
‘Kickstarter for black community’ aims to close African-American startup gap - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/kickstarter-for-black-community-aims-to-close-african-american-startup-gap/2013/05/06/5abc5c98-b677-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html
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carlyle4545
I literally cringed while visiting blackstartup.com, otherwise known as
"Kickstarter for the black community"

For two reasons: 1) A crowdfunding site, (by default), requires as large of a
crowd as possible to give each project the best opportunity to get funded.
Creating a niche site ostensibly based on race discourages the other 90% of
the US population from participating, thus inherently undermining the site's
usefulness.

2) The site suffers from poor design and doesn't appear to be well thought-
out. I spent 5 mins on Themeforest and found 5 themes that are blowing away
the template the founders used for blackstartup.com.

If the site was going to be done in the name of "blackness" perhaps us blacks
should bond together to form some sort of Black UX/UI Commission to properly
vet these types of sites so that they don't act as such a poor representative
of us as blacks as a whole. Clearly I jest, but this type of divisiveness and
exclusionary mentality is the exact reason why minorities, (and specifically
blacks), find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to the
tech/startup community.

