Founders pitch diverse startups at Push Tech
Whether or not it was by design, the pitch competition at the Push Tech 2020 conference on Wednesday was an opportunity to test a popular theory about diversity in tech: Companies with diverse founders will create products that serve a wider variety of people.
This, the thinking goes, is necessary to create more inclusive technologies, but it’s also usually good for the bottom line.
At Push Tech, a tech diversity conference put on by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the companies delivering three- minute pitches on stage veered from the Silicon Valley archetype not only in that their founders were not white and male, but also in the types of businesses they proposed.
Compare the finalists at Push Tech to those at this week’s Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, perhaps the industry’s bestknown startup pitch competition.
Among the 10 finalists at Push Tech were a startup connecting working moms with babysitters, a job marketplace for those without bank accounts, and a hub that connects small farmers with places to sell their goods.
Battlefield’s seven finalists included a company that sells artificial- intelligence- fueled customer service automation to Fortune 500 companies and one building software to make hardware process information faster.
The pitch competition is to Silicon Valley what “American Idol” is to the music industry: it can pluck a startup star from obscurity, vaulting it into the tech world limelight.
But those opportunities are typically reserved for companies serving businesses and consumers with disposable
income.
Hello Alfred, the startup that won at Battlefield in San Francisco last year, is essentially a subscription butler service.
Past winners of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt have included Yammer, the enterprise social network acquired by Microsoft for $ 1.2 billion, and Mint, the financial planning startup acquired by Intuit for $ 170 million. The winner there also walks away with $ 50,000.
Some of the startups that competed before a panel of venture capitalists for the $ 10,000 grand prize at Push Tech, meanwhile, are the kinds of companies that often have a hard time attracting funding — companies for women, minorities and those with low income.