[rabble]

It'd be interesting to see. African Americans and Latinos* make up about %28 of the US population, but are very under represented in startups. East Asians, South Asians, Arabs and Jews are over represented in tech based on over all population. What's more, most of the black programmers i've worked with at startups were born in Africa or the Caribbean.

I suspect that YC would be wise to try and recruit diversity, having different perspectives, backgrounds and world views among founders at the the dinners and other places, would probably make all the startups stronger.

Latinos or Hispanics are an ethnic group, not racial, there are white, black, native american, and asian latinos.

[anamax]

> I suspect that YC would be wise to try and recruit diversity

Why?

Are you assuming that different races might have different strengths (on average)? If so, that assumption implies that, again on average, a purely merit based system will result in less diversity than the general population.

To the extent that race correlates with culture and culture has an effect on strengths, the same applies.

So, remind me why diversity is important?

[anamax]

Note that said "less diversity" is in each role, because different roles require different strengths. Whether or not a given organization ends up less diverse depends on the roles in said organization.

However, I'm still looking for an answer to my question - why should YC care about diversity?

[tiabasnk]

"What's more, most of the black programmers i've worked with at startups were born in Africa or the Caribbean." There's a good reason for that.From the African perspective what I can say, is that Africans has very strong will and motivation. The level of excellence that is expected by African parents from there children is abnormally high. In my country, Uganda, it's very common for a parent to punish his/her child for being the Second in class regardless of the good grades earned.

At present because of the technology boom in Africa, one's ability to skillfully work with different technologies is revered by others. Consequently, more Africans are tackling various fields in technology, especially computer science, with the same motivation and determination that was dedicated to traditional fields such as tropical medicine and electrical engineering.