Black tech group aims to raise diversity capital
Jim Gibbs recalls going into rooms with frosted glass walls at venture capital firms that told him to start a rap career or become a basketball player. He remembers when a venture capitalist assumed his white co-founder was CEO, not him.
Now, he’s heading Meter Feeder, a Braddock-based firm that offers mobile payment software for parking and has secured over $800,000 in funding.
When Phil Bronner was a general partner with Novak Biddle Venture Partners, a VC based in Bethesda, Md., he sat and waited for a firm he was meeting with — ignored for 20 minutes because they didn’t realize he could have been the investor.
Patrick Paul has had investors make odd comments about how his name sounds like it belongs to a white person, but it never distracted him from raising capital. He’s the co-founder of Ikos, a startup simplifying the renting process for landlords and tenants.
Adhithi Aji has been told a white man should front the business she hand-coded, herself, from scratch. She has been asked about her accent and about whether she was the one who created her startup.
Now, she’s running Adrich, a North Side-based business using labels on consumer products to collect data about customer usage that has received over $95,000 in funding to date.
Those entrepreneurs shared their stories of discrimination at a panel during Inclusive Innovation Week at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science on Tuesday evening. The event was hosted by Black Tech Nation, an organization that advocates for diversity in the tech sector by gathering and connecting black tech professionals in the area.
“You’re rare and I want to know why you’re rare,” said Kelauni Cook, founder of Black Tech Nation. She was talking to Mr. Bronner during a fireside chat, but she may as well have been addressing the entire full room of black techies.
Mr. Bronner graduated from CMU’s School of Computer Science in 1992, and dually earned his JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and finished an MBA in finance from the Wharton School in 1997. He’s the founder of Quad Learning in Washington, D.C., which develops collaborative
partnerships with leading U.S. higher education institutions to drive international enrollment growth.
During part of his tenure in venture capitalism, he said it was extremely rare to find another black venture capitalist. It was also rare to see a black CEO.
“There are many people in venture capital who might say, I’m open to funding anybody, any great idea that comes to me I fund,” Mr. Bronner said, “but it just so happens that every idea that comes to you, [the entrepreneur] looks like you or comes from a school like you.
“It’s pattern recognition,” he said.
“It just takes a track record,” Ms. Aji later added. When other minorities are funded and have successful startups, they’re more likely to be taken seriously.
Some of the issues that entrepreneurs of color face are systemic: investors in Silicon Valley might not want to fund Mr. Paul’s business because they don’t see the value in Section 8 housing; during the bootstrap stage, some entrepreneurs can’t ask friends and family for cash because there isn’t any; student loan debt is suffocating.
Other problems come earlier in the pipeline: In communities of color, many children aren’t exposed to the basics of investment at a young age and entrepreneurship simply isn’t an option.
Meanwhile, investors, who may have a portion of their funding pool partitioned off for minorities, don’t venture to find other companies worth backing.
To help entrepreneurs of color lift each other up, Mr. Bronner had a few suggestions for Black Tech Nation.
1) Make sure everyone in the community knows each others’ companies or where one another work to foster beneficial, and often serendipitous, opportunities to find funding or connect on an idea.
2) Go to institutions like CMU, Google or Uber to show them that diversity is important.
3) Get Pittsburgh to put investment dollars into Black Tech Nation.
“You can do these things ... and I want to make sure I say that,” Mr. Bronner noted.
Sometimes, that means taking risks that are extremely uncomfortable.
Ms. Cook said she knew someone in the room who was offered a job at a local firm and when they asked if they’d be the only black person in the office and the company said yes, they didn’t accept the job offer.
“That person may need to be the first,” Mr. Bronner said, “so that the second person doesn’t have to feel like the first person.”