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The following blog post is written by a Brown woman and is advice to be followed by Brown women who are interested in technology, starting a company, launching a startup or being more successful in business.
A few weeks ago, TechCrunch wrote what I considered to be a "dumb" and patronizing article asking why there appeared to be so few Brown women launching tech startups. I began writing an angry blog post but decided instead to lead with action instead of words.
I invited two Brown women, @drgoddess and @kiratiana, who I knew from Twitter and conferences to head out and join me for StarutpWeekend in San Francisco. We had all spent time talking together at SXSW about how to launch our ideas. Kiratiana bought her ticket, booked her flight and arrived Thursday night! You can read the pre-event blog post Startup Weekend Hits San Francisco Again For 2011 I wrote up.
The Ladies of BlogHer 2010 Conference in NYC
(From left to right: Ananda, Latoicha, Nadia, Diedre, Gina)
These women are just a sampling of Brown women attending conferences. Each year I've seen the number of Brown women at blogging and tech conferences grow. Social media has been a huge part of that to help with awareness, promotion and the feeling that you're not alone out there!
I see that by age 10 or 11, parents are talking about and treating their kids differently. I cannot tell you how many fathers I've talked with who have big dreams of their sons becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg. Eveninvestors want to fund the ideas of young people interested in doing big things.
So many people feel that if you get kids started early on tech, they will pick it up and prosper. You've forgotten about society's constant reminders of gender roles plus this focus doesn't help all of the women out there who are already adults. In fact, helping adult women embrace technology and launch tech startups is a two-fer because they teach new messages to their kids through being role models!
The Big Question
Q: Why are women, especially Brown women, not planning, developing and showcasing tech startup ideas?
A: Dear Techcrunch, the reason more Brown women aren't launching tech startups is because they're not seeing role models, peers and friends do it. They're not talking about it, not going to conferences and not reading up on how to get started. I can directly attribute my attendence tonight to the San Francisco StartupWeekend to my initial sit down conversation with a Brown woman engineer by the name of Erica (@swirlspice) in the spring of 2009 and this same story has repeated itself time and time again.
I'm very excited that I was able to move the needle in the direction I wanted without being a whiny commenter on the TechCrunch site. Instead I made a difference by inviting a friend who is a Brown woman like me to attend StartupWeekend. I also wanted to make a special effort based on my amazing experiences over the last few months regarding the Brown startup world where I:
- Cheered on Jes Carter who is building Toour - an app allowing you to "create, discove and share tours of your favorite places"
- Was amazed to see Gokit launch at SXSW in less than 24 hours
- Attended a positive and uplifting brunch organized by Kimberly Dillion, founder of House of Mikko
- Smiled with happiness to see Angela Benton announce the NewMe Accelerator incubator for Brown startups
Women need to be asked and encouraged
Allie Micka, co-founder of Advantage Labs, a Drupal shop, shared how she hadn't even really considered going to conferences until a guy friend of hers asked if she was going:
I was the first woman at any DrupalCON, the only woman in Antwerp. Until the brouhaha over the keynote, I never really thought about why I went there in the first place. But the decision to travel there was triggered by a tiny and important event, so I'd like to share it.
I had been communicating back and forth with Matt Westgate about some e-commerce functionality. At the end of one of his emails, he tacked on the following:
PS - You headed
