I got an account on there
Twitter has 49 black employees in workforce of nearly 3,000
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Naw, the bay is super hood yo! yaddatalbout?
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I trained Sheng Long and Shonuff
↓R↑LYB
I trained Sheng Long and Shonuff
I go to the home page and there's a nikka with his shirt off
Ain't nobody trying to see that shyt.
it's only got 1000 dl's
why would i need help doing that?
There is a lack of Black women in tech because we dont invest our energy into dead ends, and the Black women who are ,theyre paving away for themselves.
This Black Woman Is Turning The White Investing World On Its Head
Arlan Hamilton is investing in the brilliant startups traditional backers overlook.
Emily Peck Executive Editor, Business and Technology
Try to picture a prototypical tech investor. If you’re in the tech world already or if you watch “Silicon Valley” or read the business pages, you’re likely envisioning a genial-looking white guy. Maybe a little nerdy, Bill Gates-y. He probably has a degree from Stanford or maybe Harvard, possibly MIT.
Arlan Hamilton is nothing like that.
“I’m black, female and gay,” she told The Huffington Post by phone recently. “I am a triple threat to a lot of people, but not in a Beyoncé way.”
Still, on Thursday, Hamilton officially became a tech investor. After years of trying to break into the venture capital world, the 34-year-old Dallas native launched her own “syndicate” -- an early-stage investing fund on AngelList, a website for angel investors and startup founders.
Her fund’s goal: early-stage investing in underrepresented founders. Hamilton is looking for entrepreneurs who are black, Latino, gay or female -- the kind of people who typically miss out on the money sloshing around Silicon Valley these days. Hamilton believes she’s the first black woman to lead a syndicate on the startup site.
Tech companies and venture capitalists are talking a lot these days about getting more women and minorities into the tech pipeline, sponsoring programs to teach girls to code or making sure to interview more women and minorities for jobs, like Facebook is now doing. But a fund like Hamilton’s is another piece of the puzzle. The diverse startup founders she backs can turn into the big-tech CEOs of tomorrow -- and they’ll have diversity baked into their DNA. Meanwhile, Hamilton serves as inspiration for anyone looking to break into the ultra-exclusive investing world.
"Anytime you have a visible example, someone you can point to and say here’s someone unusual doing something different, it opens up opportunities for others," Susan Kimberlin, a former Salesforce product manager who is now an early-stage investor and startup adviser, told HuffPost. "It’s like, 'Oh look, if that person can do it, so can I.'"
I’m black, female and gay. I am a triple threat to a lot of people, but not in a Beyoncé way.
Hamilton’s fund is relatively small. She plans to take investments as low as $1,000, with the end goal of rolling those up into a VC-sized fund of between $100,000 and $250,000 per company. She'll help entrepreneurs who are just starting out and need that little bit to keep going, as well as more seasoned founders. Major VCs don’t typically work in such tiny sums.
"A lot [of companies] aren’t ready for $1.5 million, but they may be dead in the water if they don’t get something," Hamilton said, explaining that not all founders can just raise cash from friends and family. That's not a possibility" for a lot of people who didn't just graduate from an Ivy League school, she points out. Those people don't have as much luck with venture capitalists or angel investors, but they have just as many good ideas.
“Black founders do not get money compared to white founders. The fact that she’s directing attention and making a material difference to these companies is huge,” said Kimberlin, who met Hamilton at a course for new investors given by 500 Startups, a well-known incubator, and has been helping her launch the fund.
A band tour manager who’s worked on shows with stars like Pharrell and Justin Timberlake, Hamilton started thinking a few years ago about the venture capital industry after reading interviews given by Troy Carter (Lady Gaga's former manager), Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber's manager), Guy Oseary (Madonna and U2's manager), and Ashton Kutcher.
She also saw that Ellen Degeneres was doing investing and was inspired. (Hamilton simply calls her Ellen -- "I'm a lesbian and we don't need her last name. She's like Madonna. Or Mothership," she told HuffPost.)
Intrigued by how VCs invest in entrepreneurs and help them grow, she wanted in.
Hamilton, who was voted most likely to succeed in her Dallas high school but didn’t make it to college, started cold-calling bigshot VCs, eventually signing up for a class at 500 Startups.
Inspired by the class, she wrote a blog post on Medium about the lack of diversity in the venture world. It was blisteringly honest: The VC world was too white and missing out on huge opportunities from entrepreneurs of color, who were having a harder time raising funds.
“DEAR WHITE VENTURE CAPITALISTS: DO NOT PITY BLACK FOUNDERS!” she wrote. “Do the same thing you do with white and Asian founders and invest in them because you want to make money. Do not think of this as a social mission.”
The responses from VCs rolled in. There were some quasi-job offers from firms, she said, but nothing that paid very much or put her at the heart of the deal-making universe. Hamilton had made a hobby out of reaching out to small business owners and connecting them with investors she had met, but it wasn’t paying off. “The investors would go for it and I’d get a pat on the head,” she said. “I didn’t want to be on the sidelines.”
She’s not on the sidelines anymore. By Thursday night, Hamilton already pulled in $19,500 from five investors -- including a partner at 500 Startups, a former Googler and a designer from Adobe. Investors pay Hamilton 15 percent and AngelList 5 percent of any profits they make.
"Using AngelList is also a brilliant way for Arlan to start making an impact right away," Sean Percival, the 500 Startups partner who's investing in Hamilton's fund, told HuffPost. "It challenges the traditional path one might become a venture capitalist, and that’s something we support."
Hamilton wasn’t ready to name the companies she plans on backing, but she’s excited about the possibilities. “There’s such potential in tech. We’re just scraping the surface."
Apple commits more than $50 million to diversity efforts
March 10, 2015, 7:11 AM EDT
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A flashy new smart watch isn’t all Apple has up its sleeve. The company is donating more than $50 million to organizations that aim to get more women, minorities, and veterans working in tech.
It’s a big week for Apple. On Monday the iPhone-maker unveiled the latest addition to its ecosystem of devices, a smart watch whose price will range from $350 to $18,000. On Tuesday, the company kicks off its annual shareholders’ meeting in Cupertino, Calif.
But there’s more. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Apple’s human resources chief Denise Young Smith said the company is partnering with several non-profit organizations on a multi-year, multi-million-dollar effort to increase the pipeline of women, minorities, and veterans in the technology industry—and, of course, at Apple.
“We wanted to create opportunities for minority candidates to get their first job at Apple,” said Young Smith, who took over as its head of HR a little over a year ago. (Before her current role, the longtime Apple exec spent a decade running recruiting for the retail side of the business.) “There is tremendous upside to that and we are dogged about the fact that we can’t innovate without being diverse and inclusive.”
Young Smith likes to say that diversity extends race and gender—Apple wants its employee base to also reflect different lifestyles and sexual orientations. (Last fall, CEO Tim Cook publicly acknowledged that he is gay—the first Fortune 500 chief executive to do so while holding the title.) But, at least for now, its diversity initiatives are mostly focused on expanding its pipeline of women and minorities.
To that end, the company is partnering with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a non-profit that supports students enrolled in public, historically black colleges and universities (known as HBCUs). These schools include North Carolina A&T State University, Howard University, and Grambling State University (where Young Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and journalism in 1978). All told, there are 100 HBCUs across the country—47 of them are considered public—and collectively they graduate nearly 20% of African-Americans who earn undergraduate degrees.
“Historically, other organizations have provided scholarship dollars or focused on whatever area matters most to them,” says Johnny Taylor, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. “What differentiates this partnership with Apple is that it hits on everything that we do—it is the most comprehensive program ever offered to an HBCU organization.”
Courtesy: Apple
According to Taylor, it is also the largest: Apple is committing over $40 million to the fund, which will use the money to create a database of computer science majors at HBCUs, train both students and faculty and offer scholarships. Apple will also create a paid internship program for particularly promising students.
“People are at Harvard and MIT looking for their students,” says Taylor. “But Apple said, there are some really talented individuals at these [HBCU] schools.”
Apple is also partnering with another non-profit, the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), to help create a broader pipeline of female technology workers. According to Lucy Sanders, CEO and co-founder of the organization, this isn’t the first time the device maker is teaming up with the non-profit, but this latest round has much broader ambitions and represents the largest single investment NCWIT has received to date—to the tune of about $10 million, which will be doled out over the course of four years. The goal? To double the number of four-year-degree recipients supported by NCWIT’s internships, scholarships and other resources, and to reach 10,000 middle school girls over the next few years.
Again, the organization’s leader says Apple’s investment is different in that it is bigger and more far-reaching than previous corporate donors. Says Sanders: “A lot of actitivies are one and done, but this is a longitudinal experience throughout the pipeline.”
Of course, Apple’s not the only heavyweight pouring significant dollars into these organizations—NCWIT, for example, is also funded by Google, Microsoft and Symantec, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund has received significant grants from the likes of Wal-Mart and the National Basketball Association. There’s also Intel, which announced it will devote $300 million to science and technology education, primarily for girls and minorities, earlier this year.
To hear Apple tell it, the focus isn’t so much on the dollar amount but more on the approach, which Young Smith calls “thoughtful.” (Leave it to Apple to think different.)
In addition to the over $50 million that will be poured into the organizations mentioned above, Young Smith says Apple is talking to military leaders to come up with a way to provide technology training and specialized on boarding programs for veterans. No word on how much money Apple will devote to this effort.
“In any of these programs we’re really trying to provide focus, impact and a ripple effect–not just on Apple,” Young Smith says.
The real effect of these efforts, however—whether Apple’s or Intel’s—likely won’t be felt for a number of years. But while last year seemed to be all about technology companies admitting they have a diversity problem, this year seems to be the time for them to finally put their money where their mouth is. Just like Apple’s new Watch, it’s a development that has been a long time coming.
In Atlanta there's tons of us
Not all of us can be in Atlanta to get a job. I had to move to Texas for my job after layoffs in Atlanta
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you live in ATL. I KNOW youve seen wilder shyt than that,I go to the home page and there's a nikka with his shirt off
Ain't nobody trying to see that shyt.
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There are qualified Black men and women in the tech industry with degrees in engineering and computer science.
These companies ARE NOT hiring Black people. They hardly even interview Black people.
They don't care.
Facebook only hired seven black people in latest diversity count
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ponders the meaning of diversity. Photograph: Jose Miguel Gomez/Reuters
Rupert Neate in New York
@RupertNeate
Thursday 25 June 2015 18.36 EDTLast modified on Thursday 25 June 2015 21.39 EDT
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Facebook is still dominated by white men despite Mark Zuckerberg’s repeated promise to get serious about building a workforce that better reflects the diversity of its 1.4 billion global users.
In its diversity report released on Thursday the social network company revealed that more than half of its US staff are white, with the proportion dropping slightly from 57% to 55%. The proportion of Asian employees increased by 2% to 36%, but the shares of hispanic and black people or those of “two or more races” remained flat at 4%, 2% and 3% respectively.
These companies ARE NOT hiring Black people. They hardly even interview Black people.
They don't care.
Facebook only hired seven black people in latest diversity count
- Company’s annual diversity report shows majority of staff still white
- Sixty-eight percent of employees are male – a 1% decrease
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ponders the meaning of diversity. Photograph: Jose Miguel Gomez/Reuters
Rupert Neate in New York
@RupertNeate
Thursday 25 June 2015 18.36 EDTLast modified on Thursday 25 June 2015 21.39 EDT
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11,545
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Facebook is still dominated by white men despite Mark Zuckerberg’s repeated promise to get serious about building a workforce that better reflects the diversity of its 1.4 billion global users.
In its diversity report released on Thursday the social network company revealed that more than half of its US staff are white, with the proportion dropping slightly from 57% to 55%. The proportion of Asian employees increased by 2% to 36%, but the shares of hispanic and black people or those of “two or more races” remained flat at 4%, 2% and 3% respectively.
Hm I'm on LinkedIn and have had Facebook Google Apple Amazon LinkedIn and other companies contact me. I've actually have had dinner with people from Facebook.
I think the company I work for has companies try and snipe me.
I don't know what it was but I struggled to find work in Atlanta after being laid off. Even interviewed with Dell and this southern white guy alluded to me having an attitude problem.
I wonder where he is now
I think the company I work for has companies try and snipe me.
I don't know what it was but I struggled to find work in Atlanta after being laid off. Even interviewed with Dell and this southern white guy alluded to me having an attitude problem.
I wonder where he is now
Even though I'd like to see more blacks going into CS and engineering programs, that's another topic and we definitely shouldn't be letting these companies off the hook for their lack of diversity either
Check this out for example: Silicon Valley struggles to hack its diversity problem
So even when accounting for the relative dearth of black CS grads, the biggest tech companies are still overlooking them. That's the sort of thing that should be called out. And there's all sorts of possible reasons I can think of for those disparity, such as where these companies focus their recruiting efforts at, or biases in hiring
And then there's this tidbit:
IMO, this is even more damning because while you can argue about whether there's a pipeline problem with blacks and technical jobs, could you really make that same argument about the non-technical jobs at Twitter?
Check this out for example: Silicon Valley struggles to hack its diversity problem
So even when accounting for the relative dearth of black CS grads, the biggest tech companies are still overlooking them. That's the sort of thing that should be called out. And there's all sorts of possible reasons I can think of for those disparity, such as where these companies focus their recruiting efforts at, or biases in hiring
And then there's this tidbit:
IMO, this is even more damning because while you can argue about whether there's a pipeline problem with blacks and technical jobs, could you really make that same argument about the non-technical jobs at Twitter?
↓R↑LYB
I trained Sheng Long and Shonuff
.༼-◕_◕-༽.
.༼-◕_◕-༽.
That's all I'm saying there are more Blacks with the degrees than are getting jobs.
Sad but true.
I realized thjs first hand opening up my first business this year and running my first shop in manhattan.
I didnt let it get to me though. But it did educate me on some harsh truths about being a black man in business.