LIFE TOPICS

Does Skin Color & Gender Influence Success In The Tech World?

February 15, 2016 | Posted at 11:53 pm | by Ashley (Follow User)

Photo Credit: (Photo: iStockphoto)

It’s interesting how the things that we talk about the most in our society are often the things that could be easily solved, if we would simply take action and decide to solve them. As a Black woman tech founder, one of those issues for me is the amount of minorities in the tech industry.
 

Now, it’s already enough of a problem that the amount of diversity in tech companies is significantly low, but it has also recently been revealed that the amount of Black women tech founders who are receiving VC funding for their businesses is significantly low, too. I have to say that it’s quite disheartening and shocking.
 

As a Black woman tech founder, I was completely alarmed to read about a study released by #ProjectDiane called, The Real Unicorns of Tech: Black Founders Women. According to the findings, black women tech founders getting significantly less funding for their companies than White men. In fact, out of all venture deals that took place from 2012 to 2014, only 0.2% (24 of 10,238 deals) went to Black female founders. That basically means ZERO Black women have received VC funding.
 

On top of this, of the 24, only 11 of them were able to raise more than $1 million in VC funding. Let me repeat, 11. This number is in comparison to the average startup founded by a White male that typically raises $1.3 million… and failed. As WIRED reported, “From 2012 to 2014, so few Black women founders raised money that, statistically speaking, the number might as well be zero.” Yeah, I completely agree.
 


 
The problem is so bad that even the leader of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Maria Contreras-Sweet, recently acknowledged it. During her “State of Entrepreneurship” address at the Nasdaq stock exchange, she called out VCs for the lack of capital that they are providing to minorities, telling them to start investing in new places and new people (i.e. Black women founders).
 


 

But the most interesting part about this whole subject is that Black women today are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country, starting more than 1.5 million businesses since 1997 (over 100,000 of which are technical companies). According to TechCrunch, “These businesses (not all being tech) generate over $44 billion a year in revenue. Yet in the tech world, investors aren’t taking a risk on startups run by black women.” I don’t understand this disconnect.
 

How is it possible that a Black women as a whole have a proven track record for succeeding in business, but they are not able to receive the funding that they need for their companies? As #ProjectDiane founder Kathryn Finney states, “Black women founders are not raising nearly enough to even test their ideas in the market and even the best Black women led startups (as indicated by the amount raised) do not raise as much as failed startups led by others, namely White men.” This is crazy.
 


 

In my opinion, this study reinforces how important it is for minorities, women, and all of society to come together to significantly change these bigger systematic issues. Since we now know these problems clearly exist, we need to come together nationally and solve them. As a result, we can then create companies where we can give back, hire more minorities, and positively change the tech in order to create a brighter tomorrow for women and minorities in the future.
 

I wholeheartedly believe we can solve this terrible problem; we just simply need to make the commitment to make it happen. I hope to use my company, RIZZARR, to create more positive changes on issues just like this, like so many others who are striving to do so as well.