As founder of Cedar Technologies, a startup creating pop-up tents that prevent vector-borne illnesses, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alum Frantz Jacques frequently reads tech new sites and blogs. But he noticed certain stories were missing from tech media's coverage, something that wouldn't surprise anyone who's familiar with the demographics of the tech world.
"I noticed a lack of coverage on people of color and women," he said to Chicago Inno over email. Furthermore, most coverage on diversity in tech tends to be on statistics that show low levels of participation, he said: About 3 percent of venture capital funding goes to women (and just 1 percent to people of color), and just 1 percent of jobs at top tech companies are held by black employees, for example. As an African American founder, he felt the perspectives of those who make up those small percentages--women and people of color--were missing.
"What they miss is actually using the voices of the people who, for example, can’t get funding because of their race or gender or both."
So Jacques decided to fill in the gaps he saw on his own. He recently launched citizennfour (or C4 Tech), a blog devoted to coverage of underrepresented tech workers and entrepreneurs. citizennfour includes a blog (with news and essays ranging from "The 5 Hottest Nigerian Startups" to "Is Diversity in Tech Even a Thing?" ) and in-depth interviews with emerging minority founders (such as social network startup The Mouve founder Uduimoh Umolu and cofounder of cosmetics startup Slayd Osazomon Imarenezor, both pictured above).
"citizennfour dialogues with individuals who have been through the trenches and have overcome obstacles, whether in the corporate tech setting or as an entrepreneur," he said. "It’s important to have these real ass conversations with them to get a glimpse of what it really means to be a minority in tech."
Jacques is also connecting with people with deep industry knowledge to better understand why institutional challenges exist. He recently posted an interview with West Loop Ventures managing director Jeff Carter where they discuss navigating funding, especially as a founder of color.
C4 is in its early stages (it launched in December), and Jacques is still working on Cedar Technologies (which is currently in UIUC's iVenture Accelerator). While plenty of tech publications cover diversity as part of the tech beat, new media ventures such as Model View Culture have popped up just to focus on diversity. And in Chicago, organizations such as Ms.Tech, Women Tech Founders, and Black Tech Mecca are organizing women and people of color around this exact issue. Jacques pointed out that in order to make change, there needs to be conversation across the entire ecosystem, from entry-level engineers to entrepreneurs to investors.
"These issues not only need to be talked about more from the vantage point of VCs but conversations need to be had on [actions] that can be taken to close these gaps on both their end and on the end of aspiring entrepreneurs - It’s a two-way street," he said. "Knowledge is power and execution is key."
