Bootstrapping in Berkeley

Hector Beltran of the UC Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research just put on an eye-opening conference. It was eye-opening not just because of the level of entrepreneurial and tech talent in the room — many conferences in Silicon Valley have that. Instead, what set his Diversity in Tech Beyond the Bootstraps conference apart were two personal characteristics of many of the stars and rising stars.

First, for all the amazing intellectual firepower in the room, there was refreshingly little ego. No one felt the need to impress or to put on a show. This conference focused not on personalities or pitches but on the problem: how to encourage more Latino/as to enter the tech field. It was a very unpretentious gathering that mixed serious intellectual discussion with a very left coast can-do approach to problem-solving. One got the sense that people were both letting their hair down and rolling up their sleeves. Getting Latino/a to write code not code switch was the order of the day.

Second, the entrepreneurs in attendance are founding very distinct kinds of startups — those with a social dimension. Where many companies are looking to help millennials get a date, these startups are looking to solve deep social problems. For example, Diego Le Fuente’s company Abogadazo looks to help Spanish speakers find legal representation. Diego, a Salvadoran-American graduated only a few years ago from Columbia Law School. When his classmates took jobs on Wall Street, he decided to go the startup route. But even there he didn’t conform to the mold. His company look to help ordinary Latinos and Latina find lawyers in a better, more reputable way than ads on the subway or billboards on the freeway.

Many others in the room had paths that resembled Diego’s. Hector Beltran has computer science degrees from MIT, but chose the academic route. Making money is not the prime motivation. In one way, the bright young entrepreneurs are no different than many who flock to the Bay Area: they are looking to use technology to solve everyday problems. But the everyday problems they are solving often help overlooked communities. These entrepreneurs face an additional challenge that many of their contemporaries might not: showing that they can do good while doing very well — that they can help their communities and their investors. It seems like a daunting challenge. But the people in the room have faced challenges before and they relish challenges. As Nicole Sanchez mentioned in the conference, the community of Latino/as in tech is so close to the tipping point.