

MC Hammer To Minority Entrepreneurs: “Let’s Get It Started” - waynesutton
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/21/mc-hammer-to-minority-entrepreneurs-lets-get-it-started/

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marcamillion
As a black person, why does this have to be targeted at 'Minorities' ?

Other than that...it looks good.

Love this: > “You don’t have to invent the wheel, but you might want to be the
company that invents the rims,” said Hammer in a phone interview.

~~~
_pius
_why does this have to be targeted at 'Minorities'?_

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-green/uplifting-black-
ame...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-green/uplifting-black-america-
v_b_844738.html)

~~~
marcamillion
So you are insinuating that this is purposely done ?

~~~
_pius
_So you are insinuating that this is purposely done?_

I'm insinuating that black people are funded in disproportionately low numbers
and it's not a coincidence. Even MIT, the finest computer science program in
the world, graduates many black students every year. The fact that Y
Combinator can barely name three black people it's funded is nothing short of
a disgrace.

In aggregate, the fact that VCs mostly ignore black people is not _purposeful_
, it's systemic. Sure, some of the reticence to fund black founders likely
comes from deliberate, overt racism, but let's assume that's rare.

One big factor is that most angels and VCs only fund people "in their network"
... in other words, friends of friends. If most VCs tend not to have many
black friends and colleagues, the effect compounds over time.

For one to believe that this effect does not exist, one has to also believe
that the contrapositive does not either. The contrapositive effect here is the
"mafia" effect, which is well observed.

As Sarah Lacy notes:

 _You can trace a whole lineage of mafias coming out of mafias. Facebook had
its roots in the PayPal mafia, which had its roots in the early University of
Illinois days along with Netscape and Mosiac. And Netscape grew out of Silicon
Graphics._ [1]

This is one of the reasons why I think that even small efforts to boost
_successful_ minority representation in the industry are important.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/13/inside-the-dna-of-the-
faceb...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/13/inside-the-dna-of-the-facebook-
mafia/)

