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Are from black swan remembers and from heart to heart arrive unsophisticated email requires confirmation on file that your startup is indeed in revenue, investors have a lot to say about a downturn.
Still, it’s a quieter and more real fact that has caught my attention since late this year: For diversified founders, downturns are nothing new. Some investors, mostly those focused on backing historically overlooked founders, say the crackdown on tech companies doesn’t have a harsh effect on founders. as diverse as their homogenous, over-funded counterparts because of pre-existing biases.
All Raise Mandela CEO SH Dixon, who joined the Equity . podcast after her annual summit, told TechCrunch that racially diverse women and investors, founders and executives don’t have a “dead and gloomy mentality because we’re so used to it” with doing more with less”.
“We’ve gotten so used to not having access to this capital, we’ve tweaked and built the muscle and capacity to weather multiple storms for the more privileged founders who enjoy the flow. this nonstop and get access to tips and insiders. she speaks. “We are women and women of color, with a long history of stormy weather, so this is not new to us.”
Dixon’s belief — that minority founders can be more prepared for a pullback because they’ve been through one — feels both in place and nuanced. Yes, diversified founders still receive disproportionately less venture capital than their homogeneous counterparts, making them smarter with their money. We have a series of studies spanning many years that show that women and different groups can be more capital efficient.
At the same time, if even the small dollars that are going their way are put at risk, won’t the industry slip further and further away from a more egalitarian position?
For the rest of my thoughts on the topic, check out my TechCrunch+ column: “For diversified founders, recessions are nothing new.” For the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about the myth of the boss girl moniker, a nuance of all these layoffs, and a deal that may have passed in your sights for the week. this. As always, you can support me by forwarding this newsletter to a friend or follow me on twitter or sign up my blog.
Trading of the week
About equity this week, we talked about a venture-backed startup that raised even more capital to make the map popular. Felt, co-founded by Sam Hashemi and Can Duruk, allows users to build maps with data sets built into them and work together to represent impact in a less static way than querying a map your usual Google map.
Here’s why it’s important: Co-Founders cite proven business models from Figma and Notion, both valued at billions of dollars, is reason to believe in their work. Both of the aforementioned companies have succeeded in rolling out for personal use, then corporate use, a book that Felt wants to follow (and VCs can certainly speak its language) .
“The kind of business model and market access is – I don’t mean immune, but a little bit removed from the kind of market volatility we’re seeing,” he said. Hashemi said in an interview. “It’s really not about consumer spending, it’s not about the advertising business, it’s just the day-to-day business that businesses are relying on.”
Image credits: Feel
How the myth of the “prostitute” harms emerging women in the tech industry
If there’s a story you read this weekend, turn it into this. My colleagues Anita Ramaswamy and Amanda Silberling wrote about the myth of girls and how it affects women in tech. They explore how “once a vague term of praise reserved only for wealthy white women, the moniker now reflects the frenzied contradictions of feminism in the workplace: We know that Just being a woman in power is not enough and what we have to do with that power is far more important than simply using it. “
Here’s why it’s important: The story tells a lot of irony, emotional situations and the impact of why the term has left many people frustrated. Here are two featured snippets:
There’s a difference between the growth of feminism in the outside world, combined with the disappointingly slow pace at which Silicon Valley realizes that a female CEO shouldn’t be a novelty. Outside of work, women fight for an intersectional, cross-cutting feminism that elevates people of color and advocates for the rights of people with disabilities. But in startup culture, just being a woman is seen as subversive.
And, this is from Sruti Bharat, who most recently served as Interim CEO at All Raise.
“Just because a woman is oppressed, marginalized, or treated differently, doesn’t mean she’s also aware of how to fix it, or how to talk about it, or doesn’t move on on her own. that. We have always campaigned for women to be icons… but the reality of that is that it takes actual advocacy work and building movement and policy,” Bharat said.
Image credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
About all these layoffs
I already know. There was a lot of news about layoffs last month and June is starting to be no different. This week we wrote about layoffs at IRL, SWVLPolicyGenius, LoomGemini and Carbon Health.
Here’s why it’s important: At this point, it still feels believable to report layoffs of venture-backed startups, regardless of whether they’re affecting 10% or 50% of employees. I don’t want to get into the game of deciding how many people need to lose their jobs to fit, but I also recognize that it will be difficult to make up for each workforce cut.
One nuance that I would like to remind everyone, but mainly myself, is that there are layoffs that occur due to market uncertainty and there are layoffs that occur due to the possibility of citing uncertainty. certainty of the market. The questions and reasoning matter a lot, and “no comment” says a lot.
In Week
Seen on TechCrunch
Seen on TechCrunch +
Until next time,
