[littletimmy]

You're being quite ridiculous.

All he said was that people's success and failures are to a large degree determined when they are born, which is true. The genes you're born with, the socioeconomic demographic you're born into, your parent's level of involvement, etc are all determined before you're born. That's factual. It is only with extreme effort and perseverance that one can counter acts of fate. It is possible, just unlikely.

How does Michael expressing this truth justify your personal rant against him?

[throwaway435232]

(I don't think you should be downvoted for your question).

If he had phrased it the way you just did (in your middle paragraph) it would have been fine. He didn't, he just posted something inflammatory. so your middle paragraph is a lot better, it took thought rather than just writing down a literal truth. (it is also something nobody would disagree with, including me, and you certainly wouldn't have been downvoted for it.) If you had been the one to write the comment, I'd have also appreciated your suggestions as to what can be done about it systemically. your paragraph is quite productive, and an important point.

as a matter of fact, what do you suggest we do? (I mean concrete steps.) should funds try to set quotas for minorities, for example? (this is a genuine question, and I'm asking you littletimmy.)

[littletimmy]

What should we do is a really difficult question.

It will require a multi-pronged effort, ranging from trying to implement better labor laws to improve parental involvement and reduce stress among the poor, better community health plans to counter poor nutrition, better public schooling through investing in teacher's salaries etc. Maybe after 20 years of doing that we're going to see minorities improve their standards.

But considering that any such long-term approach will be blocked immediately by the free-market enthusiasts, I fear there is nothing much that we can do. That raises a more important question: is fight against the machine even possible?

[throwaway435232]

Ah, your response is good but very wide and 'systemic', i.e. what society as a whole can do over decades. But in the meantime, VC's are free to make their investment decisions, so I was wondering what you thought they should do differently to make a difference, today. Should it be quotas or minimum investments for people from alternative backgrounds? Or, what can VC's do to help level the playing field? If they receive smaller amounts of dealflow from alternative backgrounds, it's hard for them to apply their usual methods of investing... i.e. they might not even get access to opportunities from those backgrounds. what, then, could be done?

[krisdol]

I didn't get your rant until this comment thread really showed me what kind discourse you're looking for and how the other poster was being inflammatory. On your side.

Now, on this topic, maybe it would be possible to establish a matching fund (maybe crowd-sourced, angellist style?) that gives some amount of matching funding in order to incentivize those VCs investing in demographic outliers, lowering the potential economic risks to investing in first-time, first-generation founders and non-Stanford/MIT grads.

[littletimmy]

I see your point. Honeslty, there is probably nothing VCs can do to solve this problem. They are but a small snowflake in this avalanche.