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.
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.
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.
Notice how these comments on GP are of nearly same length, which is a dead giveaway, because paid commenters have guidelines regarding length threshold
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.
"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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The reality is that VCs are genuinely inclined to fund black founders since their funds are overwhelmingly old white men.
This is an industry that cares a lot about not generating controversy. VCs got hit hard by Me Too- Lightspeed, Kleiner, Binary, Sherpa, 500 Startups, and others all imploded or let people go due to allegations of sexism.
It's a Partner based business where, in general, they rarely hire a new senior Partner and cut them in on the carry.
Investing in black founders and hiring minority junior VCs ends up being the easiest way to brand themselves as racially equitable.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
So they're vetting out black women because they haven't had the necessary experience, because hiring and funding is biased against them, particularly because they haven't had the necessary experience.
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."
I raised a $2M seed for Smartcar. I had no college degree as I had dropped out. I had no prior work experience. I had no team. The product was still an early prototype.
MANY of the founders I know who've also raised similar sized rounds from top VCs have stories quite like mine.
1. You think people are actually looking at her LinkedIn before the racial email filtering kicks in? You could easily test that, I suspect the implicit bias kick in right at the name and email stage. About 20 years ago, before LinkedIn, my dad sent resumes with his Brazilian name and an anglicized version. It was like 10:1 greater response to the Anglo version, and he changed our family name shortly after.
2. If the dynamic she describes existed her whole life wouldn’t it make sense that she has had a harder time building the LinkedIn profile and credentials her husband did? Not to take away from his accomplishment, he clearly worked hard and is talented, but one can’t take advantage of opportunities if they are not available by systematic design whether implicit or intentional.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dlivingston|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throwaway94894|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] postsantum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] anotherfounder|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nyczomg|5 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] areoform|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] localcrisis|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] xibalba|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sonofaplum|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] phnofive|5 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] henriquez|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] glitcher|5 years ago|reply
> 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?
[+] [-] perseusmandate|5 years ago|reply
This is an industry that cares a lot about not generating controversy. VCs got hit hard by Me Too- Lightspeed, Kleiner, Binary, Sherpa, 500 Startups, and others all imploded or let people go due to allegations of sexism.
It's a Partner based business where, in general, they rarely hire a new senior Partner and cut them in on the carry. Investing in black founders and hiring minority junior VCs ends up being the easiest way to brand themselves as racially equitable.
[+] [-] hckr_news|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] danenania|5 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] gnicholas|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigpumpkin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phnofive|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|5 years ago|reply
See the problem here?
[+] [-] anon102010|5 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] sahaskatta|5 years ago|reply
I raised a $2M seed for Smartcar. I had no college degree as I had dropped out. I had no prior work experience. I had no team. The product was still an early prototype.
MANY of the founders I know who've also raised similar sized rounds from top VCs have stories quite like mine.
[+] [-] digitaltrees|5 years ago|reply
2. If the dynamic she describes existed her whole life wouldn’t it make sense that she has had a harder time building the LinkedIn profile and credentials her husband did? Not to take away from his accomplishment, he clearly worked hard and is talented, but one can’t take advantage of opportunities if they are not available by systematic design whether implicit or intentional.
[+] [-] treis|5 years ago|reply
Would like to give this guy some truth serum and see what his honest opinion of the app was and if it should have been funded.
[+] [-] jiveturkey|5 years ago|reply
Yup. She isn't wrong, but her argument is poorly framed.
[+] [-] huffmsa|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] madballster|5 years ago|reply
The author is rightfully frustrated. But instead of focussing on lack of interest in their app, maybe there's a bigger opportunity here.
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] gkoberger|5 years ago|reply
Backstage Capital (https://backstagecapital.com/)
TxO (https://a16z.com/2020/06/03/talent-x-opportunity/)
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
Can anyone confirm this? When I follow the links, I get to this source:
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|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrnobody_67|5 years ago|reply
In the context of wrong stage/check size, Alfred's response was reasonable.
[+] [-] Kednicma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchonphoenix|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
There is a hidden asterisk: *as long as you are ex-FAANG doing a SAAS startup, in a competitive round. SWM? Hidden bonus bingo!
[+] [-] neonate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.mypthub.net/
[+] [-] anotherfounder|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avilay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon102010|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AMerePotato|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] latte|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] amb23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamReidHughes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] towaytie4567|5 years ago|reply
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/w... [2] [https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|5 years ago|reply
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