The thin line of skin that separates the mechanics and bones that make up a human being connects people to the history of this country. It tells a small part of the story of who we are, but for some – without their choosing – it plays a defining role.
“Race doesn’t matter if you’re privileged enough for race to not matter to you,” Mandy Price, co-founder and CEO of Dallas-based diversity, equity and inclusion platform Kanarys, told NTX Inno. “It affects the way you have to navigate the world to make sure [you're] successful and [your] family is successful."
For some, that story looks like making sure to end an evening jog before the sun goes down. For another, that story is in being in a waiting room before a big meeting and wondering if his clothes look good enough to match a pitch that has to be the same. Others may not have even had that story because they were passed up for a job because of their name or the school they graduated from. Or maybe they never had, through economic and societal issues, the opportunity to apply for the job at all. Worse still, others won’t finish their story, as can be seen by the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
The role race plays in society pervades nearly everything. And the systemic issues that have caused inequality and animosity because of it are also a part of the tech and startup ecosystem. Those issues have been amplified with so many voices taking to the streets to share their stories and experiences. As a driver of innovation and wealth it is something that startups and the VC community around them, they are issues that even if unseen by some will have to be tackled at a sometimes uncomfortable and individual level.
“There’s inequality in every single fabric of our society, and I think what you're seeing is people saying, ‘enough,’ that they’re tired, that they don’t want to go back to the new normal,” she said. “With the pandemic there’s this discussion of ‘when will we go back to normal,’ and I think that people have had time to sit back and reflect and say, ‘normal wasn’t good. Look at what normal produced, and how can we re-envision our society in a way that is truly fair and equitable.’”
Diversity and inclusion have been forced to the forefront of nearly every business leader’s mind, as protest continue across the country and here in Dallas, Fort Worth and many suburbs. Some put out press release, use social media hashtags and polish up their advertising campaigns. Others are taking more concrete steps. Local companies like harassment and discrimination platform Work Shield and Addison-based digital and mobile experience studio Bottle Rocket have taken steps to recognize the importance of the experience Blackness has played in history, making Juneteenth a company holiday. Bottle Rocket also took a pledge to release its diversity demographic numbers, which CEO Calvin Carter admitted would not be as high as he would like. However he said it was important to measure and put out for the public to see to remain accountable to doing better.
And that’s something that nearly every Black founder and innovator NTX Inno spoke to said. Diversity in the workplace matters. Even for a company like Bottle Rocket looking to take progressive steps, its numbers can fall short. With 31% of its workforce being people of color, it’s still not reflective of society as a whole.
“Having a myriad of voices and having a myriad of cultures helps companies be the absolute best they can be,” said Leah Frazier, president of Dallas-based social media and PR agency Think Three Media, which represents a number of Black entrepreneurs. “We’re not looking to be a charity case, we’re not looking for a handout, we’re not saying, ‘hey you always have to put a Black person in that position.’ No, we want to earn that position, what we’re saying is, ‘look at your practices to ensure there’s nothing discriminatory going on, because we just want a chance, we don’t even have the opportunity right now.’”
Frazier was recently one of hundreds of signatories on an open letter to every major advertising agency. While it was geared toward that industry, its 12 demands have implications to founders and leaders of nearly every business. Among the list are calls to track and publicly report diversity representation, bias training for management and HR, establish a diversity review panel, and requiring leadership be involved in diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Price, whose company focuses on helping businesses track diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, demographic data and progress, said first, it's right thing to do. Also, leaders should seek more diversity in the workplace because, for one, it makes good business sense. A diverse workforce helps them find and remedy pain points in culture that may have been affecting the moral of people of color. It can also help you have more perspective at the decision table and effectively target growth and marketing to the demographics they represent.
For weeks Price and the team at Kanarys has been publishing guides and resources to help founders with diversity as well. In a recent post about why founders must “redefine [their] company values to ensure they reflect people of color,” it states that it is important for them to understand the experiences of people of color, so they can create a safe work environment that values diversity and create policies around that commitment to increase it.
Those polices could take a number of forms, Price said. Whether that’s taking bias training so that the statistic that says people with a Black sounding name go away, or whether that’s actively seeking out communities of color when hiring. It could also mean removing language from hiring posts that a company may not even realize is exclusionary.
For VCs in the startup ecosystem that diversity, in addition to needing to be reflected at every level in their own workforce, extends to the portfolio of companies they back, Price said. Nationwide, more than 80% of VC firms don’t have a single Black investor. Only 1% of VC-backed founders are Black. And Only 3% of VCs are Black. This is something that hits close to home for Price, who is one of only 50 Black women to raise more than $1M in VC funding. For perspective, in North Texas during Q1 of this year, there were nearly $148 million of VC dollars spread across 40 deals.
“The ultimate feedback is the noninvestments… I think people are seeing tech as a vehicle, it has people thinking and creating new opportunities and business models, but I don’t believe we’ve gotten a fair shake to be part of that risk capital,” said Maxie Taylor, founder of Dallas-based convenience-store vending machine concept startup GoodieBoxx. “In seed investment, it’s a character evaluation… I think that speak volumes if there’s not any kind of investment to follow that.”
It’s been said in the startup scene that density creates more density. But there is a lack of it when in comes to Black representation on both sides of a pitch meeting table. And that echoes throughout the rest of the startup ecosystem. Black founders can often find it hard just to break into the scene, especially when it’s one that’s based on connections and warm introductions.
Stephen Lewis, founder and CEO of HomematchX, a Dallas-based home buying and selling social platform has seen how race can affect his industry. Black home ownership is lower than nearly every other demographic, and many struggle to secure a loan no longer due to outright racist policies like redlining but through the lack of knowledge and support to simply navigate the processes. When it comes to his own business, he said he can feel left out of the larger tech ecosystem, lacking the connections to get into a meeting.
“Right now, I like to say that we’re playing catch up, but at the same time I think now times are catching up to where the playing field is becoming a lot more settled,” Lewis said. “We’re still very far from that, but you’re starting to see people that are like, ‘I have to take looking at Black companies very seriously.’”
However, as Taylor said, even if more attention is being paid to Black businesses, it doesn’t always translate to concrete action. Price partly attributes this to unconscious bias – thinking that inherently makes one think a Black-owned business is likely to be a riskier investment or that they don’t somehow have the same knowledge and skill set. And if they don’t have that knowledge, it is likely due to a lack of opportunity based on the neighborhood and subsequent school they went to, Lewis said.
This hit home for many of the Black founders Inno spoke to. Frazier tells the story of a pitch competition held a few years ago in Dallas that was meant to highlight Black-owned businesses and bring more Black entrepreneurs to those types of events. Yet, she spent the days leading up to the event correcting media outlets that they were “underrepresented” innovators, not “under privileged,” a term that carries with it the connotation of somehow being lesser. Both Lewis and Taylor said they know what it’s like to be that founder in front of an audience or VC, wondering if they look professional enough or their presentation is thorough and flashy enough.
“This is our lives in general. We’ve always had to have, and for many of us our parents and grandparents taught us from the word ‘jump,’ that you can’t just be exceptional we have to be beyond excellent,” Frazier said. “So if a White person walked in with like a five-page deck, we better have a 20-page deck with all of our Ts crossed all of our Is dotted just because when you walk in, because you’re Black, you already have things dinged against you… that’s how it feels.”
In Dallas, like Fort Worth and nearly every major city across the country, that feeling isn’t just about one person, it extends across entire communities. A quick look at a demographic map in Dallas shows clearly the history of policies in the city that have pushed people of color to southern parts of the city, while the suburbs seem to become more and more White the more North you go.
However, in the local startup community, location still plays a factor. Most of the companies started in the region are based North of Interstate 30, which largely divides Dallas. Even well intentioned organizations can fall short, Taylor said. In 2018, the DEC Network opened its most southern location in the Redbird neighborhood. And, while it has been helpful to some members of the community, Taylor said he feels like it has been cut off and never fully received the attention other DEC locations like the Addison TreeHouse or Capital Factory receive. He said partly this could be due to Black founders there are more likely to follow more traditional entrepreneurial paths, rather than the flashy tech that garners headlines. NTX Inno has attempted to contact Redbird multiple times in the past to meet some of its founders and has not received a reply from the location or the DEC Network.
Frazier said she has seen similar things. She said she has had people interested in partnering or investing in clients she represents that happen to be located in southern DFW neighborhoods like Oak Cliff, South Dallas and The Cedars, who have passed over on those opportunities largely because they didn’t want to make the journey from the northern reaches of the Metroplex.
“We have high unemployment, we could rebound by having things that are in proximity to these businesses, but we’re just not getting that opportunity because we’re not getting that capital to take the same risk as everybody else,” Taylor said. “It seems that everybody wants to write a check or make a donation to somebody that is a middle man that will give it to the communities but man if you want to make change directly, there are Black tech founders, there are other Black constituents that could be served directly if you want to make that change.
“We don’t need an intermediary when it comes to the money. We know how to manage money just like everybody else.”
Culturally, Black people are community oriented, Lewis said. And the close ties between the community are what is being used to help collectively raise it up. Nearly every Black founder Inno spoke to talked about the goals of their business not just in terms of growth on a spreadsheet, but growth in an underrepresented community, bringing jobs and opportunities to where there previously weren’t many.
“It’s been hard from the start, and I would like to get to the point where I’m like, ‘hey, this is my solid plan and if whoever wants to come behind me, I’m able to give that value and education on at least starting and getting up on their feet,” said Katrina Thompkins, founder of Fort Worth-based CBD startup K’dara.
Others Inno talked to also saw their role as both people of color and as business leaders to speak up and speak out at every possible chance to raise awareness of issues and highlight some of the things other Black founders are doing in the area.
And then there is the role of technology. Many founders see this as a way to solve problems in communities of color. For Lewis, who sees it his mission to bring people together through technology in the homebuying process, he sees the ability tech has to connect people as a way to remove the barriers between them and allow them to see each other as two equals. Others, like Kanarys, which takes a data-heavy approach, sees tech as a way to fully track, analyze and hold companies accountable for their diversity. And overall, all see startups' ability to create jobs and wealth as an opportunity to help bring others up to a seat at the table.
“I’m happy to see that as technology evolves, the mindset changes and you’ve got people that are willing to take risks. What I’m putting together and what I’m building and what I’m so very connected to is the opportunity to know that we, as one nation, can stand together, can accept people coming together of different colors, of different backgrounds,” Lewis said. “What I intend to do is invest back in the community and to create jobs that are sustainable, because when I look at someone on the other side of that counter that’s working… all I know is that they need this job to take care of the things they need to take care of at home.”
