

A Fix for Discrimination: Follow the Indian Trails - edw519
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/21/a-fix-for-discrimination-follow-the-indian-trails/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

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apsec112
This post is shot through with more lies and fallacies than you can shake a
stick at. Some of the more egregious ones:

"Is the Valley deliberately keeping these groups out? I don’t think so.
Silicon Valley is, without doubt, a meritocracy. In this land, only the
fittest survive."

 _What_? This makes no sense. How can Silicon Valley be a meritocracy and
discriminate against minorities at the same time? Doesn't he realize that the
two things are polar opposites?

"It wasn’t always like this, but girls are now matching boys in mathematical
achievement."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathemati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_Competition#Putnam_Fellows)

You can count the girls on this list with the fingers of one hand.

"The companies they start are more capital-efficient, produce higher revenue,
and have lower failure rates than those led by men."

Proof? The data shows that women start more businesses than men, but a greater
percentage of them are part-time/lifestyle businesses, not startups with
dozens or hundreds of employees.

"Thirty years ago, there were hardly any Silicon Valley firms with Indian-born
founders. UC-Berkeley’s AnnaLee Saxenian documented that 7% of tech companies
started in 1980–1998 had an Indian founder.... according to the U.S. census,
in 2000 less than 0.7% of the U.S. population and only 6% of the Silicon
Valley high-tech workforce was born in India."

Again... _what_? He says that there were "hardly any" firms with Indian-born
founders, even though his _very next sentence_ says that Indians founded
companies at a rate ten times greater than the population baseline? This makes
no sense.

"Despite having co-founded a software company that we took from startup to
$120m in revenue; profitability; and IPO in a record five years, I couldn’t
get Research Triangle Park (RTP) VCs to even return my phone calls when I was
ready to start my second venture."

I thought this was supposed to be an article about Silicon Valley? Surely it's
not a stretch to believe that North Carolinans are more racist, on average,
than Californians?

"TiE Charter Member Vinod Khosla advised me to contact VCs in Boston and gave
me several introductions. After I followed Rehki’s and Khosla’s advice, it
didn’t take long for me to get a term sheet from Greylock Partners (of
Boston)."

Doesn't everyone know that personal introductions are a big factor in doing
deals with VCs? How does he know that hiring a white President was the
critical thing, instead of his introductions?

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pmichaud
Essentially, the author (who is Indian) says that to break the ceiling for
Indians, those Indians who made it against the odds formed a network to help
other Indians coming in behind them. This allowed them to stake their claim in
the valley.

He's saying that would be a workable model for other minorities and women
also.

I guess the fix, then, is to discriminate back, in the opposite direction.

~~~
w1ntermute
_I guess the fix, then, is to discriminate back, in the opposite direction._

If you'd bothered to completely read the article, you'd have seen this:

 _Note: TiE set a goal of helping all communities. Women are still
underrepresented in its ranks, however_

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axiom
Because as everyone knows, real diversity consists of having enough people
with the right skin color.

~~~
kiba
All discriminations have consequences on the bottom line.

All else being equal, discrimination on the basis of increasing diversity
means lower performance in the market place, and loss of potential profit.

Discrimination on the basis of selecting the best employees for the job, will
results in more profit gained.

