[colinplamondon]

A race-selected accelerator is filtering based on race first, then on quality. It's not business investment, it's social entrepreneurship.

Step 1) Throw out 87% of applications randomly. Step 2) Select based on quality. Step 3) Profit?

Compare that to a quality-selected accelerator:

Step 1) Select based on quality. Step 2) Profit!

A race-based accelerator will only outperform a quality-selected accelerator if there's a race that inherently, innately outperforms all other races. Science has pretty well debunked that one.

As to #2, you'd have to be really, really, really stupid to go with a niche accelerator that no one's ever heard of IF given the option of going with YC or TS.

NewMe could barely get a mention in TechCrunch, and, when they did, the social entrepreneurship side story beat out the "here are our awesome companies!" story.

[hackinthebochs]

Not necessarily. You're working under the assumption that Black entrepreneurs don't have a harder time getting exposure or VC funding than other groups, thus focusing solely on Black startups will likely yield a suboptimal group. This is likely to be false. If it is the case that Black startups have it harder, it is likely that strong startups exist that are being overlooked in this group. Thus intentionally taking an extra look at black entrepreneurs could in fact be a smart business decision. Furthermore, there's also the uniqueness factor that could bring extra "free" exposure which is the lifeblood of a startup.

"Merit" has different meanings in different contexts. In the startup world, merit means whoever will likely bring in the most return on investment. He's betting that the overlooked black startups fit the bill. That's a 100% business calculation.