[kabushikigaisha]

tl;dr Wayne Sutton confuses lack of interest in conducting srs bzns as racial prejudice/racism when it probably has more to do with age and quality of idea. Also what exactly do said children bring to the table? If the young man there had a prototype already in the works built by himself, that would be something.

Honestly, I never understood the idea of pitching startups at events like these to garner funding or co-founders, with no actual code/product/etc no matter the age, skill, or race of the individual. Always seemed a little quixotic and irrationally exuberant. pg and co seem to not mind however, as they seem to have gotten pitches (and accepted them) for non-existent startups. Wasn't Reddit at 0 when it was pitched and accepted into original YC?

Then again, there's a quote of pg somewhere saying nearly everyone has a product/some code at least now when pitching to YC.

[vineel]

> Wayne Sutton confuses lack of interest in conducting srs bzns as racial prejudice/racism

I don't think he's implying that at all. At the end, Sutton just notes that there were few minorities. He never explicitly makes the connection that the kids were actively discriminated against because of their race.

[waynesutton]

Correct! That's not the point I was making.

[dools]

Then why is the headline "Two 11-year-old entrepreneurs learned the hard way what it’s like to be a minority in tech during Startup Weekend"?

Is minority here referring to being outliers in the age distribution or "a sociological group that does not make up a politically dominant voting majority of the total population of a given society"[1]?

If it's the former then you should say "in the minority" or something. If it's the latter, and you're not making this an issue of racial discrimination then you need to change the headline to something like "Two 11-year-old entrepreneurs learned the hard way what it’s like to be rejected during Startup Weekend".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group

[waynesutton]

yes, I state that in the post about ALL the factors for the 11yrs old as "minority" in terms of their age, gender for the little girl and race.

[dools]

The original comment you replied to said you were (subtext: intentionally in order to create more traffic for your article) confusing racial prejudice with age/quality of idea.

You said that wasn't the point you were making: ie. that the point you were making was not that "being a minority" (read: ethnic minority - being young does not constitute being a minority since everyone is young at some point in their lives but not everyone is black, for example) influence the outcome for these two.

Now you're saying that you were making that point - but that you're saying that they were both a minority, and "minors" in that they were so young.

I think you were quite clearly link baiting here using the race card even if you're not admitting it - however the story clearly shows that these two couldn't get serious hackers to work on their ideas because they're 11 years old. I seriously doubt that their ethnic or gender minority status had anything to do with their outcomes at this event.

Also you've described Marci as a woman. She's 11. She's not a woman, she's a girl. You couldn't even describe her as a young woman - she's most definitely a girl.

Comparing age based prejudice to race or gender based prejudice is erroneous anyway. Discrimination based on age (in the case of exclusion of young people from certain activities) is entirely appropriate. Discrimination and exclusion based no race is never appropriate and gender based exclusion is rarely appropriate (I say rarely since exclusion of women from competing against men in, say, professional rugby is a safety issue).

We were all young once, but I've never been black and I've never been female (although I could approximate the latter through surgery if I was keen).

edit: removed "as stated above"

[thaumaturgy]

Yeah, I don't think he's being entirely honest.

There's this part:

> Out of the 170 or so attendees, I would guess there were about 15 to 20 blacks and maybe 10 of other ethnicities. The majority of participants were white and mostly guys.

If the focus is on their age, why doesn't he mention the age distribution there?

The only time in the entire post that he conflates their age with being a minority is, "...in terms of age and race".

Also, the accelerator program he's running doesn't exactly appear to be geared towards kids -- although, to be fair, it's hard to tell for sure, since the founders' ages aren't included in the bios of the companies they're working with. So, when he says, "Numbers like this is just another reason why we’re launching the NewME Accelerator to help other minorities launch their startup," I don't think he means age there, either.

This really bugs me. If the focus is on ethnicity and gender, I think that could become an extremely pernicious idea in this industry, because any bets on the future successes of an idea should rest solely on the quality of the idea, and any bets on the future successes of founders should rest solely on the founders' personalities and their determination to make their business successful. Ethnicity and gender should not be playing any role in any of that; to give extra attention to a startup because of the gender or ethnicity of the founders is to do a disservice not only to them -- because they will still need to compete in a market which is far less interested in their ethnicity or gender -- but also to other startups competing for resources.

Oh, and then there was this part:

> Marci and Ben experienced what it’s like to be a minority in tech. You can have great ideas, and people can and will say it’s a good idea but at the end of the day you may be own your own with little support.

No, they experienced what it's like to be people in tech.

[kabushikigaisha]

Apologies, I inferred that since this piece was written on blackweb20.com , you were saying the reason the two youngsters weren't getting attention was due to their racial background instead of age.

[walexander]

I think the headline does lead you to that conclusion, even if not explicitly stated or even the author's intention:

"Two 11-year-old entrepreneurs learned the hard way what it’s like to be a minority in tech during Startup Weekend"

Being on blackweb20.com, I would assume "minority" is referring to race here. Wayne, you may want to update the title here if you want to avoid some confusion.

(Wayne: By the way, I'm in RTP and just noticed your trioutnc site from your profile - looks like a nice tool so far, i'll be trying it).

[waynesutton]

No worries and thanks. Yes TriOutNC.com and we're working on launch a few new TriOut apps.

[kabushikigaisha]

There are few minorities at pretty much every startup event, if you discount east Asians that is.

[makmanalp]

That's not very surprising since they are "minorities", implying that there aren't as many of them.

[dools]

Minority in the sociological sense doesn't necessarily refer to numbers, but voting majority. ie. blacks in South Africa during apartheid outnumbered whites but were a sociological minority.

[ars]

That's really stretching the meaning of the word.