not the content was good.
- sib 6y ago
  Except that her experiment changed three variables: her husband is male and Asian and an ex-Google engineer, while she is none of those. So it's not possible to draw the conclusion that the difference in response comes only from race. (To be clear, I personally believe that race & gender do have an impact in the response from VCs, I just don't think her experience proves it.)
  - huffmsa 6y ago
    Of course she isn't, but that's the point. Black women are extremely underrepresented, hired and funded. You can't say "well we're not going to fund you without a good track record, even though it's damn near impossible for you to build a track record because we won't fund or hire you. Good luck". You can't say "we're going to fund more black founders, but only those who've already been proven a safe, reliable commodity."

Kednicma 6y ago

The part about Nguyen was frustrating. It's hard to imagine a more honest hypocrisy than explicitly saying, on the record, that one will be forthcoming and helpful towards the marginalized, and ending up being just as dismissive and unengaged as everybody else.

neonate 6y ago
I felt similarly. There are a lot of things one could do to help, short of funding. Even taking the time to write a longer and more personal email would not be nothing. On the other hand, the article says she did schedule a meeting with the author ("albeit a month out"). It doesn't say what happened at the meeting.
jchonphoenix 6y ago
I get the sentiment, but Ha was more helpful than she realized. I've been in this game from both sides the table. From this post, it's pretty clear she does lack basic knowledge. She needs to understand how VCs are evaluating her business, what metrics and data she needs to show, and what types of businesses are even a match for the VC model. Ha's post covers much of that. And having been in VC, the fact Ha even spent time giving advice is more than 90% of cold reachouts to VC can expect with a Google resume or not. VCs write these 101 posts because they want founders to know when it's time to come to them and how to present the info. That's very much what she makes it seem she needed.
anotherfounder 6y ago
FWIW, we had the same experience with the other Spero VC: Shripriya Mahesh. She has a lot of blogposts around investing in startups that level the playing field, and not once did that topic come up in our conversations. And she isn't the only investor. A general rule of thumb we learnt: more an investor talks about a topic, less likely is that they care. There is a hidden asterisk: *as long as you are ex-FAANG doing a SAAS startup, in a competitive round. SWM? Hidden bonus bingo!

mrnobody_67 6y ago

Sequoia is primarily a Series A investor, without seeing the deck and traction/usage/retention/revenue metrics, it's really hard to make definitive conclusions at least with regards to that one example. In the context of wrong stage/check size, Alfred's response was reasonable.

Animats 6y ago

It's an app for personal trainers to help them organize their business. Not a big niche, and there are other apps in that space.[1] That one is from Fitii, which has software for trainers, customers, and gyms, talking to each other. Crunchbase shows Fitii as being from Melbourne, AU, with "1-10 employees". In that situation, VC funding seems unlikely. [1] https://www.mypthub.net/ https://www.mypthub.net/

gnicholas 6y ago

Seems like the most compelling evidence of racially-disparate treatment is that she got no responses when reaching out via her own email address, but received some responses when reaching out via her husband's (he is an Asian-American man with a recognizably Asian name). Assuming the emails sent were identical, this would be pretty solid evidence of bias. One potential confounding issue is that her husband is a former Google engineer, and she doesn't mention having any similar experience. It wouldn't be surprising if a VC's vetting process involved checking linkedin to see what experience the person had, and giving points to former FAANG engineers (note: I am not in this category). Regardless, it's still pretty lousy that VCs that claim to want to help certain types of founders don't even respond to inbound inquiries.

bigpumpkin 6y ago
Any particular instance is not proof of racism. But I suspect VCs as an industry is biased against Black people because of its closed network nature and the lack of black founders in general for the VCs to pattern match. This should be especially acute for early stage investing when much relied on intuition and the "quality of the team".
phnofive 6y ago
I’m curious about the email thing too. If she was using the ceo@bright email in the blogpost, I can see that getting filtered before any human read the contents, otherwise it’d be foolish to not give the time of day to a person who fits their advocacy profile, regardless of the business’ viability.
oh_sigh 6y ago
Her name is "Nerissa Zhang" - unless they are looking through for profile pictures of her or something, wouldn't they assume she is Asian as well? At least for me, "Nerissa" is a name of unknown origin, maybe Greek. Zhang is clearly Chinese. I would assume the person was Chinese or at least 50% Chinese if I was forced to guess about their race/ethnicity.
- gnicholas 6y ago

phnofive 6y ago

I think the argument here is suffering as the business is questionable, though I wholeheartedly agree that pointing a founder to a blog post and pretending that counts as mentorship is bullshit. > none of the VCs I contacted even tried downloading my app (I use Intercom daily to see all the new users trying our app). They dismissed its worth without even giving it a shot. Fair, but I just had a look at the app store - this had two reviews since late January (when about ninety-five 5* reviews were posted over a few days), and neither were positive. Additionally, a cursory search for personal trainer apps will turn up dozens of well-rated alternatives. Putting myself in the mind of a VC, I would be hard-pressed to invest or advise the founder of such a company. Would love to learn more about why the VCs wouldn’t respond to her emails, though - seems like another failure to meet the commitment.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago
As far as why VCs wouldn't respond to emails, from my brief time working at a VC firm I think the logic was either 1) We don't want to start a conversation and give them false hope and 2) Not replying makes it seem like we're too busy and important to respond to everyone (and also there was some thought process of we don't owe anyone anything in the same way the average person doesn't feel obligated to respond to spam emails)
- huffmsa 6y ago
  But they responded to her husband, but not her. Supposedly the same content, same info. Just the sender was different. Unless of course you think she's not being entirely truthful.
  - callalex 6y ago
    “Same content, same info. Just the sender was different” When it comes to early-stage investment and company building, the sender is a huge part of the contents of the message.

areoform 6y ago

Venture Capital started out as high-risk, high-reward high technology investments. Genentech, LSI, Teradyne, BTU International, and Apple. As Sam Altman, Thiel et al, and others have noted, VC lost its way since the late 80s and started focusing on widgets and "blitzkrieg" capital. The point of differentiation shifted from proprietary semiconductor or recombinant DNA technology to the ability to deploy large amounts of capital at scale, quickly. What has mattered has also shifted. Uber's ride hailing solution was a revolution, of sorts, but it was an incrementalist one. The breakthrough that led to the production of synthetic insulin was a transformative one. Uber isn't a sustainable business. Genentech is still alive and kicking. The personality types that are chosen for to create a business where the only metric of "innovation" is growth and genentech are different. In one, Steve Woz is a viable co-founder. In the other, he simply isn't, and is filtered out actively and implicitly. There is discrimination in Venture Capital, that much is clear. But this issue makes it far worse. As it creates an ineffable bar that is vague and entirely defined in the VC's head. It is easier to answer the question if someone is a genius. Because genius is genius no matter the gender identity or race. A scientific or technological breakthrough is a breakthrough. No matter the origin. But the ability to "blitzkrieg" a business? Who knows. When the only metric for success is rapid growth, and the only way for rapid growth to be predicted is for it to happen, it creates a murky set of rubrics and metrics where the number of bad companies by white/asian, cis-male founders who went to Stanford outnumber the number of great ones by people who don't qualify for those checkmarks. The new system delivers sub-par returns and it is obvious that an alternative is needed. Despite great work being done by people like 1517 fund, Sam Altman's new firm, YC, Founder's Fund, Lux Capital etc, the industry isn't actively seeking out people with potential breakthroughs. It is creating artificial barriers to their success. Personally, the most significant sign that something is wrong with the ecosystem is that a potential breakthrough in phenotypic screening of pharmaceutical molecules wasn't sought out https://www.daphnia-labs.com https://www.daphnia-labs.com , but the "Uber for X" by Template Stanford Founder Y will be. It is also apparent that an alternate financing system is needed for companies that aren't technologically innovative, such as Nerissa's but aren't quite small businesses either. Companies that do fall under the "high-growth potential" label, while lacking the other qualities. The blurring between VC, traditional PE, and small business banking have led to sub-par outcomes for all involved.

henriquez 6y ago

It seems like the author could search and replace “racism” with “sexism” and put out an otherwise similar article based on her experience having to use her husband’s LinkedIn rolodex to reach these people. I think it’s shameful that VCs make empty promises to support black founders - but it’s also not surprising. Most of the people paying lip service to racial equity now didn’t give a shit six weeks ago before it was fashionable to do so. But empty promises are par for the course as they’ve been for decades. My experience living in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered is that the same people suddenly promising to fix the problem are the ones who created it. VCs only want to make money. The author raised insufficient evidence that she was a victim of racism. If any unfair discrimination occurred it’s more likely sexism. But the simplest explanation is also the most likely: the VCs just weren’t interested in her pitch.

hckr_news 6y ago
> the VCs just weren’t interested in her pitch Why not? Not even 5-10 minutes of their day? I guess all the noise coming out of VCs the last few weeks is all just virtue signaling and hot air.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  Would you not be equally incensed if they cut her off after 5-10 minutes? She sent out a pitch deck and they weren't interested.
glitcher 6y ago
The author seems clear to me that she is considering both racism and sexism. > Curiously, when I used my husband’s email to send our pitch, that’s when I started getting some responses. Do VCs only read pitches submitted by men? Do they prefer to hear from someone who is Asian rather than Black?
- henriquez 6y ago
  So she assumes bad faith but isn’t sure of the exact nature of that bad faith, meanwhile the merits of her pitch or business idea are not even a factor in her discussion of why she could have been rejected. (Let’s see, a personal trainer app when people are quarantined ...) I’ve seen numerous other founders here on HN handle rejection with more humility and constructive resolve. I don’t think the author is doing herself - or her husband - any favors with this kind of response.

hckr_news 6y ago

VCs shouldn’t be the gatekeepers to capital. The game is rigged. Who gets funding is decided by arbitrary metrics, inherent biases, and already established networks. Personally I’m planning on bootstrapping my own business and don’t plan on asking a VC for a hand.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
If it's their private capital, why shouldn't they be their own gatekeepers?
- manaman 6y ago
  Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics etc.?
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Yes, I did. But that does not mean they will invest in startups which they believe will bring negative returns or that don't otherwise suit their portfolio.
- cowpig 6y ago
  I think the comment you replied to was probably framed from different perspectives: Parent assumes "we should do what is best for the common good" Your reply assumes "we should do whatever best protects individual liberties"
- PeterisP 6y ago
  It's not their private capital - most VCs are investing the funds of 'limited partners' such as pension funds, university endowments, etc. So in essence VCs are gatekeepers which make decisions regarding startups who will or wil not get access to someone else's money.
  - lightgreen 6y ago

oh_sigh 6y ago

An insidious effect of racism is that one can explain any negative interaction through that lens if one is inclined. Based on her post, I don't actually see racism, I see someone with a stronger background and more bona fides being more successful at pitching than someone with less of those things. In most other situations, HN commenters would be saying something like 'anecdotes are not data'. I think it's hard to draw large scale conclusions of a 'different reality' from this.

manaman 6y ago
Did you read the linked TechCrunch article and how some of the VCs mentioned wanted to help some demographics which founder belongs to?
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Yes, and?

anon102010 6y ago

She asks why her husband gets more of a response (a sign of the racism she is facing). - Her linkedin doesn't show what her major was as an undergrad. - After 4 years of working she was a powerlifting coach. - Then boom, in 2017/2018 she is an owner of two gyms and in 2019 she is trying to get benchmark to invest in her app. Her Husband: Google Engineer Masters in CS from Berkeley / Undergrad in CS Started companies and managed employees. 15 years experience - 40 apps developed. Top 10 apps Multiple successful exists (to zynga then another one to google). Talking about being successful as a gym owner etc she says folks can assume its because black folks were helped out. "They assume it’s because they’re somehow lucky or exceptional or that they gained success because of help from white people. This—of course—isn’t true, but it’s an idea that continues to spread, sending the message that Black professionals require help from white people to build their careers." "We need to put an end to the lie that Black people are still in need of white folks’ help,” she continues. “What we need is the freedom to live, work, and act without white people and white institutions disproportionately targeting us and stopping us from building the success we are already capable of building on our own." So it's a bit of a confusing set of messages.

huffmsa 6y ago
Ah, so they meant they're only going to invest in and help black founders who've already had some other VC take a chance on and are safe investments. Got it. Someone else needs to actually "venture" and take a risk. You'll just sit back and tweet about how you'd love to help, but your LPs say it's too risky.
- anon102010 6y ago
  Many vc's do like past success (even white on white candidates, if you have had multiple successful exists you are much more likely to be funded). VCs arguably are taking less risk. Now sometimes it stuff like capital domination (I think super stupid) They like seeing what you've done yourself. You've built x / y / z - delivered this and that - great. This can be big if you don't have an exit yet. Or proof in pudding - good traction already, good pitch deck etc. etc. It's not clear what she's done herself. Even her gym ownership success is complicated by potential involvement of her husband even though she goes to some lengths to say it's racist to assume the ownership was result of some help. And her philosophy is that she doesn't want help from white folks, just for them to get out of the way. Then she's applying to benchmark vs Harlem capital? Its confusing.

sonofaplum 6y ago

The nature of VC being what it is, it's extremely difficult to prove racism at the level of proof that most HN readers seem to need. 99.99% of all startup ideas are bad, 99.99% of all apps are terrible, so how can we know if she was rejected for being black, or for just being another supplicant denied by the VC gods? The email thing is the strongest evidence she provides, but obviously, a doubting mind can find other reasons that her husbands email would get responses but hers wouldn't. We do know, however, that African Americans are greatly under represented in tech, in startups and in VC. There are many interlocking reasons for this, and its not unreasonable to expect that racism, whether conscious or unconscious, is one of them. (Why should tech, uniquely in American society, be immune from racism?). Because there are so many interlocking reasons, it's easy for each individual link in the chain of tech to deflect blame to the other links (business can blame the pipeline, colleges can blame the high schools, high schools can blame the financial structures etc etc etc). So, is it reasonable to expect individual VCs to make a stand against racism instead of doing what comes naturally to them? (trying desperately to make money). Not really! However, I do think it's reasonable to expect, that VC's who make big pronouncements about what their firm is going to do to combat racism should be expected to follow through with it! And guess what, given all the interlocking problems that prevent black people from founding companies, VC's probably aren't going to be able to follow through on that mission by relying on business as usual of warm intros only, five minute pitch reviews, blow off emails. Just level with us. We are all adults. Just say, I'm not actually that interested in explicitly helping black founders, I just want to keep trying to make money the way I've been doing it. Conversely, if you do give juicy quotes to the press, then be prepared to walk the walk.

graeme 6y ago
I had one of the responses questioning the story (I wrote it would be more persuasive with the pitch deck or an explanation for why the app was in VC territory) But I completely agree with you about the hypocrisy of asking for emails from black founders and then ignoring them. And also agree that requiring a warm intro as the only way to reach a VC is a real barrier. It may be a good test (“Can you hustle enough to reach me”), but is objectively harder if you’re not in a certain set.
tomp 6y ago

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

> Black women are the most educated group when you look at the number of associate and bachelor’s degrees earned within each demographic. Can anyone confirm this? When I follow the links, I get to this source: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72 That bar chart doesn't say anything to me about inter-demographic data. It looks confined to each demographic; i.e. women earn more degrees than men within each demographic, but that doesn't say anything about Black women vs. White men vs. Hispanic men vs. White women

thaumasiotes 6y ago
That bar chart does link to another report breaking down the share of degrees awarded by race. e.g. we see that for academic year 2015-2016, whites earned 65% of bachelor's degrees and blacks earned 11%. The estimate of the US population for 2019 [note, 2019 is not 2015] currently visible in Wikipedia says that whites are 60.4% of the population and blacks are 13.4%. Throwing in another assumption, we'll just say that of whites and blacks, each group is exactly half male and half female. Thus, in our population of 60400 whites and 13400 blacks, with 20,000 degrees earned between them: - The whites earned 17,105 degrees. - The blacks earned 2,895 degrees. - Of the black degrees, 1,853 went to black women, and 1,042 went to black men. - Of the white degrees, 9,579 went to white women, and 7,526 went to white men. - There are 30200 white men, 30200 white women, 6700 black men, and 6700 black women. - The rate of earning a bachelor's degree is 31.7% [note: we made this number up. It is useful only for comparing to the other three groups] for white women, 24.9% for white men, 27.7% for black women, and 15.6% for black men. White women are noticeably more educated than black women are. The original claim lumped in associate degrees along with bachelor's degrees. This might make that claim true. However, it would be hard to blame someone for viewing an associate degree as a negative rather than a positive signal. (Final note: population share of the United States is not the same thing as population share of those of college age in the United States.)
phonon 6y ago
https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/no-black-women-are-not-the-most-educated-group-in-the-us/ https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/no-black-w...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pl0x 6y ago

Most of the comments are trying to disprove the racism that this black female founder is facing. Microsoft has put out a great unconscious bias course that this mostly cismale dominated forum can benefit from. https://www.mslearning.microsoft.com/course/72169/launch https://www.mslearning.microsoft.com/course/72169/launch Why downvote this comment?

s4n1ty 6y ago
What is a "cismale", and what makes you think they dominate this forum?
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  Bot?
- tpxl 6y ago
  Cis = non-trans, ie a biological male, and they probably do dominate this forum.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

cowpig 6y ago

My experience in trying to raise capital is pretty similar to the author's, and I'm a white guy. However, I don't think that detracts from her point. If the system were more meritocratic, the demographics of people being funded would more closely match the demographics of the world. But it's actually a game of personal connections, theater, and psychological manipulation that has little relation to competence in most business domains. I think VC (and financial) culture in general is totally broken and far from meritocratic, unless you feel that getting good at the wealthy-capitalist-image-of-success-signaling metagame is a measure of some kind of merit.

bagacrap 6y ago
Structural racism ensures that whites have better access to education/experience from an early age. By the time VCs get involved, it may well be meritocratic.

anotherfounder 6y ago

I'm so glad she wrote this, and that she named names! As a female founder (not black though), we went through a similarly congnitively dissonant process. A-List investors who would publicly talk about supporting female founders would behave the worst (esp. female investors, Hi Aileen!), investors whose entire brand was around supporting ethical startups (or insert any similar alternative movement) would be the least interested in that aspect (Hi Spero Ventures!) All of that, along with a healthy dose of rudeness. In our experience, those at the very very top of the totem pole gave us the fairest chance, and those below them, were the very worst. In the end, it was hard no to feel that an investor's Twitter persona was a sham, in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler. FWIW, I know my experience was not alone. There are tons of now well-funded female founders who will echo this sentiment. I just wish there was a way to have a public list of those who walk the talk and those who just tweet the walk.. EDIT: Adding something from thread below to focus more on solutions, and providing perspective on why what is happening is not enough. >...What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG? > Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.

m0zg 6y ago
VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash. What's your track record? Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  Ah, the classic condescending first response. > VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash. > Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone. Who knew, thanks for enlightening me. Let's just say that I have VCs emailing me now.

avilay 6y ago

Even if her business idea was bad, or her app didn't have traction, or her LI profile was not impressive enough, she deserved, at the very least, the following: * Access to VCs, she had to use her husband's email to get access. * Some constructive and personalized feedback. This does not have to be very detailed, a couple of no-BS sentences will do the trick. I get that VCs are too busy to respond to each and every email they get, but they, and every one of us in the tech sector who is in a position to do so, needs to walk the extra mile to pull in people from under-represented communities who are trying to get in.

anon102010 6y ago
Anyone who interacted with her got called out by name as racist.

blargmaster33 6y ago

The fact that she writes this tells my that not funding her was the right choice.

amb23 6y ago

I don't know how to flag this thread to the mods, but--hey mods, can we lock these comments? It's disheartening to see threads on women/minorities in tech on Hacker News get strong, negative reactions from the community like some of what's written here. I would hope the forum can hold itself to higher standards than what I'm reading here.

SamReidHughes 6y ago
You mean you want to be in charge of what people say on the basis of how you feel, instead of on the basis of what's true (or not).
- amb23 6y ago
  In order for internet communities to thrive, you need to install some sense of "psychological safety." I'm using this term in the same vein that Google uses when they say that psychological safety is the foundation needed to build highly effective, high-performing teams. (It has nothing to do with "safe spaces" and whatnot.) On this thread, a female founder made the top comment with a personal experience relating to the article, only to get inundated by comments telling her she was wrong (from one commenter in particular). Similar reactions were found to the article itself. Yet someone's lived experience is just that; it's their perspective on their own, true personal experience. Calling perspective "untrue" right off the bat is like a form of internet gaslighting; it stifles open dialogue. If we want have good conversations online--something that's incredibly hard to do, yes--we need to give space to the people who share their experiences. I'm disheartened because I look to Hacker News for open commentary on issues and problems in the tech industry, and it's sad to see that dialogue overrun with people who just want to tell others they're wrong. If it takes locking a thread to improve the overall conversation, and get back a sense of "psychological safety" needed for those good conversations--so be it.

krak12 6y ago

Please upvote this! We need to expose them and work on alternatives that are inclusive to everyone. VC elites era is going to be over soon, borderless capital is unstoppable.

AMerePotato 6y ago

I'm not sure why this article is so controversial. Whether her app deserved funding or not wasn't what the main point of the article was. No one is saying they are obligated to fund a startup because a person is black. If VCs want to claim to put effort into supporting black founders, then they should follow through on that with their actions. They had committed to meeting and helping black founders. Ignoring emails and generic responses is in no way helping. They could have still said no and been more accommodating as they claimed they would do.

anotherfounder 6y ago

It is amazing to me if that the entire conversation on the thread is about her credibility, and not at all towards the systems that lead to blogposts such as these. It isn't one interaction, or one round or one app, these are system issues! I think it is more interesting to discuss how all of the investor assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG? Maybe YC can take the lead here? @mwseibel?

areoform 6y ago
Just wondering if we could talk over email. I feel your frustrations and I'm wondering if there's something that could be done.

towaytie4567 6y ago

Why is it that African-Americans (not including Black Africans in this) tend to seek acceptance into White institutions and power structures, instead of building parallel ones? For instance, TiE[1] (The Indus Entrepreneurs) was specifically set up to fund Indian founders. At the time, there was pervasive bias (not that it doesn't exist today) against Indians as being good enough only as rank-and-file engineers, but not as founders or leaders [2]. TiE was instrumental in funding some of the earliest Indian founders many of whom are successful VCs today. They effectively forced the White VC power structure to sit up and take notice. Today, there is a flourishing ecosystem of Indian VCs and founders. On a related note, as an Indian, I'm envious of what China is doing today - they realized pretty early that the Western world order would never have a place for China as equals. Hence, they began to develop viable alternatives to Western technology and institutions. Those efforts are beginning to bear fruit today. The borderline insanity and paranoia that the West has developed [3] about China is justification enough for those efforts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiE(https://en.wikipedia.org/w... [2] [https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/05/15/279748/index.htm](https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/05/15/279748/index.htm) https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

thaumasiotes 6y ago
This has been attempted; it was a piece of Louis Farrakhan's policy platform. African-Americans haven't made it work (and are unlikely to in the future); they can't outcompete the institutions of the general culture.

danenania 6y ago

I'm on easy mode (white and male), but I had no network and no prestigious previous employers or schools to point to when starting on my company a few years ago. There were many points when I felt like raising money would be impossible, but I eventually did so. In case it might help someone who's feeling hopeless and has it much harder than I did due to their background, here are a few things I've learned about how the game is played: - Talking to investors is a waste of time in the beginning. It's much better to focus on getting into an accelerator first. - Never talk to one investor at a time. That gives them all the leverage. It's better to schedule many meetings with many different investors all in a one or two week period. - Timing is everything. Don't talk to investors before you're ready to even if they say it's "just a casual coffee". They are looking for reasons to rule you out. Try to only talk to investors at inflection points where a graph of some important metric is going steeply up and to the right. - Move on quickly. Unless an investor is obviously enthusiastic by the end of the first pitch, they are highly, highly unlikely to invest. Don't waste time answering their questions or getting their "feedback" or giving them additional meetings if they seem skeptical. Just move on to the next one. - Don't ask for introductions from investors who turned you down. These are actually anti-endorsements that significantly decrease your chances with the investors you get introduced to this way.

anon102010 6y ago
excellent advice!

jrsj 6y ago

Capitalists only pretending to care about an issue to improve their image while continuing to only optimize purely for profit instead of taking additional risk to do the right thing? Shocking. /s

atdrummond 6y ago

I’ve seen this with a firm I advise; I get far better responses to outbound fundraising than the founder, who has a distinctively African name.

twayback 6y ago

This is the problem with all of these "diversity" pushes --- people have started feeling they should be "helped" and even funded. Top VCs reject thousands of pitches every year, you are one. Black or white does not matter, deal with it.

latte 6y ago

VCs' duty is to act in the interests of their limited partners, so they have to make investments that they think will generate the highest returns, within the fund's investment mandate. It may make sense for the activists to apply pressure on the limited partners (many of these being institutions with some social / public angle, such as pension funds, university endowments or sovereign and municipal funds) to demand higher diversity of founders from the venture funds they invest in. Some large-scale investors have a history of adopting a social or environmental based elements in their investment strategy (for example, Norway's SWF divesting from coal and oil companies) - probably similar moves (but aimed at equal opportunities for all backgrounds) can be demanded from major US based asset management institutions - I don't see why, just to take an example, Harvard's board of trustees can't agree to that - even if that change is not directly aimed at generating the highest return on investment, it may be the right move from the longer term societal development perspective and for the university's brand value.