This post would be a lot more persuasive with the pitch deck, or some growth numbers, or something indicating the app is in fact on a success track and is the type of app that is potentially VC scale.
I found no mentions on reddit. On google there is a single review on Capterra, no other results.
The Canadian ios app has no reviews, can’t check US on my phone. The Google play version has 88 reviews, but all but 3-4 of them are from Jan 26-Feb 2, with only one since, in May.
So some evidence of traction, product market fit, growth, or the general idea behind the app (pitch deck) would help with the argument.
The author does highlight an issue of how to get funded if you don’t have an existing network though. Network based introductions seems to be the norm for VC from what I’ve heard. And to be clear, there may be racism involved: my point is it’s hard to tell without knowing more about the app’s and whether it seems plausibly a fit for VC. Once an app has been around for a year you need more evidence of traction.
Edit: I should mention that if the app is indeed somewhere between “can be bootstrapped” and “needs VC investment” then there are are new options like Tinyseed aimed at this middle ground of company. Another commented pointed out that a competing app has 1-10 employees, which is not VC scale.
101 ratings with all but two being 5-stars. I hesitate to say that the positive reviews are largely fake, but it sure seems like it. Broken English and vague praise for the app characterize most of the reviews.
For example: "My friend recommended to me for experiencing this app. At the fist time, I didn't know this application could bring benefits to me. However, after all I use this app more frequently because its advantages. Very useful!"
What? Further, all 5-star reviews with the exception of one were written between 01/28/2020 and 01/30/2020. That leaves exactly three reviews of the 101 written outside this two-day window. Massive red flag.
I was a customer at one of their gyms and the app was garbage. It frequently crashed and there were huge bugs with basic stuff like the dates I'd be billed for renewal being wrong. I didn't realize I was still subscribed and they charged me ~$250 for a month where I didn't even go in.
Unethical Life Pro Tip (takeaway): Pay people to submit five star reviews about your competitor’s product that obviously look fake. Bonus points if they're all submitted on the same day.
This isn't very acceptable to say at the moment (hence the throwaway account), but it seems like it would make a lot more sense for preferential treatment to come earlier in the pipeline. That is, instead of VCs using race as a major factor in determining who to fund (especially 1M+ rounds), race and other similar factors can be used to help provide training, networking, and other opportunities that help give historically under-served populations more of a fighting chance to someday be in a position to raise funding.
This is even more unacceptable to say right now, but many of us white males get ignored by VCs and we know it isn't because of our race or gender. It's because VCs won't fund you if they don't think you'll make a 50-100x or more return for their LPs.
Notice how these comments on GP are of nearly same length, which is a dead giveaway, because paid commenters have guidelines regarding length threshold
Except that her experiment changed three variables: her husband is male and Asian and an ex-Google engineer, while she is none of those. So it's not possible to draw the conclusion that the difference in response comes only from race.
(To be clear, I personally believe that race & gender do have an impact in the response from VCs, I just don't think her experience proves it.)
I'm so glad she wrote this, and that she named names!
As a female founder (not black though), we went through a similarly congnitively dissonant process. A-List investors who would publicly talk about supporting female founders would behave the worst (esp. female investors, Hi Aileen!), investors whose entire brand was around supporting ethical startups (or insert any similar alternative movement) would be the least interested in that aspect (Hi Spero Ventures!) All of that, along with a healthy dose of rudeness.
In our experience, those at the very very top of the totem pole gave us the fairest chance, and those below them, were the very worst. In the end, it was hard no to feel that an investor's Twitter persona was a sham, in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler.
FWIW, I know my experience was not alone. There are tons of now well-funded female founders who will echo this sentiment. I just wish there was a way to have a public list of those who walk the talk and those who just tweet the walk..
EDIT: Adding something from thread below to focus more on solutions, and providing perspective on why what is happening is not enough.
>...What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG?
> Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.
"in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler."
If that was her main point, fair. But she's out there naming names and strongly implying that they didn't help her due to their racism and/or sexism. That's a pretty nasty accusation to throw at someone. And the names she named were the people who bothered to reply to her at all - they just didn't spend an adequate amount of effort on her to not be called out like this. She called out the only people who would give her the time of day! I think any VC who sees this article will know what to do from now on...
I can see that naming those who didn't even respond could be more appropriate. My takeaway is that you feel let down the most by those who have the most talk, hence higher expectations, which, it seems to me is the gist of the article.
I have zero business experience whatsoever. That said, I wouldn't have invested in her business for the simple reason she made it too easy to cut out the middleman. She intends to make money by hooking people up with personal trainers but there's nothing stopping said trainers and clients from just doing business themselves after she's done the work of connecting them.
The people who did reply are the same ones that did not reply when they received the exact same pitch from his email instead of hers. The ex-googler CTO was on both pitches.
I feel heartbroken seeing the responses to you and her. I'm a woman, but not a minority. I alter my writing style and my authorial voice every day to be less femme and more "neutral." And these exchanges confirm what I'd feared.
It breaks my heart that the first reaction by our community isn't to integrate her lived experience, but to question it. It is to question her being and (implicitly) her right to be in these spaces.
Few have asked what they can do to help. Fewer have offered to help. Instead, commentators have noted her track record. Their comments seem to approach her as if she was the sole founder. She's not. They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door? Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams?
More disappointing are the comments questioning her accomplishments based on her marriage. They're negating her lived experience and drive based on whom she married. And they're saying that perhaps she owes all of her success - including the gyms - to him. In this very forum, she has been reduced to but an extension of him. And that's heartbreaking.
There's a lot of work to be done in the industry. And I hope that this is a moment of personal growth and reflection for most involved.
There will be a day when these replies will be looked as antiquated. I look forward with hope to that day.
>They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door?
Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams?
Her story is a bit inconsistent here. She says that she e-mailed pitch decks from her e-mail and then sent the same message from her husband's account. Of the two responses she mentions one asked for her pitch deck and the other only responded after a Linked In message. So it doesn't seem like she was sending the same message and/or she was sending messages to people that her husband had a prior relationship with.
I downloaded the app and it's nothing special. It also looks like they bought a bunch of fake 5 star reviews at the end of January. There's nothing exciting there and nothing about her background that would lead anyone to believe that she would be a successful founder. Her pitch deserves to be binned and the only reason that it wouldn't would be because of some personal connection her husband had.
>It breaks my heart that the first reaction by our community isn't to integrate her lived experience, but to question it.
Everybody has a "lived experience" and we don't integrate the "lived experience" of others without scepticism because that would make us easy to con.
>It is to question her being and (implicitly) her right to be in these spaces.
I'll question her right explicitly to be in those spaces. Nothing she has made impresses me and I wouldn't give her money in the VC's shoes.
>There's a lot of work to be done in the industry. And I hope that this is a moment of personal growth and reflection for most involved. There will be a day when these replies will be looked as antiquated. I look forward with hope to that day.
Your blind belief in peoples lived experiences led you to seemingly get hoodwinked by somebody who develops mediocre products backed by seemingly fraudulent reviews. You're so caught up in your own superiority that you fail to reflect on the ideological blind spot that makes you easy to con.
Many VCs, founders, and DNI leaders have echoed that All Raise is primarily a way for VCs to improve their personal brand around women in tech. They don't make investments, don't run substantial programs, and spend much of their time/money on PR.
If these VCs were serious, they would commit X% of investments or X% of investment dollars to the groups they publicly support in panel after panel after tweet after TechCrunch interview.
What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG?
Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.
Curious why would VC ever agree to do that unless it was mandated in the prospectus of the fund and the LPs were onboard. VCs serve the LPs not the general public.
Are you saying that you felt you received unfair treatment, like if you had been a man you would have been received better? Or are you saying that these VCs publicly talked about making an extra effort for female founders but you did not feel that they made those efforts. I 100% agree with making exceptions for female/PoC founders so that inroads can be made to start erasing pre-conceived notions of what a founder should look like, just wondering which area the VCs failed in, or maybe both?
Problem is it's not the VC's job to help minorities. And even if one VC chooses to do so, they might make their fund less competitive compared to other funds.
We can make a simple law:
If a VC has to operate in US, they must reserve X amount for the minorities.
If VCs think it's unfair and that minorities are not good investment then VCs can figure out how to "uplift" the minorities by creating much needed programs and network for them.
VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash.
What's your track record?
Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.
And given that a majority of "Ex-Google" engineers are males, where does that leave a woman (or any under-represented group) founder?
She is not asking for money "just because" she is a woman. She is asking for a fair chance. And we need to give folks from under-represented communities a more than fair chance to combat inherent selection bias.
Ex-Google was a meaningful distinction 15 years ago. Today it does not remotely entitle you to being funded.
Many VCs today recognize that Google is an extremely bureaucratic place that does not resemble a startup and I know more than a few who view Google experience as a negative signal.
> VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash.
> Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.
Who knew, thanks for enlightening me. Let's just say that I have VCs emailing me now.
Many white male founders have had the exact same story with VCs.
If they were black or women they might have assumed it was a matter of VCs being racist or sexist. But this is probably wrong.
Because of these three attributes, one is not like the others.
"I’m a Black woman, mom of three, and I don’t have an Ivy League degree."
Because, regardless of their own race or gender, VCs are highly connected members of the Ivy League.
VCs don't like poor people for the same reason most rich people don't for thousands of years. They believe that poor people are losers. And why would an investor want to bet on a loser?
That is exactly part of the problem, though. The thing about systemic racism and sexism, versus just regular racism and sexism, is that they're entangled (or worse, encoded) into the existing systems. You can't really solve the issues without unraveling the systems.
Regular racism and sexism is when the reason you're not given a chance is because of direct racial or gender-based bias. Systemic racism and sexism can additionally include scenarios where the systems in place (such as the private Ivy League club) might not necessarily be intentionally racist or sexist, but rather just incidentally racist or sexist.
From the article, when a venture fund hides their email or contact information, that's not directly racist or sexist. However, if it prevents people outside of your existing network from contacting you, and your existing network happens to be underrepresented on the basis of color or gender, then it's certainly going to help perpetuate the already-existing under-representation in your network, regardless of whatever the root cause of it may be.
This is where intersectionality comes in. Her experience is especially worse because she is Black woman AND because she doesn't have an Ivy league degree AND she doesn't have a FAANG experience.
Believe me, it is much worse when after every negative interaction, you have to check if it was because you are female, or black or X. White male founders will not have to worry about that additional male tax.
The author of this article cites as evidence of racism higher response to her husband's solicitations of VCs than her own. However, comparing their resumés, its pretty easy to see that this is unlikely to be attributable to racism. Husband has founded multiple start-ups that were acquired, is technical, and worked at Google and YouTube. Meanwhile, the author has personal trainer and gym owner as experience.
I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc.
One might argue that without the special consideration these VC's rushed to say they would give, how would someone like the author ever have an established track record of starting/selling their businesses in the first place?
I'm frankly still expecting VC's to make decisions on what they think is going to be most profitable for them, full-stop. But plenty of other firms like large consulting firms, do set aside people and resources to work with non-profits for example. Why couldn't VC's do the same to try and level the playing field and eliminate some of these inherent advantages the well connected/well credentialed have? A "no" is potentially fine, but how you deliver that "no" can make all the difference.
> I think the larger point the author was trying to make was don't give lip service to specifically going out of your way to try and help Black founders if you're still going to use the exact same credentialing signals you always do: track record where someone has worked, name brand of their school, etc.
I think that's the mistake all these companies are making. They need to make it clear if it's their intent to help black founders, provided, all other things are equal / held constant.
That is if two people have the same or similar background and qualifications but they just happened to be different race then to not always pick the white guy cause, hey, we look alike or belonged to the same frat.
It should leave no room for interpretation as: "hey, you're black, let me throw some money at you cause you happen to be black."
Yes. Exactly this. If a VC is going to use the same filters for inbound deals. The same networks to connect to founders, the same metrics and stats. Then all their rhetoric is BS.
The VCs said that they want to fund more black-founded startups. But, if we assume you are correct about why they responded to the queries from the husband's e-mail, that means that they'll consider a proposal from someone with startup experience while rejecting that same proposal from someone without startup experience. Which, given that they've not been funding black people, means they're going to continue not funding black people, which means that their claim to want to fund more black-founded startups is just words and not actions.
And VCs who stated in public that they were open to changing their criteria and actually helping that less experienced founder flat out didn't live up to the words they said in public.
The nature of VC being what it is, it's extremely difficult to prove racism at the level of proof that most HN readers seem to need. 99.99% of all startup ideas are bad, 99.99% of all apps are terrible, so how can we know if she was rejected for being black, or for just being another supplicant denied by the VC gods?
The email thing is the strongest evidence she provides, but obviously, a doubting mind can find other reasons that her husbands email would get responses but hers wouldn't.
We do know, however, that African Americans are greatly under represented in tech, in startups and in VC. There are many interlocking reasons for this, and its not unreasonable to expect that racism, whether conscious or unconscious, is one of them. (Why should tech, uniquely in American society, be immune from racism?). Because there are so many interlocking reasons, it's easy for each individual link in the chain of tech to deflect blame to the other links (business can blame the pipeline, colleges can blame the high schools, high schools can blame the financial structures etc etc etc).
So, is it reasonable to expect individual VCs to make a stand against racism instead of doing what comes naturally to them? (trying desperately to make money). Not really!
However, I do think it's reasonable to expect, that VC's who make big pronouncements about what their firm is going to do to combat racism should be expected to follow through with it! And guess what, given all the interlocking problems that prevent black people from founding companies, VC's probably aren't going to be able to follow through on that mission by relying on business as usual of warm intros only, five minute pitch reviews, blow off emails.
Just level with us. We are all adults. Just say, I'm not actually that interested in explicitly helping black founders, I just want to keep trying to make money the way I've been doing it. Conversely, if you do give juicy quotes to the press, then be prepared to walk the walk.
I'm in VC and there are many reasons why I and my peers are not interested in yet another software product selling to gyms. They are extremely fragmented, hard to access, low ACV customers who are already well served by products like MindBody. I've seen a ton of marketplaces for personal trainers as well.
The reality is that the chance a VC responds to a cold outbound email is already near 0. I get these in my LinkedIn inbox almost all the time and they are very rarely good because the founders with great companies are not going out of their way to cold email people. I doubt that most of the VCs she's talking about spent enough time to even realize it was a WoC.
I had one of the responses questioning the story (I wrote it would be more persuasive with the pitch deck or an explanation for why the app was in VC territory)
But I completely agree with you about the hypocrisy of asking for emails from black founders and then ignoring them.
And also agree that requiring a warm intro as the only way to reach a VC is a real barrier. It may be a good test (“Can you hustle enough to reach me”), but is objectively harder if you’re not in a certain set.
The author's point about VC firms providing no contact information disproportionately impacting minority founders who don't have network connections is also a good one, and fixable.
Whether or not they publish contact details, someone without a 'pedigree' or serious traction is far more likely to end up in meetings with VCs by applying to well-known accelerators like YC than by reaching out directly to VCs. This is the primary way that founders without a network get plugged in.
There can obviously be bias issues at the accelerator level too, so I'm not saying it's a solution, but you can be sure that someone will at least take a look at your application.
I think the argument here is suffering as the business is questionable, though I wholeheartedly agree that pointing a founder to a blog post and pretending that counts as mentorship is bullshit.
> none of the VCs I contacted even tried downloading my app (I use Intercom daily to see all the new users trying our app). They dismissed its worth without even giving it a shot.
Fair, but I just had a look at the app store - this had two reviews since late January (when about ninety-five 5* reviews were posted over a few days), and neither were positive.
Additionally, a cursory search for personal trainer apps will turn up dozens of well-rated alternatives. Putting myself in the mind of a VC, I would be hard-pressed to invest or advise the founder of such a company.
Would love to learn more about why the VCs wouldn’t respond to her emails, though - seems like another failure to meet the commitment.
As far as why VCs wouldn't respond to emails, from my brief time working at a VC firm I think the logic was either 1) We don't want to start a conversation and give them false hope and 2) Not replying makes it seem like we're too busy and important to respond to everyone (and also there was some thought process of we don't owe anyone anything in the same way the average person doesn't feel obligated to respond to spam emails)
It seems like the author could search and replace “racism” with “sexism” and put out an otherwise similar article based on her experience having to use her husband’s LinkedIn rolodex to reach these people.
I think it’s shameful that VCs make empty promises to support black founders - but it’s also not surprising. Most of the people paying lip service to racial equity now didn’t give a shit six weeks ago before it was fashionable to do so. But empty promises are par for the course as they’ve been for decades. My experience living in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered is that the same people suddenly promising to fix the problem are the ones who created it.
VCs only want to make money. The author raised insufficient evidence that she was a victim of racism. If any unfair discrimination occurred it’s more likely sexism. But the simplest explanation is also the most likely: the VCs just weren’t interested in her pitch.
The author seems clear to me that she is considering both racism and sexism.
> Curiously, when I used my husband’s email to send our pitch, that’s when I started getting some responses. Do VCs only read pitches submitted by men? Do they prefer to hear from someone who is Asian rather than Black?
So she assumes bad faith but isn’t sure of the exact nature of that bad faith, meanwhile the merits of her pitch or business idea are not even a factor in her discussion of why she could have been rejected. (Let’s see, a personal trainer app when people are quarantined ...)
I’ve seen numerous other founders here on HN handle rejection with more humility and constructive resolve. I don’t think the author is doing herself - or her husband - any favors with this kind of response.
The reality is that VCs are genuinely inclined to fund black founders since their funds are overwhelmingly old white men.
This is an industry that cares a lot about not generating controversy. VCs got hit hard by Me Too- Lightspeed, Kleiner, Binary, Sherpa, 500 Startups, and others all imploded or let people go due to allegations of sexism.
It's a Partner based business where, in general, they rarely hire a new senior Partner and cut them in on the carry.
Investing in black founders and hiring minority junior VCs ends up being the easiest way to brand themselves as racially equitable.
I think it isn't just as simple as wanting to fund black founders. If you do not understand how systems work and actively fix them, you are unlikely to be helpful to black founders.
I'm on easy mode (white and male), but I had no network and no prestigious previous employers or schools to point to when starting on my company a few years ago. There were many points when I felt like raising money would be impossible, but I eventually did so. In case it might help someone who's feeling hopeless and has it much harder than I did due to their background, here are a few things I've learned about how the game is played:
- Talking to investors is a waste of time in the beginning. It's much better to focus on getting into an accelerator first.
- Never talk to one investor at a time. That gives them all the leverage. It's better to schedule many meetings with many different investors all in a one or two week period.
- Timing is everything. Don't talk to investors before you're ready to even if they say it's "just a casual coffee". They are looking for reasons to rule you out. Try to only talk to investors at inflection points where a graph of some important metric is going steeply up and to the right.
- Move on quickly. Unless an investor is obviously enthusiastic by the end of the first pitch, they are highly, highly unlikely to invest. Don't waste time answering their questions or getting their "feedback" or giving them additional meetings if they seem skeptical. Just move on to the next one.
- Don't ask for introductions from investors who turned you down. These are actually anti-endorsements that significantly decrease your chances with the investors you get introduced to this way.
Seems like the most compelling evidence of racially-disparate treatment is that she got no responses when reaching out via her own email address, but received some responses when reaching out via her husband's (he is an Asian-American man with a recognizably Asian name). Assuming the emails sent were identical, this would be pretty solid evidence of bias.
One potential confounding issue is that her husband is a former Google engineer, and she doesn't mention having any similar experience. It wouldn't be surprising if a VC's vetting process involved checking linkedin to see what experience the person had, and giving points to former FAANG engineers (note: I am not in this category).
Regardless, it's still pretty lousy that VCs that claim to want to help certain types of founders don't even respond to inbound inquiries.
Her name is "Nerissa Zhang" - unless they are looking through for profile pictures of her or something, wouldn't they assume she is Asian as well? At least for me, "Nerissa" is a name of unknown origin, maybe Greek. Zhang is clearly Chinese. I would assume the person was Chinese or at least 50% Chinese if I was forced to guess about their race/ethnicity.
Any particular instance is not proof of racism. But I suspect VCs as an industry is biased against Black people because of its closed network nature and the lack of black founders in general for the VCs to pattern match. This should be especially acute for early stage investing when much relied on intuition and the "quality of the team".
I’m curious about the email thing too. If she was using the ceo@bright email in the blogpost, I can see that getting filtered before any human read the contents, otherwise it’d be foolish to not give the time of day to a person who fits their advocacy profile, regardless of the business’ viability.
So they're vetting out black women because they haven't had the necessary experience, because hiring and funding is biased against them, particularly because they haven't had the necessary experience.
it’s not VCs responsibilities to cultivate people worthy of VC-level funding. and from all the college outreach i’ve seen in the past several years, FAANGs are absolutely desperate for women and minority engineers. companies are doing plenty
Readit News
I found no mentions on reddit. On google there is a single review on Capterra, no other results.
The Canadian ios app has no reviews, can’t check US on my phone. The Google play version has 88 reviews, but all but 3-4 of them are from Jan 26-Feb 2, with only one since, in May.
So some evidence of traction, product market fit, growth, or the general idea behind the app (pitch deck) would help with the argument.
The author does highlight an issue of how to get funded if you don’t have an existing network though. Network based introductions seems to be the norm for VC from what I’ve heard. And to be clear, there may be racism involved: my point is it’s hard to tell without knowing more about the app’s and whether it seems plausibly a fit for VC. Once an app has been around for a year you need more evidence of traction.
Edit: I should mention that if the app is indeed somewhere between “can be bootstrapped” and “needs VC investment” then there are are new options like Tinyseed aimed at this middle ground of company. Another commented pointed out that a competing app has 1-10 employees, which is not VC scale.
101 ratings with all but two being 5-stars. I hesitate to say that the positive reviews are largely fake, but it sure seems like it. Broken English and vague praise for the app characterize most of the reviews.
For example: "My friend recommended to me for experiencing this app. At the fist time, I didn't know this application could bring benefits to me. However, after all I use this app more frequently because its advantages. Very useful!"
What? Further, all 5-star reviews with the exception of one were written between 01/28/2020 and 01/30/2020. That leaves exactly three reviews of the 101 written outside this two-day window. Massive red flag.
This is even more unacceptable to say right now, but many of us white males get ignored by VCs and we know it isn't because of our race or gender. It's because VCs won't fund you if they don't think you'll make a 50-100x or more return for their LPs.
You might feel ignored, but statistically you'd be even more likely to be ignored if you were from an underrepresented group.
Her husband sent the same info as her and got response. She got radio silence.
That's the point. Not whether or not the content was good.
(To be clear, I personally believe that race & gender do have an impact in the response from VCs, I just don't think her experience proves it.)
As a female founder (not black though), we went through a similarly congnitively dissonant process. A-List investors who would publicly talk about supporting female founders would behave the worst (esp. female investors, Hi Aileen!), investors whose entire brand was around supporting ethical startups (or insert any similar alternative movement) would be the least interested in that aspect (Hi Spero Ventures!) All of that, along with a healthy dose of rudeness.
In our experience, those at the very very top of the totem pole gave us the fairest chance, and those below them, were the very worst. In the end, it was hard no to feel that an investor's Twitter persona was a sham, in the end they would invest only in the hottest SAAS startup by an ex-Googler.
FWIW, I know my experience was not alone. There are tons of now well-funded female founders who will echo this sentiment. I just wish there was a way to have a public list of those who walk the talk and those who just tweet the walk..
EDIT: Adding something from thread below to focus more on solutions, and providing perspective on why what is happening is not enough.
>...What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG?
> Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.
If that was her main point, fair. But she's out there naming names and strongly implying that they didn't help her due to their racism and/or sexism. That's a pretty nasty accusation to throw at someone. And the names she named were the people who bothered to reply to her at all - they just didn't spend an adequate amount of effort on her to not be called out like this. She called out the only people who would give her the time of day! I think any VC who sees this article will know what to do from now on...
It breaks my heart that the first reaction by our community isn't to integrate her lived experience, but to question it. It is to question her being and (implicitly) her right to be in these spaces.
Few have asked what they can do to help. Fewer have offered to help. Instead, commentators have noted her track record. Their comments seem to approach her as if she was the sole founder. She's not. They're equal partners. Why is one given a courteous reply and the other shown the door? Is it not a good signal that she was able to find and work with a highly qualified co-founder? And build the seed of a good team? Isn't it a famous industry maxim to invest in teams?
More disappointing are the comments questioning her accomplishments based on her marriage. They're negating her lived experience and drive based on whom she married. And they're saying that perhaps she owes all of her success - including the gyms - to him. In this very forum, she has been reduced to but an extension of him. And that's heartbreaking.
There's a lot of work to be done in the industry. And I hope that this is a moment of personal growth and reflection for most involved.
There will be a day when these replies will be looked as antiquated. I look forward with hope to that day.
Her story is a bit inconsistent here. She says that she e-mailed pitch decks from her e-mail and then sent the same message from her husband's account. Of the two responses she mentions one asked for her pitch deck and the other only responded after a Linked In message. So it doesn't seem like she was sending the same message and/or she was sending messages to people that her husband had a prior relationship with.
I downloaded the app and it's nothing special. It also looks like they bought a bunch of fake 5 star reviews at the end of January. There's nothing exciting there and nothing about her background that would lead anyone to believe that she would be a successful founder. Her pitch deserves to be binned and the only reason that it wouldn't would be because of some personal connection her husband had.
Everybody has a "lived experience" and we don't integrate the "lived experience" of others without scepticism because that would make us easy to con.
>It is to question her being and (implicitly) her right to be in these spaces.
I'll question her right explicitly to be in those spaces. Nothing she has made impresses me and I wouldn't give her money in the VC's shoes.
>There's a lot of work to be done in the industry. And I hope that this is a moment of personal growth and reflection for most involved. There will be a day when these replies will be looked as antiquated. I look forward with hope to that day.
Your blind belief in peoples lived experiences led you to seemingly get hoodwinked by somebody who develops mediocre products backed by seemingly fraudulent reviews. You're so caught up in your own superiority that you fail to reflect on the ideological blind spot that makes you easy to con.
Many VCs, founders, and DNI leaders have echoed that All Raise is primarily a way for VCs to improve their personal brand around women in tech. They don't make investments, don't run substantial programs, and spend much of their time/money on PR.
If these VCs were serious, they would commit X% of investments or X% of investment dollars to the groups they publicly support in panel after panel after tweet after TechCrunch interview.
What is frustrating about these investors (and YC) is that it all is very surface level. I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but all of their assumptions, ideas, pipelines, and teams, all are informed by those biases. And there isn't enough being done to deconstruct that. For example, what does it mean to say 'too early' to an under-represented founder? who is the comparison to? How many of your last X investments or team members came from Stanford or ex-FAANG?
Let's put in place processes, time allocations, smaller programs. And let's put all of this in place first for those raising their first rounds - the angel or the mythical pre-seed.
We can make a simple law:
If a VC has to operate in US, they must reserve X amount for the minorities.
If VCs think it's unfair and that minorities are not good investment then VCs can figure out how to "uplift" the minorities by creating much needed programs and network for them.
What's your track record?
Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.
She is not asking for money "just because" she is a woman. She is asking for a fair chance. And we need to give folks from under-represented communities a more than fair chance to combat inherent selection bias.
Ex-Google was a meaningful distinction 15 years ago. Today it does not remotely entitle you to being funded.
Many VCs today recognize that Google is an extremely bureaucratic place that does not resemble a startup and I know more than a few who view Google experience as a negative signal.
> VCs invest into your track record and the ability to put together and retain a good team. "Ex-Google" is a good signal that the person can at the very least _technically_ do what they are promising to do, once they take the cash.
> Nobody has ever promised that money will be given for phenotype traits alone.
Who knew, thanks for enlightening me. Let's just say that I have VCs emailing me now.
If they were black or women they might have assumed it was a matter of VCs being racist or sexist. But this is probably wrong.
Because of these three attributes, one is not like the others.
"I’m a Black woman, mom of three, and I don’t have an Ivy League degree."
Because, regardless of their own race or gender, VCs are highly connected members of the Ivy League.
VCs don't like poor people for the same reason most rich people don't for thousands of years. They believe that poor people are losers. And why would an investor want to bet on a loser?
Regular racism and sexism is when the reason you're not given a chance is because of direct racial or gender-based bias. Systemic racism and sexism can additionally include scenarios where the systems in place (such as the private Ivy League club) might not necessarily be intentionally racist or sexist, but rather just incidentally racist or sexist.
From the article, when a venture fund hides their email or contact information, that's not directly racist or sexist. However, if it prevents people outside of your existing network from contacting you, and your existing network happens to be underrepresented on the basis of color or gender, then it's certainly going to help perpetuate the already-existing under-representation in your network, regardless of whatever the root cause of it may be.
Believe me, it is much worse when after every negative interaction, you have to check if it was because you are female, or black or X. White male founders will not have to worry about that additional male tax.
One might argue that without the special consideration these VC's rushed to say they would give, how would someone like the author ever have an established track record of starting/selling their businesses in the first place?
I'm frankly still expecting VC's to make decisions on what they think is going to be most profitable for them, full-stop. But plenty of other firms like large consulting firms, do set aside people and resources to work with non-profits for example. Why couldn't VC's do the same to try and level the playing field and eliminate some of these inherent advantages the well connected/well credentialed have? A "no" is potentially fine, but how you deliver that "no" can make all the difference.
I think that's the mistake all these companies are making. They need to make it clear if it's their intent to help black founders, provided, all other things are equal / held constant.
That is if two people have the same or similar background and qualifications but they just happened to be different race then to not always pick the white guy cause, hey, we look alike or belonged to the same frat.
It should leave no room for interpretation as: "hey, you're black, let me throw some money at you cause you happen to be black."
That's what she called out very specifically.
The email thing is the strongest evidence she provides, but obviously, a doubting mind can find other reasons that her husbands email would get responses but hers wouldn't.
We do know, however, that African Americans are greatly under represented in tech, in startups and in VC. There are many interlocking reasons for this, and its not unreasonable to expect that racism, whether conscious or unconscious, is one of them. (Why should tech, uniquely in American society, be immune from racism?). Because there are so many interlocking reasons, it's easy for each individual link in the chain of tech to deflect blame to the other links (business can blame the pipeline, colleges can blame the high schools, high schools can blame the financial structures etc etc etc).
So, is it reasonable to expect individual VCs to make a stand against racism instead of doing what comes naturally to them? (trying desperately to make money). Not really!
However, I do think it's reasonable to expect, that VC's who make big pronouncements about what their firm is going to do to combat racism should be expected to follow through with it! And guess what, given all the interlocking problems that prevent black people from founding companies, VC's probably aren't going to be able to follow through on that mission by relying on business as usual of warm intros only, five minute pitch reviews, blow off emails.
Just level with us. We are all adults. Just say, I'm not actually that interested in explicitly helping black founders, I just want to keep trying to make money the way I've been doing it. Conversely, if you do give juicy quotes to the press, then be prepared to walk the walk.
The reality is that the chance a VC responds to a cold outbound email is already near 0. I get these in my LinkedIn inbox almost all the time and they are very rarely good because the founders with great companies are not going out of their way to cold email people. I doubt that most of the VCs she's talking about spent enough time to even realize it was a WoC.
But I completely agree with you about the hypocrisy of asking for emails from black founders and then ignoring them.
And also agree that requiring a warm intro as the only way to reach a VC is a real barrier. It may be a good test (“Can you hustle enough to reach me”), but is objectively harder if you’re not in a certain set.
There can obviously be bias issues at the accelerator level too, so I'm not saying it's a solution, but you can be sure that someone will at least take a look at your application.
Dead Comment
> none of the VCs I contacted even tried downloading my app (I use Intercom daily to see all the new users trying our app). They dismissed its worth without even giving it a shot.
Fair, but I just had a look at the app store - this had two reviews since late January (when about ninety-five 5* reviews were posted over a few days), and neither were positive.
Additionally, a cursory search for personal trainer apps will turn up dozens of well-rated alternatives. Putting myself in the mind of a VC, I would be hard-pressed to invest or advise the founder of such a company.
Would love to learn more about why the VCs wouldn’t respond to her emails, though - seems like another failure to meet the commitment.
Supposedly the same content, same info. Just the sender was different.
Unless of course you think she's not being entirely truthful.
I think it’s shameful that VCs make empty promises to support black founders - but it’s also not surprising. Most of the people paying lip service to racial equity now didn’t give a shit six weeks ago before it was fashionable to do so. But empty promises are par for the course as they’ve been for decades. My experience living in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered is that the same people suddenly promising to fix the problem are the ones who created it.
VCs only want to make money. The author raised insufficient evidence that she was a victim of racism. If any unfair discrimination occurred it’s more likely sexism. But the simplest explanation is also the most likely: the VCs just weren’t interested in her pitch.
> Curiously, when I used my husband’s email to send our pitch, that’s when I started getting some responses. Do VCs only read pitches submitted by men? Do they prefer to hear from someone who is Asian rather than Black?
I’ve seen numerous other founders here on HN handle rejection with more humility and constructive resolve. I don’t think the author is doing herself - or her husband - any favors with this kind of response.
This is an industry that cares a lot about not generating controversy. VCs got hit hard by Me Too- Lightspeed, Kleiner, Binary, Sherpa, 500 Startups, and others all imploded or let people go due to allegations of sexism.
It's a Partner based business where, in general, they rarely hire a new senior Partner and cut them in on the carry. Investing in black founders and hiring minority junior VCs ends up being the easiest way to brand themselves as racially equitable.
Why not? Not even 5-10 minutes of their day? I guess all the noise coming out of VCs the last few weeks is all just virtue signaling and hot air.
- Talking to investors is a waste of time in the beginning. It's much better to focus on getting into an accelerator first.
- Never talk to one investor at a time. That gives them all the leverage. It's better to schedule many meetings with many different investors all in a one or two week period.
- Timing is everything. Don't talk to investors before you're ready to even if they say it's "just a casual coffee". They are looking for reasons to rule you out. Try to only talk to investors at inflection points where a graph of some important metric is going steeply up and to the right.
- Move on quickly. Unless an investor is obviously enthusiastic by the end of the first pitch, they are highly, highly unlikely to invest. Don't waste time answering their questions or getting their "feedback" or giving them additional meetings if they seem skeptical. Just move on to the next one.
- Don't ask for introductions from investors who turned you down. These are actually anti-endorsements that significantly decrease your chances with the investors you get introduced to this way.
One potential confounding issue is that her husband is a former Google engineer, and she doesn't mention having any similar experience. It wouldn't be surprising if a VC's vetting process involved checking linkedin to see what experience the person had, and giving points to former FAANG engineers (note: I am not in this category).
Regardless, it's still pretty lousy that VCs that claim to want to help certain types of founders don't even respond to inbound inquiries.
You’re absolutely correct that if her email shows up as Zhang, that makes her email bias claim much weaker.
See the problem here?