Winston Smith
Nov 2 · 2 min read

I really enjoy reading Medium, because many articles intelligently challenge my conventions or shift my understanding of a particular area. This isn’t one of them.

The first half is just a long list of assertions presented as fact, devoid of evidence. For example: “In an ideal world, a founder would use their time on stage to sell investors on a vision… But the sheer pageantry of it all encourages snap judgments of everything from ethnicity and gender expression to educational pedigree.” Could be. It’s an interesting idea. But, other than your impression, what’s the evidence? Even one concrete example would help.

The second half tries to wade into evidence, but the author doesn’t seem to understand the idea of isolating key variables. “Fewer than 50 startups led by Black women have raised $1 million or more.” Interesting; how many went before these Demo Days? Out of those, how many received funding? How does that compare to white women who presented? How about many black men? Statistically, is the key variable race, gender, ethnicity, or some combination of the three? How strong is the correlation? Which factor is most predictive? Is there a net change over the years? Do certain demo days have more or less bias? How do you adjust for, say, the market area that each startup is directed toward? (Like: are investors biased against black women, or against new peer-to-peer lending apps — or both?)

You could conduct this kind of research, and it would be interesting, and then maybe you could make a coherent case about “Demo Days” being racist and/or sexist. But I guess its much easier to make a unsubstantiated, blanket conclusion that the whole world hates you.

    Winston Smith

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    The metaphysician is in.