Has YC ever funded a company with a Black founder?

I'm black as well. Went to Harvard and when I graduated I worked at the Kauffman Foundation. During that summer I pitched the idea to lawyers for deferred payment on corp formation and found a technical cofounder in August.<p>We wound up building a pretty miz alpha because I had no clue what I actually wanted to create to solve the problem I had in mind. Got very minimal traction, worked at a quant hedge fund to bootstrap. Learned to program (LAMP + JS) during the nights and weekends, launched a beta, got basic ("this could be interesting") level traction. Pitched angels, got funded, now working on an html5 based mobile website to capture the function our users find most interesting.<p>In general, I haven't experienced any discrimination or racial issues as yet. To be quite frank, the most helpful people have not been my color. This surprised me quite a bit because in the finance world where I interned all throughout school there's a strong "cultural networking" focus where you are connected with multiple career mentors, some of whom were "diversity" mentors.<p>With regard to my venture, I took the "open" approach and told everyone my idea in hopes of bouncing it around and making it better. In so doing, I met a lot of really interesting people of all colors who have served as advisors/friends/partners to this day. The startup community seems to be very much merit based and quantitative. If you have skills, traction, etc. you'll get looks but you wont get a handout for any reason unless you hustle for it.<p>(You should check out black web 2.0, <a href="http://blackweb20.com" rel="nofollow">http://blackweb20.com</a> they have an interesting community of people in tech.)

I know how you feel. I was one of 2 black students in my graduating CS class at CMU. It has never been a source of pressure/anxiety for me, but I do understand how it may affect other black students to feel like you are on your own.<p>As far as investors go, I doubt that they have any aversion to supporting entrepreneurs of any background. This is one industry that I would presume is more of a meritocracy than society at large. As I said on my tumblr a while back (<a href="http://bit.ly/g7jCAF" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/g7jCAF</a>) investors can see the green inside all of us :-)<p>There are many discussions going on about women in technology startups. The greater question is not why there aren't more founders, but why there arent more minority/female students in academia. Most of your founders are going to be a subset of those in academia anyway, so why not look at the problem closer to the source?

Courtland Allen, co-founder of Taskforce (YC W11)<p>And he is the technical guy of the pair.

As a black programmer with about 5 years of professional experience, I've always asked myself the same question. Throughout all the job interviews, conferences and meetups I've been to I've met no more than 3 other black programmers. One is my dad while the other is a friend and his dad. I still haven't come up with an answer but I do have two theories:<p>Role Models: There is no black Bill Gates. Not everyone is a trailblazer and for the rest of us role models play a huge "role" when choosing a career path. This is especially true for the black community. It becomes much easier to convince yourself, and your parents, that your passion is a valid career choice if you can point to an existing success story.<p>Access to technology: When I was a kid growing up I was the only one of my friends whose family owned a computer thanks to my dad being a programmer. Kinda hard to develop a passion for programming without one of those. Before tech skills became a requirement for any decent job computers were seen as expensive and unnecessary so everyone else was told "we'll get you one when you get to high school / college."<p>However, as I apply these these theories to today, Obama is president and just about every kid, rich or poor, has daily access to a computer. I'm guessing in 5 years time, when the next generation begins their careers, the number of black programmers will increase drastically all on its own.<p>That said I do know a good number of black network engineers and sys admins so I'm completely lost as to why programming is the only IT profession with such a huge discrepancy. Any theories?

&#62; <i>I'm often the ONLY black guy in the room</i><p>It's probably my European naiveté talking here, but I seriously wonder if and why that matters to you. Most of us belong to some kind of "minority" in some fashion, sometimes it's visible from the outside, sometimes not. Are things in the USA really so bad that it matters what color your skin is? Isn't tech a business of ideas anyway?

Black people only make up 13% of the population. [1] Most people forget this fact when judging race in a population.<p>1) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...</a>

It would help to know how many black founders apply in the first place.

Michael Seibel CEO of Justin.tv comes to mind.

A Co Founder of Addmired Inc. (YC W08) is black. So at least one.

It's all about access. YC can only fund the best applications it gets. Those often come from, I'm guessing, people whose creative sides have been nurtured while <i>also</i> getting some kind of constructive exposure to programming. Just like anything else, the socio-economically disadvantaged often don't get the access or education they need to wield or understand the power of programming. I do think that is changing, as evinced by the programs and organizations that have sprouted up to address the issue. But it's a slog.

I really don't think YC cares about ethnicity. I also don't quite get the point of this post.

Good Question. It would be interesting to hear about the experiences minority programmers have had in the startup scene (in our out of YC).

Can't speak to YC's experience, but I attended a historically black college/university (referred to as HBCUs) and knew a number of top-notch African-American CS students/hackers while I was there.<p>At one point, out of 7 or 8 undergrads in a research group I was with, more than half had completed PhDs and I think the rest of us (I was the lone white student in the group) had picked up MS degrees.<p>A number of the higher-quality students from this institution were heavily recruited by big corps with eyes on increasing minority hires and diversity rates.<p>What I mostly know is that successful CS students from this institution had their choice of top-notch careers or academic research opportunities. As a school (and my general region), not much emphasis was placed on entrepreneurship. Maybe both facts come into play with startup culture today.

As a black person why do you think this is?

If you watch the slide show: <a href="http://ycombinator.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/</a> long enough, a black guy will show(&#60; 3 mins in).

I'm 27 and I've only met one black programmer. That is rather strange.

It's possible that very few black people seem to care enough to give it a shot. Being black has never stopped me from trying anything. So long as I know that I can pull it off. At the very least there may be a slight prejudice simple because of the scarcity of motivated black individuals. In the end, if one can show what one's got, I do not see why that person should get a fair chance. That's my 2 cents on the matter.

Not really on topic, but I'm in Atlanta too at the moment and when I went to the game developers meetup about 5 of the 20 people who showed up were black &#38; other game development events I've been to in Georgia Tech had a few black people in them too (less than their proportion of the population, but still a good 1/4-1/5 the attendants).<p>Don't know what that might say about the games industry, if at all, just putting it out there.

Kalimah Priforce (Qykno | Career Matchmaking 4 Kids)<p>There have been several discussions about this topic, including my own: "Startup America Should Look Like America" <a href="http://bit.ly/fuqcBB" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/fuqcBB</a>.<p>There are groups that are forming to address the need for diversity in the tech world.<p>The "Black Founders" Kickoff Launch Event is on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at www.meetup.com/BlackFounders/events/16882191/ The Plancast event details are here: <a href="http://plancast.com/p/4cq2" rel="nofollow">http://plancast.com/p/4cq2</a><p>We've recently launched four "Building While Brown" groups on facebook: Bay Area: <a href="http://on.fb.me/hyJJhM" rel="nofollow">http://on.fb.me/hyJJhM</a>, NYC <a href="http://on.fb.me/fF2lXW" rel="nofollow">http://on.fb.me/fF2lXW</a>, DC|VA <a href="http://on.fb.me/gf4beu" rel="nofollow">http://on.fb.me/gf4beu</a> and the RTP <a href="http://on.fb.me/dZCrnj" rel="nofollow">http://on.fb.me/dZCrnj</a>

I think this is a good question, I'd like to piggyback on it and ask of the people who have applied did they apply as a team or as a single co-founders? Were they technical? etc.<p>I only ask these questions because I think they are important. I applied to YC and just had a conversation w/ someone who applied also however at the time of application we were both single founders.<p>I consider myself technical but I'm sure not as technical as many of you since I've only dealt in front-end web development. YC does have super specific criteria for applying, they are looking for a certain type of founder (or team of co-founders) so it would be helpful to this discussion to know.<p>I think it also depends on the idea/start-up submitted. Part of the review process does seem like they are looking at the entrepreneur but it also seems like they are looking at the entrepreneur (or team) and their ability to execute on the idea.<p>Just my thoughts...

<a href="http://oonwoye.com/2010/04/05/black-founders/" rel="nofollow">http://oonwoye.com/2010/04/05/black-founders/</a>

I'm in Atlanta, black, a programmer and and I casually take notice and see that most of the faces that surround me aren't those that look like me. I tend to wonder the same questions at times. It's a question of is the game we play skewed towards a certain outcome. If it is how do we play?

It really doesn't bother me at all because it makes sense why the low numbers exists in the first place. Basically the black community doesn't lend itself to hacking in general. When I hang with my friends I switch from geeky to a more hip hop style, they are simply not interested in what i am into and talk more about sport/entertainment topics. The few black friends I have that are in tech only do it for work. To have a Hacker/YC mind you usually have to fully immerse yourself into hacking, eg.. hacking at home,IRC etc.. So I believe the disproportion just reflects the type of people who simply interested. Believe me if you have the next million dollar idea in your hands then your set. The only color that really matters in this tech entrepreneurial space is green.

It'd be interesting to see. African Americans and Latinos* make up about %28 of the US population, but are very under represented in startups. East Asians, South Asians, Arabs and Jews are over represented in tech based on over all population. What's more, most of the black programmers i've worked with at startups were born in Africa or the Caribbean.<p>I suspect that YC would be wise to try and recruit diversity, having different perspectives, backgrounds and world views among founders at the the dinners and other places, would probably make all the startups stronger.<p>Latinos or Hispanics are an ethnic group, not racial, there are white, black, native american, and asian latinos.

How many apply? The population norm is irrelevant.<p>That said, how to correct this? E.g. Stanford University has no quota and doesn't yield on admission standards, but does a good job actively recruiting qualified minority students. Does YC recruit at all?

It doesn't address your question directly. But I find it a good opportunity to show you a visualization I've made for San Francisco Elementary school assignment by ethnicity. Clearly the city is not distributed evenly.<p><a href="http://tungwaiyip.info/2011/2011_SFUSD_ethnicity.html" rel="nofollow">http://tungwaiyip.info/2011/2011_SFUSD_ethnicity.html</a>

Here in France, we have many African people from our former colonies studying here, and many staying too, so I guess we are used to it. Speaking about skin color, there are more "brown" people than "black" people, because Magreb is more represented than sub-saharian countries.

The population percentages of race have absolutely no correlation to the percentages of startup founders accepted by YC or that would potentially be accepted by YC. With YC only funding 200 or so startups, that sample is too low to quantify any conclusions.

Others have answered the question and there are a few. However, if Paul Graham is looking to inflate the stats ala Campbell's Law... I'm actually a white African-American. ;)

black male founder probably...black female founder probably not

More interesting to me: how many have been rejected? If anyone were curious about possible racism in funding (AND I'M NOT SAYING THERE IS AT ALL) that would be the metric i'd begin with.

Confession: When I read something online that I know was written by a black person, I am significantly more critical of grammar and usage. I sometimes read sentences twice simply because I expect errors.<p>I consider myself to be a good person and I don't actively discriminate against people based on things like race, but I simply can't help this reflex. Sad, huh?

I am curious as well.

<i>was just wondering if anyone that looks like ME has EVER made it</i><p>Assuming that there might be something "unattractive" about being black -- a big assumption but one I'm willing to play along with for purposes of this thread -- how about fat people? Old people? People who don't live in cities? People who didn't go to an ivory league college? Conservatives? People who have physical defects?<p>On a few occasions, it's been stated that basically you need to look "cute", "serious", or various other quasi-bullshit phrases. It's a logical follow-up question to start asking about exactly which attributes people find attractive.<p>But I'm not sure what difference it makes. If your startup depends on YC, they probably don't want you. It's like the old thing about only asking for a loan when you don't need the money.<p>While you can count up various attributes and report on them, that's a long way from a causal relationship. Maybe no black people applied. Maybe there were only 2 black people that applied, but they were both joke applications. There's simply no useful information you can gather from a count. At least not that I can see. Perhaps you can develop a suspicion that the odds are stacked against you, but if you're looking for reasons to think the odds are stacked against you, hell, just go look at the stats for startups in general. No need to add anything else in there.<p>I guess I just don't understand your point. It doesn't seem very productive, no matter what the answer is.