A few musings on racial diversity in tech

dyed eggs

The lack of diversity in tech has been a persistent issue well before I began my career in journalism, but it seems discussion of the topic has lately reached a fever pitch. Right now, I’m doing some research on the rise of startup hubs and its impact on diversity in tech, so I was interested to read this post at the New Yorker about Silicon Valley’s “race problem.”

Among other things, the New Yorker article details how the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has made several steps to heighten its sensitivity to the issue of diversity. Tristan Walker, the African-American founder of one company featured in the story, was previously an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz. And the firm recently brought on Allison Munichiello, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Lean Startup Conference, as a partner focusing on “communities and diversity.” The firm’s efforts have already yielded some successes: it has invested in Walker’s consumer-goods company (aptly named Walker & Company), as well as a company called Proven, co-founded by a Chilean immigrant, which makes a mobile app for recruiting restaurant workers.

Despite those efforts, I was put off by a few details. First of all, I don’t think Tristan Walker is the most instructive example of Silicon Valley power brokers becoming aware of the opportunities in communities of color. Before being named entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz, Walker was the director of business development at Foursquare, which though not based in Silicon Valley (but in New York, which is rivaling California’s tech prowess more and more) is still a marquee name in the land of tech startups. He already had ample access to the industry’s resources. But are investors willing to bet on talented entrepreneurs of color who aren’t yet on the inside track?

Secondly, I noticed in the article a persistent conflation of hip-hop culture and black identity. There were repeated references to rappers and hip-hop initiatives—hosting a talk with Steve Stoute, enlisting Nas as an investor in one of Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio companies, visiting Henry Louis Gates at Harvard’s Hip Hop Archive—as part of Ben Horowitz’s outreach to black communities. But hip-hop is not the sole driver of entrepreneurial ambition in black communities, and it’s misguided to use the former as a proxy for the latter. In fact, black entrepreneurialism predates hip-hop by many decades, if not centuries, as noted by the New Yorker’s reference to Madam C.J. Walker. Simply adjusting one’s “pattern matching” to account for a few people who look like Jay Z is an incomplete solution to diversity, at best. At worst, it may end up pigeonholing black entrepreneurs who identify more with other facets of black culture.

Curiously, the New Yorker article—as well as many of the discussions that I’ve seen, whether in magazine articles, on social media, or in conference panels—doesn’t address recruiting minority tech talent in an obvious place: historically black colleges and universities. There is much hand-waving about the need for Silicon Valley to expand its networks, but I see little evidence of outreach to the organizations that have historically aided networking among black professionals, including HBCUs, Greek organizations, and civic groups such as Jack and Jill and the Links. That omission squanders valuable opportunities to expose talented students and workers to entrepreneurial paths. One cultural factor that I believe even advocates for diversity in tech may overlook is that blacks (and Latinos) often face greater pressure to pursue “safe” careers in areas that have traditionally yielded success in their communities: medicine, law, dentistry.

I sincerely hope that Silicon Valley’s efforts toward greater racial diversity go beyond the surface. But it looks like investors may simply be relying on figureheads and stereotypical tropes rather than actually challenging their assumptions of what a successful entrepreneur looks like.


Update: Tristan Walker responded to this article via Twitter. Here’s what he had to say:

Indeed, organizations such as CODE2040, Black Girls Code, and Close the Divide Project are working to address the lack of diversity in the tech industry. Much of their work focuses on the “pipeline” problem—the low number of blacks and Latinos skilled in computer science—which is a separate, though equally important, issue from how minorities currently in the industry are regarded by potential investors and employers.

As Walker points out, Andreessen Horowitz is one of CODE2040’s partners. So I find it interesting that in an article about “addressing Silicon Valley’s race problem,” we hear a lot about Steve Stoute and Nas, but nothing of, say, recruiting students from HBCUs for internships. Most of the supposed efforts to address diversity that are mentioned in the New Yorker article are cosmetic solutions, at best. Perhaps the writer simply glossed over Andreessen Horowitz’s other work in this area; indeed, the venture firm’s sponsorship of events and programs to boost minority participation in tech is briefly noted in one sentence.

However, I’m not convinced that the New Yorker is solely to blame. As a business journalist, I know that companies and organizations—particularly well-financed and highly visible ones like Andreessen Horowitz—are quite deliberate in how they present themselves, and they will do everything they can to ensure that their press clippings align with their carefully scripted narratives. So I’m hard-pressed to believe that Ben Horowitz waxed at length about diversifying the pipeline of tech talent and scouting for potential investments in new areas, but somehow all of those comments were left out.

Moreover, even the outreach efforts described in the article are limited to his own network:

Horowitz told me that he recently started an African-American “network” at Andreessen Horowitz. (“I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it out loud,” he said.) Made up of prominent black figures drawn largely from his own address book, the network includes everyone from hyper-connected C.E.O.s to rappers to entrepreneurs. [emphasis added]

Many aspiring entrepreneurs seeking to conquer Silicon Valley, especially those of color, face roadblocks because they lack the connections to gain entry into the networks investors like Horowitz operate in. Yet Horowitz’s solution is to rely upon those same closed networks to diversify his pool of potential investments. That limited approach is exactly what yields tokenism: finding a few brown faces to fit the bill without examining why so few people of color gain consideration in the first place.

If organizations such as CODE2040 are working to address systemic issues such as the lack of diversity in the talent pipeline, does it matter if firms such as Andreessen Horowitz take a cosmetic approach? I believe it does. It doesn’t take much funding to start an Internet company, but rapidly scaling such a company into the likes of a Google or Facebook requires significant capital. Those who are systematically overlooked by investors thereby face dampened prospects for their businesses’ growth. Even skilled technologists of color, whose numbers CODE2040 seeks to increase, aren’t immune to the effects of that bias.

Black in America, Silicon Valley edition: thoughts

Black women in tech gather for discussion

Last night, the much-ballyhooed Black in America 4, which followed the participants of the NewME Accelerator, finally aired. (I caught the 11 pm re-airing after catching up on violin practice and refusing to watch the NY Jets get blown out in the second half of Sunday Night Football.) It generated some advance controversy, courtesy of Michael Arrington (more on that here), but in the end, I thought it was a solid take on the challenges for black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Some random thoughts:

  • I would have liked to learn more about how the accelerator was put together, especially given the pretext that blacks lack influence and stature in Silicon Valley. Despite that, NewME seemed to have a solid set of advisors.
  • That said, what was the real point of Vivek Wadhwa’s talk? All I got from the documentary was “black entrepreneurs should get white frontmen for their companies” and “black folks don’t support each other.” The second point is valid, but I really hope there was more meat to his talk that CNN just didn’t show.
  • NewME co-founder Angela Benton has a really inspiring story: from teenage mother to Web entrepreneur. The documentary makes note of the difficulty of her and Wayne Sutton (the accelerator’s other co-founder) having to leave children/family behind to work on their startups. There has been discussion around whether motherhood is a barrier for women in tech, and I wonder if family concerns are a similar issue for blacks in tech. Plenty of people argue that youth is an advantage for entrepreneurship: there isn’t as much risk in failure because founders rarely have family responsibilities. But that isn’t really true for a lot of black and Latino 20-somethings. And even those without kids of their own may have other family members to support.
    *Note: this is a class issue as much as it is a race one, but of course, race and class tend to be closely linked.
  • In hindsight, it’s really a shame that the Michael Arrington bit got the most attention leading up to the air date, because it was by far the least insightful segment. He was unprepared and made clueless (and somewhat offensive) remarks, but then I wasn’t impressed with Soledad O’Brien’s questions to him, either. Given the scarcity of black tech entrepreneurs, I don’t think asking who Arrington thinks is the “#1 black entrepreneur” was bound to yield a useful response. (Though it is still ridiculous that he couldn’t name any black entrepreneurs at all–really?)
  • I’d really like an explanation of how even the organizers of the accelerator were unprepared for the dragon’s den at the Google event. I agree with Navarrow Wright, one of the panelists at the event, that entrepreneurs should be ready to pitch at any time, but there is a difference between speaking one-on-one with a potential investor/advisor/customer and having to make a formal pitch on stage. Does Y Combinator or TechStars spring this on its participants?
  • Also, I’m curious what it was like for Benton and Sutton to run the accelerator and work on their companies at the same time. How much support/advice were they able to give the others?

If you saw BIA 4, what did you think of it?