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Comment by anticonformist | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

More rich women and rich black people joining the VC network would not solve the problem. And yet that's the conclusion this thinking leads to. It's the author's solution as well and doesn't address the real problem at all.

What portion of non-rich people make up the VC network? It's definitely lower than the percentage of women or black people. No one is more "underrepresented" than non-rich people.

VCs are the 1%. Their target of exclusion is the 99%. Most don't care about race or gender. They will overlook almost any attribute if they see dollar signs, race, gender, and even someone's poor background. Because their primary concern is money.

And since VCs hate poor people. And they know this about each other. Even those VCs that don't hate poor people will be more reluctant to fund poor people because they know other VCs are assholes. If other VCs will discriminate then the company may have trouble raising money and is more likely to fail. This is one of the major the systemic problem.

One type of bias does not preclude the other. In this case, one may even strengthen the other. The argument that VCs discriminate on wealth strengthens the argument of systemic racial and gender-based bias, given the disparities in income and wealth between races and genders. This is the indirect nature of systemic bias I was describing.

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.

Her experience is the same. Zero funding is zero funding. Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome.

She's receiving equal treatment.

But she's expecting and explicitly asking for preferential treatment based on the her belief that VCs have promised it.

It could be that these VCs were never intending to offer preferential treatment. Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising.

> . Your experience cannot be worse than "received no money" when it comes to raising money. It is a binary outcome.

Oh, but it can. That's kinda one of the points.

> Or that they meant that they would offer preferential treatment to black members of the Ivy League. Neither of these answers would be surprising.

Not surprising but inconsistent with the talk.

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