Diversity in tech is a problem? Our team’s from 5 continents & more than half are women.

So apparently (lack of) diversity is a real problem for technology companies in Silicon Valley and a hot news topic at the moment.

Without making any conscious effort to ‘be diverse’ my small startup team at Party with a Local has naturally developed to include people from 5 different continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Australia), we’re racially diverse, between us we speak 10 languages fluently (English, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, German, French) and more than half our team are women.

I didn’t set out to create a diverse team, I simply employed the best people for the roles we needed to fill. I’m really happy it has worked out this way though because the mix of backgrounds definitely brings a lot of new ideas and a dynamic atmosphere to the office.

Having multiple women on the team has helped us bring new perspectives on how we approach community management and how we present our brand to a wider audience, as we strive to make our app’s community more diverse too.

I don’t have any solution to the diversity problem in the wider tech scene or in Silicon Valley. But I can definitely see the benefits of having a diverse team.