racism
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4 women in engineering discuss harassment, isolation and perseverence
Women engineers often face workplace and career challenges that their male colleagues don’t because they remain a minority in the profession: Depending on how you count, women make up just 13% to 25% of engineering jobs. That inequity leads to a power imbalance, which can lead to toxic working environments.
One of the more infamous and egregious examples is Susan Fowler’s experience at Uber. In a blog post in February 2017, she described her boss coming on to her in a company chat channel on her first day on the job. She later wrote a book, “Whistleblower,” that described her time at the company in detail.
Fowler’s ordeal cast a spotlight on the harassment women engineers have to deal with in the workplace. In a profession that tends to be male-dominated, behavior ranges from blatant examples, like what happened to Fowler, to ongoing daily microaggressions.
Four female engineers spoke with me about their challenges:
- Tammy Butow, principal software reliability engineer (SRE) at Gremlin
- Rona Chong, software engineer at Grove Collaborative
- Ana Medina, senior chaos engineer at Gremlin
- Yury Roa, SRE technical program manager at ADL Digital Labs in Bogota, Colombia
It’s worth noting that Fowler was also an SRE who worked on the same team as Medina (who was later part of a $10 million discrimination lawsuit against Uber). It shows just how small of a world we are talking about. While not everyone faced that level of harassment, they each described daily challenges, some of which wore them down. But they also showed a strong determination to overcome whatever obstacles came their way.
Feeling isolated
One of the primary issues these women faced throughout their careers is a feeling of isolation due to their underrepresentation. They say that can sometimes lead to self-doubt and an inkling that you don’t belong that can be difficult to overcome. Medina says that there have been times when, intentionally or not, male engineers made her feel unwelcome.
“One part that was really hard for me was those microaggressions on a daily basis, and that affects your work ethic, wanting to show up, wanting to try your best. And not only does that damage your own self-esteem, but your esteem [in terms of] growing as an engineer,” Medina explained.
Roa says that isolation can lead to impostor syndrome. That’s why it’s so important to have more women in these roles: to serve as mentors, role models and peers.
“One barrier for us related to being the only woman in the room is that [it can lead to] impostor syndrome because it is common when you are the only woman or one of few, it can be really challenging for us. So we need to gain confidence, and in these cases, it is very important to have role models and leadership that includes women,” Roa said.
Chong agrees it is essential to know that others have been in the same position — and found a way through.
“The fact that people talk authentically about their own jobs and challenges and how they’ve overcome that, that’s been really helpful for me to continue seeing myself in the tech industry,” she said. “There have been points where I’ve questioned whether I should leave, but then having that support around you to have people to talk to you personally and see as examples, I think it has really helped me.”
Butow described being interviewed for an article early in her career after she won an award for a mobile application she wrote. When the article was published, she was aghast to discover it had been headlined, “Not just another pretty face…”
“I was like, that’s the title?! I was so excited to share the article with my mom, and then I wasn’t. I spent so much time writing the code and obviously my face had nothing to do with it. … So there’s just little things like that where people call it a paper cut or something like that, but it’s just lots of little microaggressions.”
Pushing through
In spite of all that, a common thread among these women was a strong desire to show that they have the technical skill to get past these moments of doubt to thrive in their professions.
Butow said she has been battling these kinds of misperceptions since she was a teenager but never let it stop her. “I just tried to not let it bother me, but mostly because I also have a background in skateboarding. It’s the same thing, right? You go to a skate park and people would say, ‘Oh, can you even do a trick?’ and I was like, ‘Watch me.’ You know, I [would] just do it. … So a lot of that happens in lots of different types of places in the world and you just have to, I don’t know, I just always push through, like I’m just going to do it anyway.”
Chong says she doesn’t give in to discouraging feelings, adding that having other women to talk to helped push her through those times.
“As much as I like to persevere and I don’t like giving up, actually there have been points where I considered quitting, but having visibility into other people’s experiences, knowing that you’re not the only one who’s experienced that, and seeing that they’ve found better environments for themselves and that they eventually worked through it, and having those people tell you that they believe in you, that probably stopped me from leaving when I [might] have otherwise,” she said.
Women helping women
Chong’s experience is not unique, but the more diverse your teams are, the more people who come from underrepresented groups can support one another. Butow recruited her at one point, and she says that was a huge moment for her.
“I think that there is a network effect where we know other women and we try to bring them in and we expand on that. So we can kind of create the change or we feel the change we want to see, and we get to make our situation more comfortable,” Chong said.
Medina says that she is motivated to help bring Latinx and Black people into tech, with a focus on attracting girls and young women. She has worked with a group called Technolachicas, which produced a series of commercials with the Televisa Foundation. They filmed six videos, three in English and three in Spanish, with the goal of showing young girls how to pursue a STEM career.
“Each commercial talks about how we got our career started with an audience persona of a girl younger than 18, an adult influencer and a parent — people that are really crucial to the development of anyone under 18,” she said. “How is it that these people can actually empower someone to look at STEM and to pursue a career in STEM?”
Butow says it’s about lifting people up. “What we’re trying to do is sharing our story and hoping to inspire other women. It’s super important to have those role models. There’s a lot of research that shows that that’s actually the most important thing is just visibility of role models that you can relate to,” she said.
The ultimate goal? Having enough support in the workplace that they’re able to concentrate on being the best engineers they can be — without all of the obstruction.
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Investors are missing out on Black founders
I’m a Black man in America — that’s hard. Black founders, and uniquely Black founders in tech, are facing insurmountable odds.
As the recipients of less than 1% of venture capital raise, institutionalized systems are visibly at play. Within almost 10 years of my entrepreneurial journey, I have encountered just as many setbacks and failures as I have successes.
However, I have pressed forward despite the disparities that often plague the Black entrepreneurial community. From imbalances in fundraising to minimal capital and access, Black brilliance and its cloak of resilience continues to rise.
Now, as a CEO who has ambitiously raised nearly $13 million for my current venture, against the odds, I posit that it is not the Black founders who are missing out the most — it is the investors who are at a loss, not comprehending that they have underestimated the power of these founders’ Black brilliance.
Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences.
When you think about the intersection of venture capital and technology, and specifically how it works — it is being led from an engineering perspective. Developers and coders historically go to specific schools and colleges, entering a funnel that guides them to success.
Historically, many Black students (more so Black male students), are influenced by sports as a vehicle to higher education and not necessarily the institutions recognized for technological prowess.
Their parents and community encourage athleticism because that is the only thing they know — as an institutionalized mindset reinforced over time. Unless they are guided into the accepted foundations for technology, or get into a Cal Berkeley, Stanford or Harvard, where many of the technology companies are built, they are immediately funneled outside of the “circle,” which sets the first of many ongoing obstacles for a Black tech founder.
I offer, however, that these “obstacles” are not in fact barriers but the crucial catalyst for these founders’ superpowers.
Admittedly, there were no entrepreneurs in my family. I did not have access to information about the best colleges. Despite having great grades and graduating with honors, I was completely unaware of how valuable an Ivy League education could be.
As a star basketball player, with my skills and grades, I could have played and graduated from somewhere like Yale, Brown, Columbia or even a school like Southern Methodist University where I was offered a full scholarship. But because of the lack of knowledge that I could actually do so and benefit from being inside the Ivy League “circle,” I didn’t.
I was in college from 2000 to 2004. A lot of great companies were started at elite schools during that period. It is this institutional blocking of information from myself and many other Black students that molded our overall perspective and created our glass ceilings.
Breaking through that glass ceiling, overcoming these odds to press forward relentlessly, with unyielding focus, and to hold conversations with the types of investors I have had to sit in front of, with the type of company that I have built, takes a different level of brilliance that only the Black experience can provide. For 2021 and beyond, Black founders need to not only recognize, but unlock that power as they look to fundraise and catapult their tech companies to success. It would be smart, and incredibly beneficial for investors, venture capitalists and the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem to take heed.
For Black founders, a paradigm shift is evident, but it can only manifest if implemented in these five ways.
Black founders: Forget what you think works in fundraising
Black founders and specifically Black tech founders are fed a monotonous script of how to raise money “the right way,” in light of disparaging statistics highlighting a lack of funding — so much that there is a robotic approach to the process. They try to become this cookie-cutter entrepreneur that is designed to raise money from investors, with their playbook and by their rules.
Black founders capitulate and conform to what society has dictated as appropriate fundraising, often glorifying the investor with the fate of their startup in their hands, without realizing that they hold the negotiating power. Their playbook hasn’t won us any games. As of today, own your power.
Become an irresistible force: Leverage your expertise
Set the playbook aside and lean more into your expertise and uniqueness.
Years ago, Mark Cuban delivered a keynote address at Dallas Startup Week that chronicled his road to success. One of his main points was to “Know your business, and know your business cold.” It was so simple, yet so impactful.
Early on in my career, I learned about venture capital from my experiences working for a startup. While I did not know the area in depth, I referenced what little knowledge I had as I raised for my own company years later. Although I was limited in my dealings with venture capitalists, I was confident in my background and expertise (at that time as a payroll technology sales professional) to truly stake my claim and seat at the table.
So while they may have sold a company for $7 billion or have $35 billion AUM (assets under management), I knew that they were not as well-versed in payroll or payroll technology than I was. It was this tenacious mindset that made me look at investors, rather than up to them, thereby positioning us on equal footing.
Connect in the common goal of brilliance
As a Black founder in tech, I have encountered many injustices — from networking to fundraising to the game of business as a whole. Even among those sitting at the table, there is a plethora of worldviews, political preferences, religious propensities and more that create a melting pot of divisiveness. However, recognizing that the common thread between all of the players in the game is the desire to be part of the brilliant business opportunity at hand is what will ultimately prevail.
It served me well not to overindex whether the venture capitalists liked me or on our differences. Locking in on the ambition of my entrepreneurial spirit and focusing on my brilliance — my Black brilliance — made them want to invest in me. Simplistically, investors want to give their money to founders who will make them money — passionately and ambitiously. Be you and find the investor that appreciates you.
Get in front of as many investors as you can
Black founders are not getting in front of enough investors. Systemically, the venture capital landscape has marginalized this community and has failed to expand their network for inclusiveness. Currently, ethnic minorities are severely underrepresented in the venture capital industry. Eighty percent of investment partners are white, with only a staggering 3% being Black or African-American.
Regardless, Black entrepreneurs must press forward and still show up. The sheer number of people that entrepreneurs must face during the fundraising process is astronomical, so one must not be swayed by the disillusionment of opportunity.
Realistically speaking, it takes a long time to raise money. Period. I have talked to thousands of potential investors to raise nearly $13 million for my current company. If you are a Black founder, it is going to take you longer to fundraise and you are going to have to get in front of more people. So I ask, “Do you have enough oxygen in the tank to withstand the obstacles, for a long enough period of time, to attract the venture capital that you need?” The wealth gap says no.
When I first started Gig Wage, the number one question I received from investors is, “How much runway do you have?” I would answer, “Until I get to where I need to get.” They would then rephrase, “How much money do you have in the bank? How long is your wife going to let you do this?” I would reply, “It does not matter how much money I have in the bank because I’m going to keep going until this happens.”
Discriminatively, there was this unspoken expectation that I lacked the financial wherewithal and stamina to withstand the fundraising process, and at times it was extremely discouraging — because to be honest, when I looked in the bank account, I realistically had about nine to 12 months of runway.
The reason Black people raise less than 1% of venture capital is because the racism weaved into the fabric of American society bleeds over into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite it all, I took thousands of meetings. I was willing to endure with an ambitious conviction that I was going to win. Again, this is Black brilliance.
Own your resiliency, own your power
As a Black man, I have personally endured challenges to build resiliency — mirroring similar realities of other Black men in America. Whether it was dealing with the police or witnessing men in my family struggle with drugs, violence, poverty or the like — I often think, “Why would I be intimidated by an investor meeting or a term sheet?” The construct of America has dealt me much worse.
Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences. The victory mentality that ensues thereafter is the type of mindset that venture capitalists should want to invest in, and if they do not, they are undoubtedly missing out.
The unyielding focus of “The world is stacked against me but I’m not going to quit. I’m going to pivot. I’m going to be resourceful. I’m going to figure it out — even if I’m scared,” is a person you need to invest in. It is not necessarily that they have a groundbreaking business idea, but culturally, Black people have a passion and a perspective that is unmatched, with limitless possibilities that venture capitalists are overlooking.
So for 2021 and well beyond, Black founders, and those especially in tech, need to shift their respective paradigms, own their place within the entrepreneurial space, take back their power and continue to operate at the utmost in Black brilliance. It is the investors, not the founders, that are missing out. Be bold. Be courageous. Be audacious.
As for me, the best thing that I can do right now is to continue to drive the conversation, illuminate the disparities and be as successful for Black entrepreneurs, Black professionals and the world at large as possible. I am owning my power and I’m committed to epitomizing and evangelizing Black brilliance.
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Emerging companies thrive on data. Shouldn’t they use it to improve hiring decisions?
Zoe Jervier Hewitt is a leadership coach and talent partner at multi-stage VC fund EQT Ventures, where she helps portfolio companies structure and accelerate their search for talent by facilitating connections to the right technology and people required to source candidates at each stage of company growth.
While emerging companies are often started by technically minded founders and funded by VCs for their data-driven approaches to product and growth, the irony is that these companies are often using less data and rigor when it comes to hiring talent than more traditional, less data-focused companies. The truth is, the way in which tech companies hire has been relatively untouched by disruption, with most still relying on resumes and conversational interviews for its highest-stake decisions.
The consequences of this is not only detrimental to building teams, but to the overall diversity of the startup space.
Data-driven hiring isn’t just about having the right funnel metrics in place to determine efficiency of process, it extends to the information we choose to collect (or not collect) and measure to determine if someone is a fit for a role. There’s a science to building teams, and therefore selecting talent to join teams. So, why is hiring in early-stage companies still not regarded as a data-driven activity?
Some argue that by nature, talent selection involves people and so can’t truly be scientific. People are unique, complex, emotional and unpredictable. Additionally, few people think they’re a bad judge of character and talent, most overconfidently hold the belief that they’ve got a superior instinct and “nose” for talent. Hiring talent is one of the few operational activities in business where formal training or decades of experience isn’t expected in order to be better than average.
Move away from gut-based evaluations
The impact of this outdated way of thinking is felt across the board — first and foremost when it comes to team dynamics. To first know if someone is qualified, you need to know what you’re assessing for. Companies that operate with a shallow understanding of what drives success in a role lack the vital information needed to build a strong system of selection. The output is a weak hiring process that is heavy on unstructured interviewing, light on predictive signals and relies on gut-based evaluations.
Chemistry, confidence and charisma are more likely to determine whether a candidate lands a role versus competence to do the job. As a result, almost half of new hires are estimated to fail and be ineffective, and weak teams are built. The lack of reliable data also means most companies suffer from a broken feedback loop between hiring and team performance, which stunts learning and improvement. How do you know if your selection process is efficiently assessing for the skills, traits and behaviors that drive top performance if you’re not connecting the dots?
The dangers of subjective approaches
More dangerously, a hiring process that’s not designed to collect and evaluate based on evidence almost always results in a lack of team diversity, which as we know stunts innovation and therefore limits company success.
Subjective approaches to talent selection and development create a revolving door of unconscious biases and exclusion, with a resounding impact on what now makes up the homogenous tech ecosystem. This is not helped by natural overreliance on networks as means to fill hiring pipelines in early-stage company building.
Lastly, for talent operators and people practitioners, it does no favors for the credibility of their profession. Recruiting and selecting talent will continue to be branded an unsophisticated, lesser back-office function, or as a “dark art” that is about as data-informed as looking into a crystal ball.
Taking an evidence-based approach
In bringing more objectivity to the hiring process, founders and their teams are served best when starting with a clear, evidence-based definition of what success markers look like in a role, and then putting structure around each stage of selection to assess for a specific skill or behavioral trait: What and when will you assess? What criteria will you evaluate the data based on? In other words, the objective is to get as close as possible to unearthing signals that are reliable enough to accurately predict that someone will perform in a role.
Up until recently, science-based talent assessment tools, which help hiring managers make more objective evaluations, have been largely used by bigger, more established firms that suffer from high-volumes of job applications — the luxury “Google” problem. However, three recent shifts suggest we’re about to see a trend in their adoption by earlier-stage startups as they scale their teams:
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Pressure to build diverse and inclusive teams. 2020 has pushed diversity and inclusion to the top of the agenda for most companies. Assessment tools used as part of team-building can help groups better identify where specific cognitive, personality and skill gaps exist, and therefore focus hiring for those missing ingredients. Candidate assessment also helps reduce unconscious bias that might creep into interviews by showing more objective information about someone’s strengths and weaknesses.
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The sharp rise in job applicants. The COVID-19 pandemic has had two significant effects on recruiting. First, companies have been forced to embrace hiring talent in remote roles, which has increased the size of the global talent pool for most jobs inside a tech firm. Second, the increase in available talent has meant that the average number of job applications has risen dramatically. This shift from a candidate-driven market to an employer-driven one means that selecting signal from noise is increasingly becoming a challenge even for early companies with a less-established talent brand.
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Better designed, more affordable products on the market. For a long time, talent assessment software has been largely inaccessible to noncorporate clients. Academic user interfaces and off-putting candidate experiences has meant that many scientifically robust tools simply haven’t been able to capture the attention of tech and product-obsessed buyers. Additionally, many tools that require add-on consultancy or specialist training to administer and interpret are simply out of range of early-stage budgets. With new entrants to the assessment market that have automation, product design and compliance at their core, scale-ups will be able to justify spending in this area and perceptions will change as they become essential SaaS products in their team’s operating toolkits.
As these outside factors continue to push hiring toward a more evidence-based approach, businesses must prioritize making these changes to their hiring practices. While unstructured interviews might feel most natural, they’re perilous for accurate talent selection and while the conversation might be nice, they create noise that does nothing for making smart, accurate decisions based on what really matters.
Instinctive feelings and “going with your gut” in hiring should be treated with caution and decisions should always be based on role-relevant evidence you pinpoint. Emerging companies looking to set a strong team foundation shouldn’t risk the redundancies and biases created by subjective hiring decisions.
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The startup world needs a ‘Black Minds Matter’ awakening
Kofi Ampadu is the founder and general partner of SKU’D Ventures, a pre-seed fund focused on consumer product startups.
I was recently part of an open forum about being Black in America, as well as in the startup space.
A white founder asked, “What can I do as the founder of a very early-stage startup?” The group gave various suggestions that included the obvious (or at least I would hope it’s obvious), “When you are growing your team, consider hiring Black team members,” or “When you are considering an investment from an investor, press them about the diversity of their current portfolio founders.”
But one suggestion really stood out, which was to make a concerted effort to find someone different from your current team’s makeup when bringing in subject matter experts. This intentional act shows your homogeneous team members that Black people, other racial minorities or genders can be experts too. It can also be applied when growing your team by making sure you interview diverse candidates whose level of expertise is often second-guessed.
This got me thinking about VC Monique Woodard’s statement that “Black founders are often overmentored and underinvested.” In June, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests and open dialogue about anti-Blackness, we saw a slew of investors rushing to offer mentorship to Black founders. Some of the investors don’t have Black founders among their portfolio companies so to some onlookers, this rush to help Black founders was seen as insincere and a marketing ploy.
As a former founder, I can confidently say that most Black founders simply want a fair shot at presenting their startups to investors. The prevailing system of needing a warm introduction to access investors puts founders, especially Black founders, who don’t have the same networks as investors at a disadvantage. The proper mea culpa by these investors should be to make pitching more accessible for all founders. Although offers of mentorship are certainly welcome, the constant barriers Black founders tell me they struggle with are access to capital and networks, not a lack of talent or business savvy.
The quick emphasis on mentorship made me ask myself: How are the contributions of Black people (founders, investors, operators, etc.) to the startup space seen? Are we showcased as experts or as perpetual students in need of mentoring and advising? To directionally answer this question, I turned to podcasts. According to a New York Times article, “more than half the people in the United States have listened to one (podcast), and nearly one out of three people listen to at least one podcast every month.” This figure shows that podcasts are a wide-reaching medium that audiences use as a source of both entertainment and information.
I dug into the 2018 and 2019 guest lists of three of my favorite startup-related podcasts: “This Week In Startups,” “How I Built This With Guy Raz” and “The Twenty Minute VC.” These are all top-ranked podcasts with tens of millions in downloads and over half a million subscribers.
| Podcast | Description | Typical Guest Profile |
| This Week In Startups | Entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis brings you his take on the best, worst and most interesting stories from the world of startups. Glimpse into the boardroom during deep-dive interviews with the most innovative founders and investors. Get the experts’ hottest takes on trending topics during our news roundtables. |
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| How I Built This with Guy Raz | Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world’s best-known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists — and the movements they built. |
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| The Twenty Minute VC | The Twenty Minute VC takes you inside the world of venture capital, startup funding and the pitch. Discover how you can attain funding for your business by listening to what the most prominent investors are directly looking for in startups, providing easily actionable tips and tricks that can be put in place to increase your chances of getting funded. |
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I analyzed more than 500 episodes that were aired in 2018 and 2019 across all three podcasts to get a racial and gender breakdown of guests that were featured on those episodes.
Image Credits: Kofi Ampadu (opens in a new window)
Image Credits: Kofi Ampadu (opens in a new window)
Image Credits: Kofi Ampadu (opens in a new window)
Image Credits: Kofi Ampadu (opens in a new window)
Image Credits: Kofi Ampadu
Not surprisingly, a majority of the guests featured were white men (60%). Black men and women were featured on 4% of all the episodes. A total of 15 Black (nine men and six women) unique guests were showcased as guests out of more than 400 unique guests during the two-year span. Also interesting to note that of those 15 Black guests, three were celebrities (a comedian, a TV personality and a rapper), two of whom were featured twice.
There are certainly more than 15 Black noncelebrities available who would fit the ideal guest lists of these podcasts. It is also interesting to note the percentage of Black guests decreased by 2% from 2018 to 2019 and incidentally increased by 2% for white guests during that span. The percentage of Black female guests within the female gender pool drastically decreased by 10% while white female guests increased by 21% in the two-year time period.
Conclusion
The results are a microcosm of what has been happening in the startup ecosystem: Black minds are undervalued and underappreciated. Oftentimes in the startup space, a founder is deemed a successful founder not based on how much money they collect from satisfied customers but by how much money they have raised from investors. Based on these misleading standards, Black founders will rarely be classified as successful because 1% of VC-backed founders are Black.
When it comes to the investor ranks, 81% of venture funds have no Black investors, so very often Black investors have to raise their own funds since the path to joining one is limited. Given these and other obstacles, I would argue Black people are the inspirational and relatable experts whose stories and advice need to be heard by wider audiences.
It is also worth noting that Black people are versed in varying topics and should not be exclusively invited on platforms to speak on Black issues. Black people are not a monolith and each person has their own passion and areas of expertise and outside of lived experiences not all Black people may be well-equipped to dissect Black issues.
In the spirit of not only pointing out systemic racism in the startup space, here is a list of emerging Black founders, investors and startup ecosystem builders, curated by Denisha Kuhlor and me. The talented people listed would make great guests for podcasts, conferences and any platforms that aim to amplify a diverse set of insights and experiences.
Methodology: Analyzed 484 guests across all three podcasts, the hosts of these podcasts were not included in the analysis as guests. As a result, podcast episodes that only included the host were excluded. Reaired podcast episodes were included in the analysis. If an episode had multiple guests, each guest was accounted for separately in the analysis.
The gender of guests was based on pronouns used to refer to guests on the podcast or publicly available information. The race of guests was objectively determined based on how the guest identifies or subjectively determined based on photographs, videos and publicly available information. The “Other Minorities” grouping includes Latinx, Southeast Asian and East Asian guests.
Disclaimer: This write-up is by no means written to cast aspersions on the three podcasts analyzed. They were simply chosen because I am an avid listener and they are all relatively popular in the startup space.
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What does accountability look like in 2020?
Rae Witte is a New York-based freelance journalist covering music, style, sneakers, art and dating, and how they intersect with tech. You can find her writing on i-D, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire and Forbes, among others.
“What happens after a company gets called out?” he asked over the phone. “Do you know what happens to the people in-house that come forward?”
I didn’t.
A Black male engineer at a fashion tech company who wished to remain anonymous was telling me how he’d been passed over for promotions white counterparts later received after they’d pursued risky and unsuccessful projects. At one point, he said management tasked him with doing recon on a superior who made disparaging comments about women because his subordinates were uncomfortable reporting it directly to HR.
When human resources eventually took up the matter, the engineer said his participation was used against him.
More recently, his company brought furloughed employees back and managers promoted a younger, white subordinate over him. When he asked about the move, his direct supervisor said he was too aggressive and needed to be more of a role model to be considered in the future.
In the absence of industry leadership, there’s no blueprint to remedy institutional problems like these. The lack of substantial progress toward true representation, diversity and inclusion across several industries illustrates what hasn’t worked.
Audrey Gelman, former CEO of women-focused co-working/community space The Wing, stepped down in June following a virtual employee walkout. Three months earlier, a New York Times exposé interviewed 26 former and current employees there who described systemic discrimination and mistreatment. At the time, about 40% of its executive staff consisted of women of color, the article reported.
Within days, Refinery29’s EIC Christene Barberich also resigned after allegations of racism, bullying and leadership abuses surfaced with hashtag #BlackatR29.
In December 2019, The Verge reported allegations of a toxic work environment at Away under CEO Steph Korey. After a series of updates and corrections in reporting, it seemed she would be stepping away from her role or accelerating an existing plan for a new CEO to take over. But the following month, she returned to the company as co-CEO, sharing the statement: “Frankly, we let some inaccurate reporting influence the timeline of a transition plan that we had.”
Last month, after Korey posted a series of Instagram stories that negatively characterized her media coverage, the company again announced she would step down.
Bon Appétit former editor-in-chief Adam Rapaport resigned his position the same month after news broke that the cooking brand didn’t prioritize representation in its content or hiring, failed to pay women of color equally and freelance writer Tammie Teclemariam shared a 2013 photo of Rappaport in brown face.
In a public apology, staffs of Bon Appétit and Epicurious acknowledged that they had “been complicit with a culture we don’t agree with and are committed to change.”
Removing one problematic employee doesn’t upend company culture or help someone who’s been denied an opportunity. But with so much at stake when it comes to employing Instagram-ready branding, the lane is wide open for companies to meet the moment when it comes to doing the right thing.
A 2017 report by the Ascend Foundation found few Asian, Black and Latinx people were represented in leadership pipelines, and at that point, the numbers were actually getting worse. Seemingly, in an effort for transparency and accountability to do better, 17 tech companies shared diversity statistics and their plans to improve with Business Insider in June 2020. The numbers were staggering, especially for an initiative supposedly prioritized industry-wide in 2014:
Underrepresented minorities like Black and Latinx people still only make up single-digit percentages of the workforce at many major tech companies. When you look at the leadership statistics, the numbers are even bleaker.
While tech’s shortcomings show up clearly in a longstanding lack of diversity, companies in other industries polished their brands sufficiently to skate by — until COVID-19 and the call for racial justice after George Floyd’s murder called for lasting change.
In June, Adidas employees protested outside the company’s U.S. headquarters in Portland, Oregon and shared stories about internal racism. Just a year ago, The New York Times interviewed current and former employees about “the company’s predominantly white leadership struggling with issues of race and discrimination.”
In 2000, an Adidas employee filed a federal discrimination suit alleging that his supervisor called him a “monkey” and described his output as “monkey work.” When spokesperson Kanye West said in 2018 that he believed slavery was a choice, CEO Kasper Rorsted discussed his positive financial impact on the brand and avoided commenting on West’s statement.
In response to the internal turmoil at Adidas, the brand originally pledged to invest $20 million into Black communities in the U.S. over the next four years, increasing it to $120 million and releasing an outline of what they plan to do internally, Footwear News reported.
On June 30, Karen Parkin stepped down from her role as Adidas’ global head of HR in mutual agreement with the brand. In an all-employee meeting in August 2019, she reportedly described concerns about racism as “noise” that only Americans deal with. She’d been with the brand for 23 years.
Routinely protecting employees perceived as racist, misogynistic or abusive is bad for business. According to a 2017 “tech leavers” study conducted by the Kapor Center, employee turnover and its associated costs set the tech industry back $16 billion.
POC experience-centered social and wellness club Ethel’s Club invested into its community’s well-being and has not only managed to stay open (virtually) through the COVID-19 pandemic, it has managed to grow. Meanwhile, The Wing lost 95% of its business.
So, what really happens after the companies are called out? Often, the bare minimum. While the perpetrators of the injustice may endure backlash, abusers in corporate structures are often shifted into other roles.
Tiffany Wines, a former social media and editorial staffer at media/entertainment company Complex, posted an open letter to Twitter on June 19 alleging that Black women at the outlet were mistreated, sharing a story in which she claimed to have ingested marijuana brownies left in an office that was billed as a drug-free environment. Wines said she blacked out and accused superiors of covering up the incident after she reported it.
Her decision to speak up prompted other former employees to share stories alleging misogyny, racism, sexual assault and protection of abusers. One anonymous editor said she was asked if she would be comfortable with a workplace that had a “locker room culture” during a 2010 interview. (She did not end up working there.)
Complex Media Group put out a statement four days later on its corporate Twitter account, which had approximately 100 followers — as opposed to its main account, which has 2.3 million followers.
“We believe Complex Networks is a great place to work, but it is by no means perfect,” read the statement. “It’s our passion for our brands, communities, colleagues, and the belief that a safe and inclusive workplace should be the expectation for everyone.” It went on to state that they’ve taken immediate action, but it’s unclear if anyone has been terminated. [Complex is co-owned by Verizon Media, TechCrunch’s parent company.]
Members of the fashion community have formed multiple groups to combat systemic racism, establish accountability and advance Black people in the industry.
Set to launch in July 2020, The Black In Fashion Council, founded by Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner and fashion publicist Sandrine Charles, works to advance Black individuals in fashion and beauty.
The Kelly Initiative is comprised of 250 Black fashion professionals hoping to blaze equitable inroads, and they’ve publicly addressed the Council of Fashion Designers of America in a letter accusing them of “exploitative cultures of prejudice, tokenism and employment discrimination to thrive.”
Co-founders of True To Size, Jazerai Allen-Lord and Mazin Melegy, an extension of the New York-based branding agency Crush & Lovely, started offering their Check The Fit solutions to the brands they were working with in 2019. The initiative is an audit process created to align in-house teams and ensure sufficient representation is in place for brands’ storytelling.
Check The Fit determines who the consumer is, what the internal team’s history is with that demographic and the message they’re trying to communicate to them, and how the team engage’s with that subject matter in everyday life and in the office. Melegy says, “that look inward is a step that is overlooked almost everywhere.”
“At most companies, we’ve seen a lack of coherence within the organization, because each department’s director is approaching the problem from a siloed perspective. We were able to bring 15 leaders across departments together, distill through a list of concerns, find points of leverage and agree on a common goal. It was noted that it was the first time they were able to feel unified in their mission and felt prepared to move forward,” Lord says of their work with Reebok last year.
Brooklyn-based retailer Aurora James established the 15 Percent Pledge campaign, which urges retailers to have merchandise that reflects today’s demographics: 15% of the population should represent 15% of the shelves.
During the melee that transpired largely on Twitter and Instagram only to attempt to be reconciled in boardrooms, one Condé Nast employee and ally has been suspended. On June 12, Bon Appétit video editor Matt Hunziker tweeted, “Why would we hire someone who’s not racist when we could simply [checks industry handbook] uhh hire a racist and provide them with anti-racism training…” As his colleagues shared an outpouring of support online, a Condé Nast representative said in a statement, “There have been many concerns raised about Matt that the company is obligated to investigate and he has been suspended until we reach a resolution.”
Simply reading through accusers’ first-person accounts, it often seems like these stories end up on public forums because little to nothing is done in favor of the people who step forward. The protection has consistently been of the company.
The Black engineer I spoke to escalated his concerns to his company’s CEO and said the executive was unaware of the allegations and seemed deeply concerned.
Seeing someone who seemed genuinely invested in doing the right thing “obviously, means a lot,” he said.
“But at the same time, I’m still really concerned knowing the broader environment of the company, and it’s never just one person.”
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Don’t let VCs be the gatekeepers of your success
Kevin Henderson is founder and CEO of Indenseo, a data and analytics software automation company empowering the insurance industry to change how it assesses risk.
I have struggled for years about whether or not to write a piece like this.
Speaking out about racism goes against every lesson I have learned since I was the only Black kid in my first-grade class in the Boston suburbs:
Save candid conversations about race for Black people. You’re being a victim. People will think you’re whining or making excuses. They’re not interested. Don’t make white people feel uncomfortable.
In a professional environment, speaking up could be career suicide. But now is not the time to be silent.
The startup I founded, Indenseo, is a data and analytics software insurtech company that provides automated underwriting services, software and analytics services to the insurance industry.
Despite strong customer relationships and support from angel investors, we didn’t complete building solutions and moving the company forward until we stopped taking unproductive pitch meetings with VCs. Some of my [white] colleagues who attended those meetings characterized these encounters as disrespectful and dismissive, but for me, they were par for the course.
Black founders have a better chance playing pro sports than landing VC funding
I was raised by a single mother in West Medford, Massachusetts, and worked my way through Harvard, located about five miles away. Before starting Indenseo, I worked for @Road, a fleet management telematics company that was acquired by Trimble, a company that says it transforms “the way the world works by delivering products and services that connect the physical and digital worlds.” There, I led a team that pioneered the sale of telematics data, which started with using data for traffic predictions and expanded to other markets, including insurance.
At Trimble, I saw the difficulty legacy insurance carriers faced when they tried to incorporate new types of data into their underwriting and business processes; I started Indenseo to solve this problem by combining deep insurance industry experience with the nimbleness of a startup.
I knew fundraising would be a challenge: Commercial auto insurance has been unprofitable for years, and industry executives would be naturally skeptical that my solution would make it better. As my insurance industry friends said, “you sure picked a hard problem to solve.”
Even as a first-time founder, I did not anticipate how difficult it would be to raise venture funding, but the experience offered some insights into why so few Black entrepreneurs are funded by VCs.
Insurance is not the most mainstream venture category, though in recent years many insurtech companies have received funding. And VCs are not accustomed to seeing Black founders in this space. The overall scarcity of Black founders suggests that they’re not used to seeing many of us, period.
The odds of winning a venture round are low for everyone, but Black founders have a better chance playing pro sports than they do landing venture investments.
The odds of winning a venture round are low for everyone, but Black founders have a better chance playing pro sports than they do landing venture investments.
According to a Harvard study, between 1990 and 2016, just 0.4% of the entrepreneurs who received funding were Black. That’s 188 Black entrepreneurs, versus 34,000 white entrepreneurs in total, or about seven per year. In 2016, nine Black NFL quarterbacks started at least one game during the season. Should anyone wonder why ambitious young Black men pursue sports careers?
I got the meetings and pitched Indenseo to investors in Silicon Valley, New York City, Chicago and Boston. I expected that my experience, my best-in-class team, the compelling Indeseo proposition, market fit, and the financial and advisory backing of notable insurance executives would land the dollars, despite the odds. I was wrong.
One recurring phenomenon we frequently encountered were dismissive and disrespectful investors (in the words of a white colleague). When I had one disappointing meeting after another, people in my multiracial network — many with extensive fundraising experience — told me it didn’t make sense. I’d resisted getting distracted by race as a factor, but white colleagues were saying that something wasn’t adding up.
As Toni Morrison said, “The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” My own lived experience is that it’s an added factor that Black entrepreneurs have to manage.
I assumed most investors were jerks, but my white colleagues were shocked
I followed advice given to many Black founders: take a white colleague to your pitch meeting. I brought colleagues who had done a lot of fundraising themselves; some of these meetings were with their contacts. I tried this strategy dozens of times, and my colleagues were repeatedly shocked at the treatment we received.
I assumed most investors were jerks in pitch meetings, but they told me the level of disrespect and dismissiveness I received was not typical.
But if I lose my temper, I’d likely be labeled as just another angry Black man.
I did let my frustration show once when I directed a VC’s attention to the milestones we’d met and industry support we had gathered.
“What does it take for us to get a check from you?” I asked. His response: There is nothing you can say or do to get me to invest, but if you get another VC to lead the round, call me.
In another conversation with a VC, I pointed out the lack of diversity in both the ranks of investors and the entrepreneurs they choose to fund. He replied that Silicon Valley has produced the greatest accumulation of wealth in human history in the last 25 years. Why do we need to change anything?
GW Chew is a friend and a Black founder who was also having difficulty getting VC funding for his vegan meat company, Something Better Foods. He approached investors to raise funds to meet the fast expanding demand for his products. Talk about traction.
A white investor told Chew that if the founder/CEO were white, the company would have raised millions already. My friend told me he’s no longer talking to VCs and is raising funds from alternative sources.
Then there are the grifters. I don’t think Black founders are the only ones whose ideas get stolen after pitch meetings, but it happened to me.
We pitched a VC firm that had a consultant with an insurance background on their team to help evaluate the Indenseo opportunity. VCs don’t sign NDAs, but we did sign one with the consultant, who said Black founders can’t get companies funded but white founders can. (Yes, he said it.)
He later tried to ingratiate himself by saying he was considering investing too. Instead, he founded a company that copied our ideas. (So much for our NDA.)
Eventually, he told me, “I like your team. Call me when the wheels fall off.” When he announced his new company, we saw that he was backed by the VC who brought him into our meeting. He has since gone on to raise more than $40 million.
So why didn’t I sue him for violating the NDA? I consulted with some of our angel investors and they said we would be better off fighting them in the marketplace, given our limited time and resources. It wasn’t the first time our ideas were stolen.
When another company we pitched appropriated some of our ideas, my contact there informed his executives that they’d signed an NDA with Indenseo. Their reply: Indenseo doesn’t have the money to sue us. But they weren’t domain experts and we had left out much about our plans: They announced their launch in The Wall Street Journal, but as I expected, they failed.
I’ve never pitched at a VC firm that had a Black person in the room
Am I calling VCs racists? I don’t know what’s in their hearts, but I do know what’s in their numbers. Dealing with unconscious bias is difficult because as a Black entrepreneur trying to build a company, you know it exists and you have to figure out a way to manage around it. But it’s a subtle problem.
I don’t think VCs wake up in the morning and consciously decide not to invest in Black entrepreneurs or businesses intentionally choose not to buy from companies founded by Black entrepreneurs. But, the results of who receives investment and who doesn’t are quantifiable: few VC funds have Black employees or invest in companies started by Black founders.
I have never pitched at a VC firm that had a Black person in the room. And the pipeline excuse doesn’t work. There are Black people with technical degrees who aren’t hired at VC firms and white VC investment partners who earned liberal arts degrees.
Sure, there are funds started by Black VCs, but they encounter unconscious bias too when raising money. While more Black VCs with more capital is a crucial element of addressing underrepresentation, does that mean VC firms that aren’t founded by Black investors don’t have to change anything?
Deciding to stop the time-consuming VC pitch process and go in another direction to fund and develop the company was quite liberating. Moving forward, we’re free to manage our startup without wondering how VCs will view our decisions in the future when we seek funding.
We raised money from angel investors (including the former CEO of one of the world’s leading analytics software companies and his wife). In addition to money, it expanded our knowledge and it improved our products. Another lesson learned: Angel investors may be more helpful to your company than VCs.
The ultimate judgment on Indenseo’s products and team will be rendered by customers, partners and domain experts. The insurance industry has unique metrics that determine a company’s profitability. If you’re selling analytics software and services, either your solution is helping improve those metrics or it isn’t. The insurance industry is validating our market fit and survival skills.
Don’t let VCs be the gatekeepers of your success
I was able to build Indenseo without VCs because the insurance industry operates differently from VCs. One of the keys to success in the insurance industry is developing trust. Insurance isn’t a tangible product. It offers the promise that when a customer pays its premiums the insurance company will be able to support them when they file a claim. Without trust, a company can’t succeed in the industry.
There is a process to get insurance industry trust, and many senior executives in the industry are reluctant to invest the time in startups that’s necessary for them to get that trust. That’s because they aren’t convinced the startup will persevere to get through the process of getting that trust. We are able to get time with those executives because they trust our team and they don’t doubt that it’s worth their time to talk to Indenseo. They know we won’t fold when times are difficult.
A change I’ve seen since I started Indenseo that works in our favor is insurers don’t rely on VCs to act as a de facto screen for which insurtechs have the best teams and solutions. That’s because they don’t have confidence in investors’ judgments about insurtech companies.
Another lesson I’ve learned from my experiences: Don’t let VCs be the gatekeepers of your success. There are other funding sources, such as angel investors, corporate strategic investors, crowdfunding and more. There is funding outside the United States. Don’t overlook international investors: There is wealth in African countries. I found a way of funding the company that works for Indenseo.
We’ve developed Indenseo with angel investors and sweat equity. The key to our success is the amazing team, our advisory board and using capital efficiently. They remind me that you’re not the only one with an emotional investment in this company. When I started this company the only people in the insurance industry I knew were the people I had interacted with when I worked at Trimble.
Most of the people on our advisory board and team with insurance industry backgrounds are people I’ve met since I started Indenseo. It takes time to build those relationships. Because of them there is no corner of the commercial property casualty insurance industry we can’t access. The head of insurtech at a global reinsurance company told me that ours is the best balanced team of any insurtech company they’ve seen.
We are in the early stages of showing our flagship product, and it isn’t available for general release yet. Our VP of Engineering is telling me about a new concern: that we don’t take on too many customers too quickly.
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If you’re not investing in diverse founders, you’re a bad investor
BLCK VC is a nonprofit focused on empowering Black investors and increasing diversity in venture capital.
We won’t sit here as we have for so many years with strong faces and encouraging words and pretend that we’re not tired.
We’re tired because we’ve spent yet another week mourning our Black brothers and sisters who died unjust deaths. We’re tired because we spent half of that week holding the hands of White allies as they were reminded that racism still exists and that it is, indeed, sad. We’re tired because we’re a broken record, telling firms and companies what they can do to fight racism and rarely getting the action they so emotionally promise they care about. We’re tired of holding back anger and sadness as we talk about these issues, knowing our industry isn’t even doing the bare minimum to support Black investors. On top of advising allies, mourning lives lost and working full time jobs, we also raised over $100,000. And we’re tired of racism.
Last week, BLCK VC hosted We Won’t Wait, a day of action where we called on venture firms to discuss, donate and diversify. We asked these firms to discuss Venture’s role in combating institutional racism, to donate to nonprofits that promote racial equity and to release their data on the diversity of their investment teams and portfolio founders. These are the first steps. If you haven’t done these, you’re likely not ready for “Office Hours.” So before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s address why these steps aren’t straightforward or sufficient.
Discuss. It took nationwide uprisings for many VC firms to discuss how they could combat institutional racism. Yet, 80% of firms don’t have one Black investment professional who can identify with what we go through in both our professional and personal lives. BLCK VC held its own discussion to share that perspective, centered on the experiences of Black investors and entrepreneurs.
During this discussion, Terri Burns of GV said, “when a Black person is murdered yet again by police, it is not correct to say that the system has failed, because the system was designed that way.” It is clear that systemic racism leads to the maltreatment, dehumanization and unjustified deaths of Black people across the country. Van Jones of Drive Capital drew a fitting analogy: “Being Black is like being in lane eight with a weight vest and cement boots.” Sounds uncomfortable. But that’s how every Black person in America feels stepping out of bed everyday. For Black founders, discrimination by VCs is par for the course. Elise Smith is not alone when she puts on her daily armor to allow herself to show up in the White-dominated industries of venture capital and Silicon Valley tech.
But we’re not going to repeat what they said. Because you can watch the video, and you can do the research, and you can understand the problem on your own. Truthfully, we have no interest in explaining the problem to White VCs again and again when so many of my brothers and sisters have already spoken on it. If you’d like to know why institutional racism made venture capital so homogeneous and exclusive and racist, please see here, here, here, here and here.
What we are interested in explaining is that these are just examples of what Black investors and entrepreneurs deal with everyday. For almost every Black person in tech, these examples are not only relatable, they are commonplace. These are not the stories that shock and surprise the Black community, these are the stories of the everyday. We didn’t talk about the times we heard the N-word from your colleagues or the times they said our natural hair and beards were unprofessional. We talked about the systems.
There are so many more stories and experiences out there besides what was shared by those seven voices, so please think about what perspectives are missing when you have your discussions. Not just your discussion about racism, but your discussions about the future of venture capital, and about aerospace investing, and about COVID-19 and D2C businesses, and about hiring, and about mentoring and about golf. Black voices are so often left out of the conversations where relationships are built and investment decisions are made, but discussions that lack a Black perspective are incomplete.
Donate. Many VC firms and investors spoke last week about donating their time and resources to Black entrepreneurs and investors — what an interesting way to talk about your job. Please do not donate your time or your money to Black investors or entrepreneurs.
Invest in Black founders because they’re some of the best entrepreneurs. Invest in them because they understand an issue that you do not. Invest in them for the same reason you invest in all of your entrepreneurs — because they’re good. When you frame what you’re doing as a donation, it not only demeans what these entrepreneurs are doing and perpetuates some of the most racist aspects of venture capital, but it also prevents you from understanding that you’re bad at your job. Yes, if you don’t have a diverse pipeline or a diverse portfolio you are bad at your job. Making a separate space and separate fund for Black entrepreneurs removes firms from the responsibility they have to search for, invest in and support Black founders.
If you would like to donate money, donate money to nonprofits that fight institutional racism. If you would like to donate time, volunteer. If you would like to become a better investor, figure out why your pipeline is so homogeneous and fix it.
Diversify. Let’s circle back to an important statistic: More than 80% of venture capital firms don’t have a single Black investor. This statistic is interesting because, as much as it’s about industry trends, it’s really about the failings of individual firms. Most firms don’t have a diverse investing staff. They don’t have a diverse investing staff because they don’t understand the value of racial diversity. They don’t understand the value of racial diversity because there are no diverse investors to force them to think about diversity. Rinse. Repeat.
The single most important part of diversifying a VC firm and diversifying VC broadly is tracking the lack of diversity. Most firms do not routinely track data on their investor, deal pipeline, event or investment diversity. As a result, they rarely think about racial diversity. This is where we ask firms to start. Yes, mentorship can be helpful, office hours can be helpful, but if you’re not tracking your firm’s diversity metrics, they will not improve.
What now? Okay, you’ve discussed racism with your partners, you’ve donated money to nonprofits and you (hopefully) started tracking the diversity of your firm. Now what? Racism resolved? Probably not.
Hopefully these conversations made you realize where your firm’s specific shortcomings are, and you have to address those. Most firms will realize they have a pipeline problem, so start there. Do all of your events, dinners and programs have Black representation? When you’re trying to fill an investor role, did you post the job on your website and in different Black online communities? Did your final round of candidates reflect the diversity of our country? Did you support the diverse investors you already employ so they don’t feel disadvantaged, under-advocated and left out? When you’re trying to write new checks, did you utilize Black scouts and consider businesses that don’t address you directly?
When you’ve done all of that, ask yourself this: When the protests quiet down, and articles about racial oppression aren’t at the top of your timeline, what will you be doing? Don’t let it just be office hours. Don’t let the enormity of the work ahead paralyze you against taking action now. Your actions matter. Your inaction matters.
The resilience of the Black community is unparalleled. That resilience means that no matter how tired we are, we will still fight to change this country and to change this industry. It means that no matter how many times we don’t want to advise allies, we will. And it means that no matter how many times we face oppression and mourn for our brothers and sisters, we will still rise to the challenges. And while the stories of overt racism and microaggressions will continue, so too will our drive to move forward and our action to break down barriers. We will continue to build a home for ourselves in this industry. We will continue to work to ensure that Black Lives Matter.
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Instagram reenables GIF sharing after GIPHY promises no more racism
A racial slur GIF slipped into GIPHY’s sticker library earlier this month, prompting Instagram and Snapchat to drop their GIPHY integrations. Now Instagram is reactivating after GIPHY confirmed its reviewed its GIF library four times and will preemptively review any new GIFs it adds. Snapchat said it had nothing to share right now about whether it’s going to reactivate GIPHY.
“We’ve been in close contact with GIPHY throughout this process and we’re confident that they have put measures in place to ensure that Instagram users have a good experience” an Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch. GIPHY told TechCrunch in a statement that “To anyone who was affected: we’re sorry. We take full responsibility for this recent event and under no circumstances does
GIPHY condone or support this kind of content . . . We have also finished a full investigation into our content moderations systems and processes and have made specific changes to our process to ensure soemthing like this does not happen again.”
We first reported Instagram was building a GIPHY integration back in January before it launched a week later, with Snapchat adding a similar feature in February. But it wasn’t long before things went wrong. First spotted by a user in the U.K. around March 8th, the GIF included a racial slur. We’ve shared a censored version of the image below, but warning, it still includes graphic content that may be offensive to some users.
When asked, Snapchat told TechCrunch ““We have removed GIPHY from our application until we can be assured that this will never happen again.” Instagram wasn’t aware that the racist GIF was available in its GIPHY integration until informed by TechCrunch, leading to a shut down of the feature within an hour. An Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch “This type of content has no place on Instagram.” After 12 hours of silence, GIPHY responded the next morning, telling us “After investigation of the incident, this sticker was available due to a bug in our content moderation filters specifically affecting GIF stickers.”
The fiasco highlights the risks of major platforms working with third-party developers to brings outside and crowdsourced content into their apps. Snapchat historically resisted working with established developers, but recently has struck more partnerships particularly around augmented reality lenses and marketing service providers. While it’s an easy way to provide more entertainment and creative expression tools, developer integrations also force companies to rely on the quality and safety of things they don’t fully control. As Instagram and Snapchat race for users around the world, they’ll have to weigh the risks and rewards of letting developers into their gardens.
GIPHY’s full statement is below.
CHANGES TO GIPHY’S STICKER MODERATION
Before we get into the details, we wanted to take a moment and sincerely apologize for the
deeply offensive sticker discovered by a user on March 8, 2018. To anyone who was affected:
we’re sorry. We take full responsibility for this recent event and under no circumstances does
GIPHY condone or support this kind of content.
The content was immediately removed and after investigation a bug was found in our content
moderation filters affecting stickers. This bug was immediately fixed and all stickers were re-
moderated.
We have also finished a full investigation into our content moderation systems and processes
and have made specific changes to our process to ensure something like this does not happen
again.THE CHANGES
After fixing the bug in our content moderation filters and confirming that the sticker was
successfully detected, we re-moderated our entire sticker library 4x.
We have also added another level of GIPHY moderation before each sticker is approved into
the library. This is now a permanent addition to our moderation process.
We hope this will ensure that GIPHY stickers will always be fun and safe no matter where you
see them.THE FUTURE AND BEYOND
GIFs and Stickers are supposed to make the Internet a better, more entertaining place.
GIPHY is committed to making sure that’s always the case. As GIPHY continues to grow, we’re
going to continue looking for ways to improve our user experience. Please let us know how we
can help at: support@giphy.com.
Team Giphy.
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Snapchat removes Giphy feature due to racial slur GIF
Snapchat has temporarily removed its Giphy GIF sticker feature after a user saw an extremely racist GIF as an option. Snapchat confirms to TechCrunch “As soon as we were made aware, we removed the GIF and have disabled Giphy until we can be sure that this won’t happen again. Read More
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