I attended a wonderful launch and holiday party at the Bull & Bear hosted by ITA. The atmosphere was festive and everyone seemed to have a great time networking and enjoying the food and drinks.
However, it struck me that in this capacity crowd of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and business professionals the gaping lack of demographic diversity amongst the crowd. If the recent Presidential election and census data portends the shifting demographics of America, then, we have some work to do in Chicago’s Startup Community.
The brilliant technological achievements by the Obama For America (OFA) team highlighted that African Americans and Latinos use smart phones and social media in greater numbers than Whites, which enhanced OFA’s ability to successfully communicate and turnout these groups in large numbers to vote. This recent Pew Research study found that smart phone usage by these demographic groups are African Americans 44%, Latinos 44%, and Whites 30%.
If these data are true, then the question becomes are African Americans and Latinos destined to be Consumers of technology and Whites the Producers of technology due to their limited involvement in the startup community?
Networking events, technology competitions, conferences and other functions held in the startup community are overwhelmingly attended by Whites with few if any African Americans and Latinos representing these entrepreneurial Producers. The only time this is not so, is when minority organizations host functions for startups and then there are few whites that attend these functions. Its like our startup community is the proverbial high school cafeteria sectioned off by demographics.
There are no easy answers to this demographic phenomenon of minorities as technology Consumers v. whites as technology Producers. However, we must be aware of this phenomenon and acknowledge its existence to incorporate solutions that solve this problem so we can have a successful and thriving startup community. Future Founders is a good example of an organization doing their part to address this issue.
Recently I read an article by Sarah McBride of Reuters entitled Silicon Valley’s dirty little secret: age bias. This article discussed the problems that 40-60 year old seasoned entrepreneurs and IT professionals face competing for opportunities in the startup world. I wondered, could minority bias become a stigma in Chicago’s vibrant and growing startup community?
Hopefully five years from now someone is not writing an article like Sarah McBride’s entitled Chicago Startup Community’s dirty little secrete: Consumers v. Producers bias. Let’s not be, Silicon Valley.
