

White, male startup companies get funding for being white and male - erikpukinskis
http://geekfeminism.org/2010/11/29/white-male-tech-startups-get-funding-for-being-white-male/

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kenjackson
Doerr lost a lot of points in my book. Maybe all of them (as if he cares about
my scorecard).

Unfortunately though I think he has simply voiced what a lot of people, VC or
otherwise, secretly think (or not so secretly, when not in mixed company).

If you're a minority or female, expect to be shut down at every avenue. It's
not possible for you to succeed, so we will ensure that you don't.

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ohyes
Seriously? He's an idiot for saying this, but...

"...nerds, with no social life who dropped out of Harvard or Stanford"

Is probably the actual important part. For example, I'm white and male. By
these criterion, I would not be selected, because I didn't drop out of an Ivy,
and have a social life...

He should relax his criterion so that he allows non-male non-white nerds who
dropped out of Stanford/Harvard, but I kind of doubt the candidate pool would
change much...

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kenjackson
_He should relax his criterion so that he allows non-male non-white nerds who
dropped out of Stanford/Harvard, but I kind of doubt the candidate pool would
change much..._

Which is what makes what he said all the more perplexing. He could have
probably also said "and are shorter than 7' tall and weighless than 500lbs and
have not won a Grammy for best new R&B singer".

None of those change the candidate pool much either, yet wouldn't be worth
saying. The only reason I can think that he would make the statement he did is
because he believes that "white maleness" is an intergral part of the equation
and contribute within an order of magnitude of the other things (Ivy league
drop out with no life) -- otherwise you wouldn't mention it as it doesnt'
change the "complexity".

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jacquesm
Bollocks. If that were true all white male start-up companies would get funded
and no females or any other minorities (females are a minority??) would ever
get funded.

I think you can only say this when you take in to account the ratio of
applicants.

Of course that can be countered with 'they're not applying because they know
they won't be accepted' but I don't think that's going to cut it for me.

~~~
michaelchisari
Did you read the article? It's based on a direct quote from venture capitalist
John Doerr:

 _“That correlates more with any other success factor that I’ve seen in the
world’s greatest entrepreneurs. If you look at Bezos, or [Netscape
Communications Corp. founder Marc] Andreessen, [Yahoo Inc. co-founder] David
Filo, the founders of Google, they all seem to be white, male, nerds who’ve
dropped out of Harvard or Stanford and they absolutely have no social life. So
when I see that pattern coming in — which was true of Google — it was very
easy to decide to invest.”_

~~~
curtis
Did Doerr really say that? I'm asking because the examples don't really
support the thesis. It seems like Jerry Yang would completely invalidate David
Filo as an example. Also, I can't find any indication that Jeff Bezos ever
attended Harvard or Stanford (according to Wikipedia he attended to Princeton
and he graduated). Marc Andreessen attended the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign and also graduated.

~~~
michaelchisari
Yes, according to the WSJ:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/05/08/why-
ventur...](http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/05/08/why-venture-
capitalists-dont-want-you-to-have-a-sex-life/tab/article/)

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CRASCH
Seriously? This is link bait.

It is hard enough to pick a winning portfolio of companies. Would anyone
really intentionally handicap themselves and not try to pick the best ones? At
the expense of their portfolio?

If a green woman walks in with a hockey stick graph, VBM, kicking ass, they
will line up to write her a check.

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rcfox
Insurance companies do the same thing: they do statistical analysis do
determine factors that correlate with whatever it is they're looking for.

VCs aren't in the business of being fair; they're interested in making as much
money as possible. If they find that white males are succeeding more often
than other groups, they're going use that to maximize their profit.

~~~
lwhi
Insurance companies do this, because they can't invest time in getting to know
each end-user of their services _personally_.

Venture capitalists, can and _SHOULD_ invest time in looking beyond
superficial details - and ultimately be able to understand each proposal on a
deep level.

~~~
rcfox
No argument there. I'm just trying to point out that it's not necessarily
racism or sexism.

