Mariah Lichtenstern argues that diversity means any differing perspective, not just gender or ethnicity. Black, Latino, and women founders face steeper hurdles due to limited networks and capital. She points to techfundingequity.com, a project with the Aspen Institute that documents the historic funding gap and offers tools to close it.
¡Hola!
I'm Mariah Lichtenstern. I'm a graduate of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Founder Institute and Managing Director of the Sacramento, California chapter. I'm also the founding partner of Diversity Ventures, and HQ wanted me to say a few words about recommendations that I have for founders from diverse backgrounds. So first of all, I would love to take this opportunity to contextualize what I mean by diversity, and I would also kind of redefine that question a little bit.
So first of all, what is diversity? Diversity just basically means different backgrounds, right? Differences. That's what diversity is. So I don't look at diversity as having to do with women or people of color or underrepresented founders. I look at diversity as being inclusive of different perspectives, and that could be by virtue of gender and ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic status, experience. It could be, you know, you bring some parents in the room, you bring some veterans in the room. They have different perspectives and life experiences that may contribute to whatever domain that you're in, right? So I look at diversity in a very inclusive way, and I think it's important that we do that because, say for example, if you have a boardroom that's full of Black people and you bring in a couple of white guys, that boardroom just got a little more diverse. So just because you're a white guy, it doesn't mean that you're not diverse. We have a saying at Diversity Ventures that Diversity includes you. And so that's what I see diversity as. It means capitalizing on diverse perspectives, bringing diverse perspectives to the, to the table. And even if it's a little bit uncomfortable, you push through it so that you can capitalize on diverse perspectives. Now, in terms of founders from diverse backgrounds, what I really think is meant by that is founders from underrepresented backgrounds. So one of the things I would say 2 founders from underrepresented backgrounds, specifically Black founders, Black American founders, Latino founders, and women. I would say know the landscape, which is something that, you know, I thought, you know, mom burned the bra, you know, people did the whole eyes on the prize of rights movement, we're good, right? Nope, sorry, still work to do. So I would just say know the landscape that you're in and be ready because it is going to be a little bit harder, right? Actually, it's going to be a lot harder. It's hard for everyone, but it's going to it's gonna be even harder if you're from an underrepresented background, mostly because you're not gonna have the same access, most likely, to the networks that people coming from, you know, maybe more privileged backgrounds have access to or are able to gain access to more quickly. One of the things I would suggest is that you check out the work that I'm doing at techfundingequity.com. It's a project that I am working on with the Aspen Institute's Tech Policy Hub to close the funding gap and just to really recognize what the historic and persistent challenges are for people from underrepresented backgrounds. And, you know, hopefully we can work together on overcoming those so that we can capitalize on diverse perspectives together. Thanks.
