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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-Lis

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.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    Why "condescending"? It's true. VCs are driven by ROI. ROI is driven largely by whether the person taking investment can do the job.
    - anotherfounder 6y ago
      I assume you are genuinely asking this but I wish I had more energy to dissect it but the fact that you would need to explain that or assume that I mean that one should be funded by phenotype are two quick examples of that condescension. I hope someone else on this thread can explain more in detail..
      - m0zg 6y ago
        You're the one "assuming" on this thread, not me. I did not assume anything at all. If I "assumed" I wouldn't have commented to begin with.
    - zentiggr 6y ago
      So first time leaders are out of luck, or have to be stellar. Gotcha. And women even more so, not because of any inherent differences in anything but the selection process biases. Women of color even more so, not because of any inherent differences in anything but selection bias. Just watch the biases and the whole process even out to an actual chance for all the ideas floating around. Doesn't have anything to do with teams or ROI when you're talking to a first time pitcher.
      - 6y ago
- avilay 6y ago
  And given that a majority of "Ex-Google" engineers are males, where does that leave a woman (or any under-represented group) founder? She is not asking for money "just because" she is a woman. She is asking for a fair chance. And we need to give folks from under-represented communities a more than fair chance to combat inherent selection bias.
  - s4n1ty 6y ago
    Perhaps the reason a majority of engineers are male is that men are more likely to be interested in engineering. This is a very insightful paper exploring the subject, written by a Google engineer: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
    - anotherfounder 6y ago
      sigh, here we go again..
    - zbentley 6y ago
      Not only has that particular piece been debunked, shredded, put back together, debunked, shredded again, and (metaphorically) left in the dumpster, but it's totally irrelevant to this thread. Interest in running a company or technology is not at issue. You have a bunch of founders in this thread with demonstrable (as in: they have founded companies) interest in doing these things, and they're having trouble getting over the line because of bias. Perhaps the VCs they pitched to read the same paper, and jumped to the same conclusions you did. If so, that's super fucked up.
      - s4n1ty 6y ago
        > Not only has that particular piece been debunked, shredded, put back together, debunked, shredded again, and (metaphorically) left in the dumpster Not at all. Damore's memo was reasonable, accurate, and the criticism of it has been, like yours, entirely without substance.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  Like the team that built the Iowa Caucasus app?
- perseusmandate 6y ago
  Alphabet has 120K employees right now. Ex-Google was a meaningful distinction 15 years ago. Today it does not remotely entitle you to being funded. Many VCs today recognize that Google is an extremely bureaucratic place that does not resemble a startup and I know more than a few who view Google experience as a negative signal.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    > Google is an extremely bureaucratic place And that would be accurate, to a large extent. But it's also one of the few remaining _technically competent_ places that does not hire people who can't code. That is why I qualified my statement by saying that the prospective founder would be _technically_ capable, not capable in general. If anything, they could be less organizationally capable, but that can be resolved with the right co-founder. To put it into more concrete terms: say you had a million dollars and would want to allocate it towards a bet in order to potentially turn it into a lot more. Who would _you_ pick, someone with tech aptitude credentials (which a substantial stint at Google as an engineer all but guarantees), or someone with no discernible credentials? Note that I'm not even mentioning race here. Race/gender/sexual orientation is 100% irrelevant in this calculation unless it actually confers an increased chance of turning $1M into $10M. E.g. as an investor I'd probably prefer a gay person to lead a gay dating service, just for the domain expertise. I'd still require that they have technical and/or business chops, however.
nyczomg 6y ago
"in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler." If that was her main point, fair. But she's out there naming names and strongly implying that they didn't help her due to their racism and/or sexism. That's a pretty nasty accusation to throw at someone. And the names she named were the people who bothered to reply to her at all - they just didn't spend an adequate amount of effort on her to not be called out like this. She called out the only people who would give her the time of day! I think any VC who sees this article will know what to do from now on...
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  I can see that naming those who didn't even respond could be more appropriate. My takeaway is that you feel let down the most by those who have the most talk, hence higher expectations, which, it seems to me is the gist of the article.
  - nyczomg 6y ago
    I don't see how that would be constructive either. If people start getting called out for ignoring emails, that's going to be a lot of noise. And for anecdotes like this, it's impossible to know why said email was ignored. Should the assumption always be bad faith like racism/sexism? What if they just weren't interested and didn't even realize the email came from a woman or POC? Should they be obligated to seek out the sex/race of the person emailing them to know if it's appropriate to ignore them? I totally get your point that it's crappy for VCs to talk the talk and act like they want to help under-represented people, but then go back to business as usual. That sucks. And I completely believe that it is harder out there for woman and people of color. But I don't think that naming names based on anecdotes like this actually helps. I wish I had better ideas, but I really don't think this is it.
  - pluto9 6y ago
    Both strategies are inappropriate because they assume that anything less than funding her startup is an act of bigotry. I wouldn't have responded to her because I don't think her startup is particularly interesting or likely to be profitable. It's a low-effort idea. Easy to replicate, easy to cut the middle man out of, and has been done multiple times before. "Naming names" of people who declined to waste their money on your bad idea isn't social justice, it's entitlement.
ericmcer 6y ago
Are you saying that you felt you received unfair treatment, like if you had been a man you would have been received better? Or are you saying that these VCs publicly talked about making an extra effort for female founders but you did not feel that they made those efforts. I 100% agree with making exceptions for female/PoC founders so that inroads can be made to start erasing pre-conceived notions of what a founder should look like, just wondering which area the VCs failed in, or maybe both?
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  Both, thanks for clarifying!
anticonformist 6y ago
Many white male founders have had the exact same story with VCs. If they were black or women they might have assumed it was a matter of VCs being racist or sexist. But this is probably wrong. Because of these three attributes, one is not like the others. "I’m a Black woman, mom of three, and I don’t have an Ivy League degree." Because, regardless of their own race or gender, VCs are highly connected members of the Ivy League. VCs don't like poor people for the same reason most rich people don't for thousands of years. They believe that poor people are losers. And why would an investor want to bet on a loser?
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  This is where intersectionality comes in. Her experience is especially worse because she is Black woman AND because she doesn't have an Ivy league degree AND she doesn't have a FAANG experience. Believe me, it is much worse when after every negative interaction, you have to check if it was because you are female, or black or X. White male founders will not have to worry about that additional male tax.
  - anticonformist 6y ago
    Her experience is the same. Zero funding is zero funding. Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome. She's receiving equal treatment. But she's expecting and explicitly asking for preferential treatment based on the her belief that VCs have promised it. It could be that these VCs were never intending to offer preferential treatment. Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising.
    - anotherfounder 6y ago
      > . Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome. Oh, but it can. That's kinda one of the points. > Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising. Not surprising but inconsistent with the talk.
areoform 6y ago
I feel heartbroken seeing the responses to you and her. I'm a woman, but not a minority. I alter my writing style and my authorial voice every day to be less femme and more "neutral." And these exchanges confirm what I'd feared. It breaks my heart that the first reaction by our community isn't to integrate her lived experience, but to question it. It is to question her being and (implicitly) her right to be in these spaces. Few have asked what they can do to help. Fewer have offered to help. Instead, commentators have noted her track record. Their comments seem to approach her as if she was the sole founder. She's not. They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door? Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams? More disappointing are the comments questioning her accomplishments based on her marriage. They're negating her lived experience and drive based on whom she married. And they're saying that perhaps she owes all of her success - including the gyms - to him. In this very forum, she has been reduced to but an extension of him. And that's heartbreaking. There's a lot of work to be done in the industry. And I hope that this is a moment of personal growth and reflection for most involved. There will be a day when these replies will be looked as antiquated. I look forward with hope to that day.
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  @areoform I wholeheartedly echo this! Thank you!
- treis 6y ago
  >They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door? Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams? Her story is a bit inconsistent here. She says that she e-mailed pitch decks from her e-mail and then sent the same message from her husband's account. Of the two responses she mentions one asked for her pitch deck and the other only responded after a Linked In message. So it doesn't seem like she was sending the same message and/or she was sending messages to people that her husband had a prior relationship with. I downloaded the app and it's nothing special. It also looks like they bought a bunch of fake 5 star reviews at the end of January. There's nothing exciting there and nothing about her background that would lead anyone to believe that she would be a successful founder. Her pitch deserves to be binned and the only reason that it wouldn't would be because of some personal connection her husband had.
localcrisis 6y ago
had the same experience with Aileen. Many VCs, founders, and DNI leaders have echoed that All Raise is primarily a way for VCs to improve their personal brand around women in tech. They don't make investments, don't run substantial programs, and spend much of their time/money on PR. If these VCs were serious, they would commit X% of investments or X% of investment dollars to the groups they publicly support in panel after panel after tweet after TechCrunch interview.
- anotherfounder 6y ago
  Agreed. 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.
- adrr 6y ago
  Curious why would VC ever agree to do that unless it was mandated in the prospectus of the fund and the LPs were onboard. VCs serve the LPs not the general public.
econcon 6y ago
Problem is it's not the VC's job to help minorities. And even if one VC chooses to do so, they might make their fund less competitive compared to other funds. We can make a simple law: If a VC has to operate in US, they must reserve X amount for the minorities. If VCs think it's unfair and that minorities are not good investment then VCs can figure out how to "uplift" the minorities by creating much needed programs and network for them.

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.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Why "condescending"? It's true. VCs are driven by ROI. ROI is driven largely by whether the person taking investment can do the job.
  - anotherfounder 6y ago
    I assume you are genuinely asking this but I wish I had more energy to dissect it but the fact that you would need to explain that or assume that I mean that one should be funded by phenotype are two quick examples of that condescension. I hope someone else on this thread can explain more in detail..
    - m0zg 6y ago
      You're the one "assuming" on this thread, not me. I did not assume anything at all. If I "assumed" I wouldn't have commented to begin with.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    So first time leaders are out of luck, or have to be stellar. Gotcha. And women even more so, not because of any inherent differences in anything but the selection process biases. Women of color even more so, not because of any inherent differences in anything but selection bias. Just watch the biases and the whole process even out to an actual chance for all the ideas floating around. Doesn't have anything to do with teams or ROI when you're talking to a first time pitcher.
    - 6y ago
avilay 6y ago
And given that a majority of "Ex-Google" engineers are males, where does that leave a woman (or any under-represented group) founder? She is not asking for money "just because" she is a woman. She is asking for a fair chance. And we need to give folks from under-represented communities a more than fair chance to combat inherent selection bias.
- s4n1ty 6y ago
  Perhaps the reason a majority of engineers are male is that men are more likely to be interested in engineering. This is a very insightful paper exploring the subject, written by a Google engineer: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
  - anotherfounder 6y ago
    sigh, here we go again..
  - zbentley 6y ago
    Not only has that particular piece been debunked, shredded, put back together, debunked, shredded again, and (metaphorically) left in the dumpster, but it's totally irrelevant to this thread. Interest in running a company or technology is not at issue. You have a bunch of founders in this thread with demonstrable (as in: they have founded companies) interest in doing these things, and they're having trouble getting over the line because of bias. Perhaps the VCs they pitched to read the same paper, and jumped to the same conclusions you did. If so, that's super fucked up.
    - s4n1ty 6y ago
      > Not only has that particular piece been debunked, shredded, put back together, debunked, shredded again, and (metaphorically) left in the dumpster Not at all. Damore's memo was reasonable, accurate, and the criticism of it has been, like yours, entirely without substance.
tmpz22 6y ago
Like the team that built the Iowa Caucasus app?
perseusmandate 6y ago
Alphabet has 120K employees right now. Ex-Google was a meaningful distinction 15 years ago. Today it does not remotely entitle you to being funded. Many VCs today recognize that Google is an extremely bureaucratic place that does not resemble a startup and I know more than a few who view Google experience as a negative signal.
- m0zg 6y ago
  > Google is an extremely bureaucratic place And that would be accurate, to a large extent. But it's also one of the few remaining _technically competent_ places that does not hire people who can't code. That is why I qualified my statement by saying that the prospective founder would be _technically_ capable, not capable in general. If anything, they could be less organizationally capable, but that can be resolved with the right co-founder. To put it into more concrete terms: say you had a million dollars and would want to allocate it towards a bet in order to potentially turn it into a lot more. Who would _you_ pick, someone with tech aptitude credentials (which a substantial stint at Google as an engineer all but guarantees), or someone with no discernible credentials? Note that I'm not even mentioning race here. Race/gender/sexual orientation is 100% irrelevant in this calculation unless it actually confers an increased chance of turning $1M into $10M. E.g. as an investor I'd probably prefer a gay person to lead a gay dating service, just for the domain expertise. I'd still require that they have technical and/or business chops, however.

nyczomg 6y ago

"in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler." If that was her main point, fair. But she's out there naming names and strongly implying that they didn't help her due to their racism and/or sexism. That's a pretty nasty accusation to throw at someone. And the names she named were the people who bothered to reply to her at all - they just didn't spend an adequate amount of effort on her to not be called out like this. She called out the only people who would give her the time of day! I think any VC who sees this article will know what to do from now on...

anotherfounder 6y ago
I can see that naming those who didn't even respond could be more appropriate. My takeaway is that you feel let down the most by those who have the most talk, hence higher expectations, which, it seems to me is the gist of the article.
- nyczomg 6y ago
  I don't see how that would be constructive either. If people start getting called out for ignoring emails, that's going to be a lot of noise. And for anecdotes like this, it's impossible to know why said email was ignored. Should the assumption always be bad faith like racism/sexism? What if they just weren't interested and didn't even realize the email came from a woman or POC? Should they be obligated to seek out the sex/race of the person emailing them to know if it's appropriate to ignore them? I totally get your point that it's crappy for VCs to talk the talk and act like they want to help under-represented people, but then go back to business as usual. That sucks. And I completely believe that it is harder out there for woman and people of color. But I don't think that naming names based on anecdotes like this actually helps. I wish I had better ideas, but I really don't think this is it.
- pluto9 6y ago
  Both strategies are inappropriate because they assume that anything less than funding her startup is an act of bigotry. I wouldn't have responded to her because I don't think her startup is particularly interesting or likely to be profitable. It's a low-effort idea. Easy to replicate, easy to cut the middle man out of, and has been done multiple times before. "Naming names" of people who declined to waste their money on your bad idea isn't social justice, it's entitlement.

ericmcer 6y ago

Are you saying that you felt you received unfair treatment, like if you had been a man you would have been received better? Or are you saying that these VCs publicly talked about making an extra effort for female founders but you did not feel that they made those efforts. I 100% agree with making exceptions for female/PoC founders so that inroads can be made to start erasing pre-conceived notions of what a founder should look like, just wondering which area the VCs failed in, or maybe both?

anotherfounder 6y ago
Both, thanks for clarifying!

anticonformist 6y ago

Many white male founders have had the exact same story with VCs. If they were black or women they might have assumed it was a matter of VCs being racist or sexist. But this is probably wrong. Because of these three attributes, one is not like the others. "I’m a Black woman, mom of three, and I don’t have an Ivy League degree." Because, regardless of their own race or gender, VCs are highly connected members of the Ivy League. VCs don't like poor people for the same reason most rich people don't for thousands of years. They believe that poor people are losers. And why would an investor want to bet on a loser?

anotherfounder 6y ago
This is where intersectionality comes in. Her experience is especially worse because she is Black woman AND because she doesn't have an Ivy league degree AND she doesn't have a FAANG experience. Believe me, it is much worse when after every negative interaction, you have to check if it was because you are female, or black or X. White male founders will not have to worry about that additional male tax.
- anticonformist 6y ago
  Her experience is the same. Zero funding is zero funding. Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome. She's receiving equal treatment. But she's expecting and explicitly asking for preferential treatment based on the her belief that VCs have promised it. It could be that these VCs were never intending to offer preferential treatment. Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising.
  - anotherfounder 6y ago
    > . Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome. Oh, but it can. That's kinda one of the points. > Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising. Not surprising but inconsistent with the talk.

areoform 6y ago

I feel heartbroken seeing the responses to you and her. I'm a woman, but not a minority. I alter my writing style and my authorial voice every day to be less femme and more "neutral." And these exchanges confirm what I'd feared. It breaks my heart that the first reaction by our community isn't to integrate her lived experience, but to question it. It is to question her being and (implicitly) her right to be in these spaces. Few have asked what they can do to help. Fewer have offered to help. Instead, commentators have noted her track record. Their comments seem to approach her as if she was the sole founder. She's not. They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door? Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams? More disappointing are the comments questioning her accomplishments based on her marriage. They're negating her lived experience and drive based on whom she married. And they're saying that perhaps she owes all of her success - including the gyms - to him. In this very forum, she has been reduced to but an extension of him. And that's heartbreaking. There's a lot of work to be done in the industry. And I hope that this is a moment of personal growth and reflection for most involved. There will be a day when these replies will be looked as antiquated. I look forward with hope to that day.

anotherfounder 6y ago
@areoform I wholeheartedly echo this! Thank you!
treis 6y ago
>They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door? Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams? Her story is a bit inconsistent here. She says that she e-mailed pitch decks from her e-mail and then sent the same message from her husband's account. Of the two responses she mentions one asked for her pitch deck and the other only responded after a Linked In message. So it doesn't seem like she was sending the same message and/or she was sending messages to people that her husband had a prior relationship with. I downloaded the app and it's nothing special. It also looks like they bought a bunch of fake 5 star reviews at the end of January. There's nothing exciting there and nothing about her background that would lead anyone to believe that she would be a successful founder. Her pitch deserves to be binned and the only reason that it wouldn't would be because of some personal connection her husband had.

localcrisis 6y ago

had the same experience with Aileen. Many VCs, founders, and DNI leaders have echoed that All Raise is primarily a way for VCs to improve their personal brand around women in tech. They don't make investments, don't run substantial programs, and spend much of their time/money on PR. If these VCs were serious, they would commit X% of investments or X% of investment dollars to the groups they publicly support in panel after panel after tweet after TechCrunch interview.

anotherfounder 6y ago
Agreed. 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.
adrr 6y ago
Curious why would VC ever agree to do that unless it was mandated in the prospectus of the fund and the LPs were onboard. VCs serve the LPs not the general public.

econcon 6y ago

Problem is it's not the VC's job to help minorities. And even if one VC chooses to do so, they might make their fund less competitive compared to other funds. We can make a simple law: If a VC has to operate in US, they must reserve X amount for the minorities. If VCs think it's unfair and that minorities are not good investment then VCs can figure out how to "uplift" the minorities by creating much needed programs and network for them.