7 ms·

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 t

• 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."
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • EB66 6y ago
        I think you're underestimating the impact of being an ex-Googler. VCs are inundated with mobile app pitch decks from all kinds of random people with no relevant experience. Receiving a pitch deck from an ex-engineer of a highly respected software firm is going to make that pitch stand out. It lends instant credibility. EDIT: looking at his LinkedIn, it's clear that he has way more experience and an established track record than just working at Google. Also, don't forget that it was the husband who had the LinkedIn connections to the pitch deck recipients. Race, gender and experience aside, you're obviously more likely to get a response from recipients who already know you (or are friends of friends) than from recipients who are total strangers to you. If the author was also an ex-engineer of a highly respected software firm and had the same LinkedIn connections, then you would have a much stronger anecdotal case that racism or bias was the cause of being ignored.
        • jjeaff 6y ago
          The ex googler husband was on the front page of both pitch decks with the same title as CTO in both cases. The only difference was that it came from his email account the second time.
          • bleah1000 6y ago
            But that assumes that people looked at the deck. You can't make that assumption, they might look only at the person sending them the deck, then decide to look at the deck. In fact, she said she sent out the deck from her own e-mail and linked-in account. So, that means it was probably easy to get her husband's linked-in when he sent it out. You could make the case that people claiming to want to help minorities, should at least spend time reading the deck, but that doesn't mean that anyone was racist/sexist in this particular instance. It seems like even after sending it out by the husband, nobody was very interested.
    • rayiner 6y ago
      But if there are hurdles to black women getting hired at places like Google, isn’t your explanation just passing the buck? People aren’t happy with the status quo, where one of our most important and creative industries is nearly devoid of people who make up more than 1 in 10 Americans. In view of that, I don’t think it passes muster to say that “we don’t discriminate against black women, we just look for Founders in places that are nearly exclusively white/Asian.” Pipelines need to be reformed.
      • s4n1ty 6y ago
        > But if there are hurdles to black women getting hired at places like Google, isn’t your explanation just passing the buck? What is the evidence that there are hurdles for black women getting hired at Google? For example, does their representation differ significantly from, say, the rate at which they graduate with CS degrees?
        • digitaltrees 6y ago
          How much evidence would ever convince you? How much evidence of racism do you need? How about red lining that continued until the 90s which locked black families out of home ownership? There is so much evidence available that demanding evidence at this point is more a sign of willful blindness than intellectual rigor.
          • s4n1ty 6y ago
            Could you elaborate on what you mean by "red lining" in the 1990s and how this constitutes evidence of bias by Google against hiring black women in 2020? You seem irritated by a simple request to support a claim with evidence, which is strange.
            • genoapol 6y ago
              I suspect it's being pointed out that racial discrimination doesn't just start at age 30 when applying for a job at Google, it impacts many key points of development and opportunity along the way. Perhaps true support of black founders takes this truth into consideration, especially if a business idea is solid.
    • digitaltrees 6y ago
      Run your own experiment then. Send requests with identical LinkedIn profiles and just change the race or gender. I’ll bet you $10,000 you’ll get more responses as a white man. Let me know if you want to take the bet.
    • zentiggr 6y ago
      How about the idea that there are implicit biases in all three of those variables and her experience proves how much they multiply?
• dlivingston 6y ago
  The US reviews are very peculiar: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-bright-app/id1471800945?ls=1#see-all/reviews https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-bright-app/id1471800945?ls... 101 ratings with all but two being 5-stars. I hesitate to say that the positive reviews are largely fake, but it sure seems like it. Broken English and vague praise for the app characterize most of the reviews. For example: "My friend recommended to me for experiencing this app. At the fist time, I didn't know this application could bring benefits to me. However, after all I use this app more frequently because its advantages. Very useful!" What? Further, all 5-star reviews with the exception of one were written between 01/28/2020 and 01/30/2020. That leaves exactly three reviews of the 101 written outside this two-day window. Massive red flag.
  • Jommi 6y ago
    Let's just refrain from going too far with any ambiguous quips at the product. I dont think anyone is going to gain from that.
    • mad182 6y ago
      But this is relevant. If both the product and her CV are weak, the racism card doesn't hold up. If I was deciding if I want to invest money in some app, I'm pretty sure seeing most of the reviews are poor quality fakes would be a lot more important factor than founders race.
      • Jommi 6y ago
        You're mistaking the forest for the trees. You could go look at a handful of other funded apps and evaluate their reviews. You're going to find similar things. My point was that you don't need to get into a more subjective, personal quip, as the arguments brought by others (eg. The CV) here are already strong enough to dismiss the racism claim.
        • jjeaff 6y ago
          I think you are also missing the forest for the trees. The point of her post is that she submitted the exact same proposal to the exact same VCs from her husband's email instead of her own and actually started getting responses for the first time.
• throwaway94894 6y ago
  This isn't very acceptable to say at the moment (hence the throwaway account), but it seems like it would make a lot more sense for preferential treatment to come earlier in the pipeline. That is, instead of VCs using race as a major factor in determining who to fund (especially 1M+ rounds), race and other similar factors can be used to help provide training, networking, and other opportunities that help give historically under-served populations more of a fighting chance to someday be in a position to raise funding. This is even more unacceptable to say right now, but many of us white males get ignored by VCs and we know it isn't because of our race or gender. It's because VCs won't fund you if they don't think you'll make a 50-100x or more return for their LPs.
  • whakim 6y ago
    This is just another way of saying there's a "pipeline problem" (myth/fallacy/etc.) You might feel ignored, but statistically you'd be even more likely to be ignored if you were from an underrepresented group.
• postsantum 6y ago
  Notice how these comments on GP are of nearly same length, which is a dead giveaway, because paid commenters have guidelines regarding length threshold