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You are assuming they actively seek out people by race. If the pool of people in your domain are predominately of a particular race, it may be simple demographics at play, not bias.

how are they not when they have been mostly funding cis-white males?

This is just lazy, though. YC could hire a couple of well paid people to seek out innovators, via social media (Reddit, YouTube) and attempt to balance the scales.

Throwing up one's hands and saying "welp, demographics/statistics/climate change/demon fairies are at play, here, so I guess we'll do nothing" is certainly capitalist, but it's not very good.

> attempt to balance the scales

That is actually imbalance you are seeking.

For example if 90% of people in a domain are of race X, then unbiased selection *should* select 90% of race X. Assuming the perceived investment opportunity is evenly distributed between all people.

My point is the "domain" itself may be biased, and you won't know that if you go "well, 90% of the people applying are X, so that's what we're going to do" - perhaps the domain would be more heterogeneous but the non-X don't know anything about YC, VC, etc. There's lots of incredibly smart and savvy people on the planet. Eschewing them because "statistics" or "demographics" is, as i said, lazy.

> the "domain" itself may be biased

I agree there. If you grow up in a chaotic country where survival is your main concern, it is less likely you will be involved with creating new technology.

> Eschewing them because "statistics" or "demographics" is, as i said, lazy.

Having fair and unbiased selection on your pool of applicants is not "Eschewing" anyone. I'd say that claim is lazy.

Are you arguing that venture capitalists shouldn't be capitalist...? You want them to go out and prod minorities into creating startups instead of considering the businesses that come to them?

Now that you mention it...yes exactly that.

It's not YC's fault the vast majority of undergrads graduating from CS programs are male. Also I would bet East and South Asians are disproportionately represented in this group.

So is YC now making attempts to fund diverse founders? Why did this only happen under Michael Seibel. Us LGBTQ+ are still under represented.

Yes, they are making such attempts, but not by enforcing some ratio and denying white-owned companies, but by reaching out and creating themed groups that try to cater to disadvantaged groups and help them where possible. They just provide a little more help/resources to them, which is how it should be done IMHO.

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