Speaker 1: Afro tech World, the Child has managing partner and precursor
Speaker 1: Vengures is on the virtual stage talking with Lisa Watson,
Speaker 1: co founders CEO Squad and it comes to no surprise
Speaker 1: that when you're investing early in the startup life cycle,
Speaker 1: many will find out what they originally started building has
Speaker 1: to morph into something new. What does Child think about
Speaker 1: this pivot? Does he get concerned when he invested in
Speaker 1: one thing and it becomes anohing? Yeah, the pivoting question
Speaker 1: is a good one. So I do care about the
Speaker 1: initial idea. I I know some precedency investors who don't
Speaker 1: care about the initial idea. They're just like, this is
Speaker 1: an amazing person that The challenge we have is that
Speaker 1: most of the companies we've acted are raising five two
Speaker 1: million dollars. It's not a lot of money in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things. So if your first original idea
Speaker 1: is really off base, you might not have enough time
Speaker 1: to actually pivot to a new idea. Pivot are pretty
Speaker 1: common for us to precede normally because we're backing somebody
Speaker 1: pre product with the hypothesis, and sometimes you roll out
Speaker 1: the hypothesis in the form of a product and it
Speaker 1: turns out that the market responds to it in a
Speaker 1: very different way than you had expected. So whenever that happens,
Speaker 1: I always try to take founders through a set of
Speaker 1: questions to figure out did we get something wrong about
Speaker 1: our initial hypothesis, And sometimes it happens. Sometimes the hypothesis
Speaker 1: was correct, but the market is less interesting than we
Speaker 1: thought once we get interest. So, hey, there's people who
Speaker 1: want to buy this product. They like it, song to
Speaker 1: them is kind of a pain. Servicing them's kind of
Speaker 1: a pain. There's a market here, but not one that
Speaker 1: like we as a company are like super excited to tackle.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes you launch it and you go the
Speaker 1: product we launched was okay, and it's fine, but in
Speaker 1: launching it, we discovered something that we think is way
Speaker 1: more interesting. So the way I think about is it's
Speaker 1: always okay, I think to of it if you're doing
Speaker 1: it from a position of knowledge. What I worry about sometimes, though,
Speaker 1: is people who are flailing. They launched a product, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work immediately, so they launched another product that doesn't
Speaker 1: work immediately. Sometimes you just have to like take a
Speaker 1: breath and figure out what did you learn? And sometimes
Speaker 1: the answer is the product is right, the market's just
Speaker 1: not ready for it. So do we want to hunker
Speaker 1: down and be patient and wait for the market to
Speaker 1: catch up with what we think or do we want
Speaker 1: to just say, hey, you know, we're way too early here.
Speaker 1: We should probably abandon this and find something new. So
Speaker 1: a lot of what I try to get people to
Speaker 1: think through is what did we actually learn from this launch?
Speaker 1: What have we actually learned about the customer? And are
Speaker 1: we doing this from a position of information and knowledge
Speaker 1: and not from a position of like fearer panting. I'm well, Lucas,
Speaker 1: this is black tech, free money. I'm going to answer
Speaker 1: this you to some of the biggest names somebody brightness,
Speaker 1: minds and brilliant ideas. If you black and building simply
Speaker 1: using techis and Chiga back this podcast. This fee Barry
Speaker 1: Williams this chief operating officer of Bandwagon, fan club data
Speaker 1: and identity analytics tech company focus on the sports and
Speaker 1: entertainment space. She's also a diversity inclusion and corporate social
Speaker 1: responsibility consultant. Prior to Bandwagon, she held executive roles at
Speaker 1: companies like al Turtles, Stuff Up, and Facebook. Bar is
Speaker 1: a finger, not a coder, and I wanted to gather
Speaker 1: her thoughts on why it seems to be harder for
Speaker 1: black people who are non technical roles at companies that
Speaker 1: bill tech to see themselves as being in tech. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: if we say we work in HR are legal at
Speaker 1: a healthcare and energy company, we're much quicker to say
Speaker 1: we work in those sectors because there's still some the
Speaker 1: mystification that it needs to happen about what building tech means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there probably is um level of disconnect. I guess I
Speaker 1: would call it in terms of are you really in
Speaker 1: tech or are you tech? A Jason and I think
Speaker 1: I feel like, particularly in my field, like being a lawyer,
Speaker 1: I feel like you're still in tech because there are
Speaker 1: certain things that you have to do and double check
Speaker 1: in terms and make sure the product doesn't violate any laws,
Speaker 1: um that your privacy is kept private, that you know
Speaker 1: something doesn't happen where the company ends up getting sued
Speaker 1: because of some discriminatory element of what it is that
Speaker 1: you created, or even if it's looking at it from
Speaker 1: the lens of how inclusive is the product, like kind
Speaker 1: a blind person useless. So if the answers know, you
Speaker 1: may be opening yourself up not just two lawsuits. But
Speaker 1: people also neglect the fact that, you know, a tech
Speaker 1: company can do something and get horrible pr and get dragged,
Speaker 1: and that has absolutely nothing to do with whether the
Speaker 1: product was good, bad, or and different. It could be
Speaker 1: you had a really terrible marketing campaign, but if you
Speaker 1: might have had a black marketer in that room, they
Speaker 1: would have told you that that Ancestry DNA where a
Speaker 1: slave runs away with her masters, not necessarily the best
Speaker 1: way to get us sign up for Ancestry DNA care. So,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's about saving the company from itself,
Speaker 1: even if you don't think that that is a an
Speaker 1: adequate tech role. And I'd say that because I'm married
Speaker 1: to a product manager, so he is very in and
Speaker 1: of tech and not tech adjacent. So but I still
Speaker 1: don't think that, you know, I don't think that those
Speaker 1: roles are tech adjacent. They're just as important to keep
Speaker 1: the company going is anything else. Do you think there's
Speaker 1: any level of feeling not included because we may not
Speaker 1: be able to code if we work at a tech
Speaker 1: company and we can't say we work in tech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely think people will look at it that way.
Speaker 1: There are lots of people who look at it that
Speaker 1: way in a sense that oh, well, you're not really
Speaker 1: you're not really in the industry because you can't write
Speaker 1: a line of code. I sure can't, but I could
Speaker 1: tell you. You show me how what you've written and
Speaker 1: how it works, and I can tell you whether that's
Speaker 1: legal or not valuable. So I rebuke that whole idea
Speaker 1: in the name of Jesus, But I understand that some
Speaker 1: people don't. UM. But I do think that there's definitely
Speaker 1: kind of a there's definitely a hierarchy, and people look
Speaker 1: at it. The people who can code, or the people
Speaker 1: who are product managers, are the people who are product designers.
Speaker 1: Those are the people that are really in tech. All
Speaker 1: your you know, your g n A functions, you're legal,
Speaker 1: your sales, your marketing UM hr dn I. They look
Speaker 1: at that as like it's not really you're not really
Speaker 1: moving the product forward. You know, you've done a lot
Speaker 1: of advocacy for being in the room and trying to
Speaker 1: hold the door open for other people to be able
Speaker 1: to get in the room. But how can you admonish
Speaker 1: other folks to both strategically and successfully advocate for having
Speaker 1: more faces, you know, brown faces, black faces in the room.
Speaker 1: UM when everybody don't want us in the room. So
Speaker 1: how how can we do that and not feel like
Speaker 1: we're in a precarious situation, you know, putting ourselves in jeopardy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that they're I wouldn't even say that.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't want us. I said, most
Speaker 1: of them probably don't want us in the room because
Speaker 1: we're gonna point out things that they don't see because
Speaker 1: a lot of these people their coding and building products
Speaker 1: that it's it's solely focused on their lens and view
Speaker 1: of the world, which is not the global population. Sorry
Speaker 1: to say that is not what the global population looks like.
Speaker 1: Y'all are actually in the minority. So they don't want
Speaker 1: us in the room. But I think what's important is,
Speaker 1: and I always lead from a diversity standpoint, is if
Speaker 1: you tell people how much money they can make or
Speaker 1: how much money they will lose, that is when they
Speaker 1: will listen. That is when they will care. They don't
Speaker 1: want to hear like I never ever start a conversation
Speaker 1: with oh, well it's the right thing to do. Well,
Speaker 1: I have hell, we all know it's the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. But if people really cared about doing the
Speaker 1: right thing, it would have already been done. So but
Speaker 1: if I tell you, if you put out this type
Speaker 1: of marketing campaign with these visuals and this narrative, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get dragged on Twitter. That ad is gonna have
Speaker 1: to come down. You will have lost five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And however, many men and woman hours creating this ad.
Speaker 1: So there's that angle. Or it's if you make it
Speaker 1: a product that is inclusive and has multiple use cases
Speaker 1: and functions and also maybe has an audio function, has
Speaker 1: a function that you know will allow that to have
Speaker 1: a blind person use it, you're gonna gain that much
Speaker 1: more traction because now more people can use your product.
Speaker 1: So that's more revenue. You know, you testified before Congress
Speaker 1: about AI bias, artificial intelligence bias, and the congressman asked
Speaker 1: you about how that could be. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: just developing this this this software, and I guess some
Speaker 1: people might imagine that it's not inherently racist. It's just
Speaker 1: cold and right. But you know, can you speak to
Speaker 1: what's happening with the development of AI that should be
Speaker 1: potentially cause a concern for black and brown people as
Speaker 1: we get more into a world that relies on artificial intelligence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when he asked me that question, I kind of
Speaker 1: I just remember sitting in church with my mom and
Speaker 1: she would just pinch me and say, fix your face,
Speaker 1: Fix your face. Because I was like, how, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? How is it? How could it possibly be
Speaker 1: inherently biases code? Well, who makes the code? People? It's
Speaker 1: unconscious biases, Like it's not like the code magically came
Speaker 1: from the sky. A lot of things that go into
Speaker 1: making these algorithms that will tell you your credit score
Speaker 1: or your availability for a certain mortgage amount. It's based
Speaker 1: on stale data. So the example that I gave was,
Speaker 1: if you are basing this off of data from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, well, they were still red lining in black neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: saying we couldn't having restrictive covenants and deeds and said
Speaker 1: we couldn't buy in certain areas. So if you're using
Speaker 1: that data, it's going to be inherently biased because it's
Speaker 1: based on racist laws. And so if you are not
Speaker 1: updating that data or using additional data to corroborate what
Speaker 1: you have already coded, then you're doing it wrong. And
Speaker 1: the way that the easy summation of that for me
Speaker 1: is who fact checks the fact checkers because in this instance,
Speaker 1: the people that are coding the algorithms that will determine
Speaker 1: your credit worthiness will also determine um. They also use
Speaker 1: this same kind of functionality in policing algorithms to tell
Speaker 1: police where they should go on certain times of days.
Speaker 1: And it's based off of previous crime data history. It's
Speaker 1: based off of moon phases, it's based off temperature records,
Speaker 1: it's based off of like randomness. So you're just gonna say,
Speaker 1: because in nineteen eighty five it was a d eight
Speaker 1: degrees in East Oakland, So now we need to send
Speaker 1: twenty cars to patrol there tonight. Yeah. Like oh, and
Speaker 1: it's also based on sports team records, So I guess
Speaker 1: how do you gauge that? Because how many cop cars
Speaker 1: do you send in Order Dame when they win a
Speaker 1: big game and those kids storm the field versus the
Speaker 1: Warriors lose and you have had a bajillion cars around
Speaker 1: the coliseum, So like, how do you gauge? And a
Speaker 1: lot of that is gonna be you know, unconscious bias.
Speaker 1: You're gonna send the twenty cop cars so where the
Speaker 1: majority of the black people are, but you know, those
Speaker 1: white kids storm in the field. Oh, they're just celebrating.
Speaker 1: Can you enlighten things on fire? Can you? Can you
Speaker 1: talk to me like a little bit about what's what's
Speaker 1: happening in the actual technology that allows it to be biased,
Speaker 1: like seeing certain faces versus other faces, thinking some people
Speaker 1: look at like versus other people looking at like. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about like the unconscious bias and their
Speaker 1: actual test of that where you have to decide and
Speaker 1: that you get like I think three seconds to scroll through,
Speaker 1: um and I've taken this course. You have three seconds
Speaker 1: to decide if this person is like a good person
Speaker 1: or a bad person. And it's interesting because you could see,
Speaker 1: you know, seek men with with their hair wrapped, or
Speaker 1: you could see a black woman with a natural hair,
Speaker 1: or your who's dark skin, or you could see a
Speaker 1: lighter skin black woman with straight hair, or you see
Speaker 1: a white lady, or you see a dark skin black man,
Speaker 1: and you literally just have to press the button and
Speaker 1: figure out, oh is this person not sure? And even
Speaker 1: just like not just looking at their face, but also
Speaker 1: the clothing. Some of them had on college sweatshirts, which
Speaker 1: is gonna give you a whole difference view of that person, right, like,
Speaker 1: so maybe I might be afraid of your face, but
Speaker 1: if I see the fact that you're wearing a shirt
Speaker 1: and says Stanford, maybe I'm less afraid. And it's little
Speaker 1: subtle cues like that too. So you you're dealing with
Speaker 1: people who are taking those tests and to some extent
Speaker 1: are failing them. Uh, and those are the people who
Speaker 1: are actually doing the coding. And it's then understanding that
Speaker 1: even little things like the hand dispensers in um in
Speaker 1: public bathrooms, like you go to the airport and I
Speaker 1: have to stick my hand under that thing three times
Speaker 1: before SoC will come out. And it's because it was
Speaker 1: designed for people with lighter skin hands and little simple
Speaker 1: things where it's not that you think people are doing
Speaker 1: it on purpose, it's just that is what they're used to,
Speaker 1: and so that is how they design the product, and
Speaker 1: the same thing is transferred to code. Well, if this
Speaker 1: is the data that I've been given in order to
Speaker 1: base your credit score off of, and this is historical
Speaker 1: data of what the credit scores and certain based on
Speaker 1: your zip code, based on your age, if this is
Speaker 1: the information that we've had for the last ten years, well,
Speaker 1: then that's what I'm gonna use so we've already established
Speaker 1: in this conversation that you know, they don't want to
Speaker 1: send the room in the first place, you know, in
Speaker 1: order to the people that you're advocating for, they don't
Speaker 1: want to send the room. And then at the same time,
Speaker 1: having us not in the room causes these biased situations
Speaker 1: to proliferate. You know, if to use a big word,
Speaker 1: not respecting the probably a bigger word than necessary. But
Speaker 1: so the million dollar question is is how do we
Speaker 1: get more of us in the room in order to
Speaker 1: be able to solve these problems for our future. I
Speaker 1: think the answer to that is probably twofold one. It's
Speaker 1: going to take people willing to bring people into the
Speaker 1: rooms that are not carbon copies of themselves. And I
Speaker 1: say that because I think the status something like fifty
Speaker 1: three of tech employees are referrals. And let's just say,
Speaker 1: like if the company is probably six white males and
Speaker 1: the other is a mix of everybody else. But also
Speaker 1: in that forty percent would be predominantly Asian. Well, that
Speaker 1: leaves us with at about probably five at best. And
Speaker 1: I know the one thing that I did when I
Speaker 1: worked at Facebook is every single person that I referred
Speaker 1: was a black woman. Even when I left, I still
Speaker 1: would float their resumes, give them to people who I
Speaker 1: knew were allies internally, and the good news is they
Speaker 1: all got hired. But it's because I knew who to
Speaker 1: pick and choose in terms of like advocating for them internally.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that it's hard to It's like
Speaker 1: nine times I'd attend if you have an internal advocate,
Speaker 1: that will get you farther down the line, But because
Speaker 1: there are a few of us there, it's hard to
Speaker 1: find an internal advocate. So usually it's a friend of
Speaker 1: a friend or somebody from that went to your college
Speaker 1: or your law school or your business school or what
Speaker 1: have you, and doesn't always have to be a a
Speaker 1: internal advocate, but somebody who knows how to navigate that
Speaker 1: system and we'll we'll champion it for you. And I
Speaker 1: think the other piece to that is also just making
Speaker 1: sure that you know if if you get inside, you
Speaker 1: have to be to me. I always look at um.
Speaker 1: There was a line in my black graduation from Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and I think it was Michael Eric Dyson who gave
Speaker 1: the speech, and he always said he at the end
Speaker 1: of the speech, he said, be a trojan horse. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I look at everywhere I go
Speaker 1: is And I've seen two types of black people in
Speaker 1: these companies. One is the type that's a trojan horse,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna hold the door open and advocate for
Speaker 1: other people to get inside, or if there are people
Speaker 1: already there, you advocate for them to get promoted, or
Speaker 1: you advocate for them to get better work assignments. And
Speaker 1: the second type of person I've seen is the type
Speaker 1: that wants to be the special Negro snowflake and they
Speaker 1: want to make sure the door slammed because they want
Speaker 1: to be one of a few. Like that makes you
Speaker 1: feel special. Now that doesn't make me feel special, but
Speaker 1: but for some of those people, it's that is their
Speaker 1: calling card. That so the less the less of us
Speaker 1: that are there, the more special they feel. And so
Speaker 1: they want to make sure that the door is shut.
Speaker 1: And I have even seen d I practitioners like that,
Speaker 1: which to me is like, how do you have this job? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know how you have a job because
Speaker 1: you're gonna be a yes person for the majority. But
Speaker 1: it just seems like a a cruel bait and switch.
Speaker 1: But I would say it's it's gonna be that twofold.
Speaker 1: You have to have people that are on the inside
Speaker 1: that are gonna be trojan horses, and you also have
Speaker 1: to make sure that you have internal advocates and work
Speaker 1: your network. You know, tech is still, you know, a
Speaker 1: very new industry, may in may in the mainstream context.
Speaker 1: You know, if you think fifteen years ago, you just
Speaker 1: started to get things like Facebook and etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: you know, so let's say let's call it twenty years
Speaker 1: that tech has been like in the dominant, you know,
Speaker 1: mainstream conversation, there are so many attorneys who maybe work
Speaker 1: in real estate law or maybe they work in criminal law,
Speaker 1: but they want to be in to this tech thing.
Speaker 1: How can they find their way into helping startups? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say there are lots of startups that um
Speaker 1: can't retain large firms. So like if you think of
Speaker 1: like a MOFO or Cooley, UM, you know, they just
Speaker 1: can't afford the larger companies. And so the answer to
Speaker 1: that would be, maybe that person offers them discounted services
Speaker 1: just to get the experience to say that they've been
Speaker 1: advising startups or helping startups. I think that's one thing
Speaker 1: that actually would be great in terms of bolstering your resume,
Speaker 1: and then who knows if that startup actually gets more
Speaker 1: funding than you would be the person that they would
Speaker 1: end up hiring as their first attorney, whether that's a
Speaker 1: general counsel role or some other um. The other thing
Speaker 1: you can do is I always tell people to make
Speaker 1: your experience analogous to whatever it is that you're applying for.
Speaker 1: So people tend to look at resumes and they don't
Speaker 1: really or they look at job descriptions rather and they
Speaker 1: don't change their resume to fit the narrative of what
Speaker 1: the job description is looking for. That is a huge
Speaker 1: no no. So for every bullet point that is on
Speaker 1: that job description, your resume needs to detail how you
Speaker 1: have either done something that is just like that and
Speaker 1: here are the results that I got from doing that work,
Speaker 1: or it needs to be an analogous argument meaning I
Speaker 1: didn't you know, I didn't necessarily do it this way,
Speaker 1: but this is something that I did that is very
Speaker 1: akin to what it is that you're looking for. And
Speaker 1: I don't even I would start off with I haven't
Speaker 1: done this. I would just say, you know, in accordance
Speaker 1: with you know, X, Y and Z type of experience,
Speaker 1: I've done something analogists such as blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and here are the results from that. So always make
Speaker 1: sure that you are reading the job description and making
Speaker 1: sure that your resume lines up with it. A lot
Speaker 1: of people simply just send the same generic resume out
Speaker 1: over and over again. And also they need to be
Speaker 1: mindful that the way the job descriptions are written, it's
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you can't tell what is I bucket
Speaker 1: them in three ways something what's a what's a must have?
Speaker 1: What is a nice to have? And what is a moonshot?
Speaker 1: Like we want you to have these, you know, five
Speaker 1: imperative skills. It would be great if you have these
Speaker 1: three that are nice to have. And then like also
Speaker 1: if you speak Arabic and Japanese like we love it now,
Speaker 1: you probably are going to get that, but the other
Speaker 1: things you probably can. And um also be mindful that
Speaker 1: though the words and the phrasings that they're using in
Speaker 1: those job descriptions, those are the keywords that they're going
Speaker 1: to be searching for in their portal when they're looking
Speaker 1: to advance people to screening interviews. And so again, if
Speaker 1: you're just sending out a generic resume and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have any of those buzzwords in it. There you're not
Speaker 1: going to get past the screen. So let's take the
Speaker 1: other arguments or the other case to this, and how
Speaker 1: does it start up that has potential court an advisor
Speaker 1: who may be a lawyer, like how to like what
Speaker 1: gets Barri's attention to for you to be an advisor
Speaker 1: to my thing? A good idea, Like honestly, I'm not
Speaker 1: someone who focuses solely on you know, how how fast
Speaker 1: can they go public or how much money can they
Speaker 1: make or how much money have they already raised? And
Speaker 1: for me it's it's also the journey and like how
Speaker 1: passionate are these these people are this team about what
Speaker 1: it is that they're doing. And also I always try
Speaker 1: to ask people, you know, what what is the difference
Speaker 1: ferentiation factor between you and your competitors? Because at that point,
Speaker 1: I've probably looked at who who's your competition? How is
Speaker 1: this different? Like what what's gonna be the factor that
Speaker 1: gets you noticed and gets you investment dollars and not
Speaker 1: crash and burn as opposed to these people who are
Speaker 1: already doing something similar may not be exact, but if
Speaker 1: it's similar enough people will pass on it. UM. So
Speaker 1: those are the things that really catch my attention. And
Speaker 1: UM and a deck, what is your what does your
Speaker 1: deck look like? If you have a thirty slide deck?
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not reading all that. And I can
Speaker 1: tell you from working with UM, working with startups and
Speaker 1: then working with people working with investors, that's literally the
Speaker 1: first thing they say they want a deck that is
Speaker 1: in ten slides or less, and ten is pushing it.
Speaker 1: It's the seven that's even better. How should start us
Speaker 1: be thinking about compensating advisors? Like is there a compensation
Speaker 1: for an advisory role? Is there an equity package? Like
Speaker 1: how do you get you know, folks, really good attorneys
Speaker 1: to come on and give them some incentive to be there?
Speaker 1: Or do you need an incentive to be there? Um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be on an individual basis. And always I
Speaker 1: always say you get what you negotiate. So that's something
Speaker 1: that people should always be mindful of. Is it's not
Speaker 1: gonna necessarily you don't You're not necessarily gonna always get
Speaker 1: what you deserve. You're gonna get what you can negotiate.
Speaker 1: And for me, when I have done it, it's been
Speaker 1: a mix of actual just equity, and in compensation. Some
Speaker 1: people choose just compensation, some people choose just equity. It's
Speaker 1: really gonna depend on what that person wants and what
Speaker 1: it is that the startup can provide. I would say
Speaker 1: nine times i'd a tend it's easier for them to
Speaker 1: provide equity because they may not have the cash on
Speaker 1: hand yet because they haven't raised So but if you're
Speaker 1: getting equity and they're doing a preseed round or anything else,
Speaker 1: like you're you're gonna be one of the few people
Speaker 1: that that's on the cap table, and that's a good
Speaker 1: place to be, particularly if they end up getting funding
Speaker 1: and they do go public or they're acquired. That's the
Speaker 1: other thing people don't think about. Everyone's always so like,
Speaker 1: you know, short term, focused on how how long can
Speaker 1: we get to I p O? Well, maybe I p
Speaker 1: O isn't necessarily the best route to go. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: perfectly fine to just get acquired by a larger company.
Speaker 1: I was looking at your website, and so many people
Speaker 1: have blogs on their website that do not get updated
Speaker 1: because people got stuff to do. But like, you really
Speaker 1: go in on on your writing, right, And I wonder,
Speaker 1: like what makes you prioritize the thoughts that you have
Speaker 1: to say to publish them regularly. Yeah, I think because
Speaker 1: there's always something going on, particularly in the last I
Speaker 1: would say three years, there's there's always been something going on,
Speaker 1: whether it's in the tech space or it has to
Speaker 1: do with social justice. And like that was the thing
Speaker 1: that I wrote um last was talking about. You know,
Speaker 1: all these tech companies made these pledges like after George Floyd, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we care so deeply, and we're gonna invest in black founders.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do business, you know, we're gonna do have
Speaker 1: more supplier diversity funds deviated and set aside for black
Speaker 1: owned businesses, and we're gonna have these hiring targets where
Speaker 1: we're gonna have of our leadership is gonna be black.
Speaker 1: And it's like okay, And then you read the fine
Speaker 1: print and it's like by twenty six it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's fine. At least you gave me something to
Speaker 1: work with, right, like I have, there's a metric and
Speaker 1: then there's a day. But that was my gripe. As
Speaker 1: it's been a year and no one has reported out
Speaker 1: on any of the the things that they've done, and like,
Speaker 1: where where is it? Because I could say I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do a whole bunch of things today and but I
Speaker 1: won't have them done until so. Does that mean you're
Speaker 1: not gonna start working on them until so? For me,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it should be a
Speaker 1: constant progress report. And the other thing that gave me
Speaker 1: such pause about that was the idea of saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to self audit and report out to the
Speaker 1: press was like, you know, no, that literally is like
Speaker 1: what I said. That's like if I punish my son
Speaker 1: and then tell him, well, what do you want your
Speaker 1: punishment to be? And he says, I want cookies and
Speaker 1: ice cream and my Nintendo switch, and I say okay,
Speaker 1: and then I'm just gonna report out that he was punished.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you all that other stuff. So that,
Speaker 1: to me, is not a viable option. There need to
Speaker 1: be independent auditors that are coming in and looking at
Speaker 1: that because there's no there's no incentive for the company
Speaker 1: to really tell us the truth, right, Like, they'll just
Speaker 1: report out the metrics that fit their narrative that makes
Speaker 1: it look like they did something, but they're going to
Speaker 1: completely bypass and maybe the other are four things that
Speaker 1: they said they were going to do. So we'll just
Speaker 1: tell you about this one. Just focus on this one,
Speaker 1: and then you ask them, well what about the other four?
Speaker 1: What about them? We really did really great on this
Speaker 1: one though. Yeah, I mean when we have I don't
Speaker 1: want to call everybody in diversity theater, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of folks who do do diversity theater, and we
Speaker 1: think when we have things like a George Floyd during
Speaker 1: a COVID pandemic happened, and so a lot of us
Speaker 1: do talk about how to who's holding these folks accountable
Speaker 1: to what they said they were going to do. What
Speaker 1: has to happen to get to a place to where
Speaker 1: there is a body that holds people accountable to those promises?
Speaker 1: Like what is it shareholders that have to step in
Speaker 1: and organize, or like what has to happen in order
Speaker 1: to get to a place that we're saying we're no
Speaker 1: longer having to say somebody has to hold them accountable
Speaker 1: to such and such is holding them accountable? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think it should be. It's going to be a mix
Speaker 1: of shareholders and I would love to see like a
Speaker 1: coalition of independent auditors who kind of do this work
Speaker 1: um and then make them actually have to sign on
Speaker 1: to handle that. But I think that that's gonna be
Speaker 1: very difficult because these people they don't want to be
Speaker 1: held accountable. They want to continue to do what they're
Speaker 1: doing and do it in the dark. And when they
Speaker 1: decide to tell you something is when they decided to
Speaker 1: tell you something, and it's it's troublesome. But I think
Speaker 1: that you know, press asking these questions, and that's why
Speaker 1: you asked why I published as much as I do?
Speaker 1: Because again, who fact checks the fact checkers or in
Speaker 1: this case, who's gonna who's gonna tell me what you've
Speaker 1: actually got gotten done? You had a year and like
Speaker 1: I want to see, I want to see the receipts,
Speaker 1: and it looks like you don't have any. So what
Speaker 1: that tells me is you haven't started working on this,
Speaker 1: or if you have, your results were so abysmal you
Speaker 1: didn't even want to share them. So but I think
Speaker 1: there's a fast company like they don't they donated, but
Speaker 1: they they made their entire June issue around this topic.
Speaker 1: And I think if you have more people continuously asking
Speaker 1: the question, you can only avoid it for so long
Speaker 1: if they're like eight or nine publications asking you the
Speaker 1: same question. And that's the other thing I thought was
Speaker 1: super interesting is then you have people who write independently
Speaker 1: or I'm but I'm a Fast Company contributor. But then
Speaker 1: you have other people who are doing things independently asking
Speaker 1: the question. You have people creating tools that are asking
Speaker 1: the question. My favorite tool last year is one called
Speaker 1: layoffs dot f y I, where it listed all all
Speaker 1: the people who got laid off during the pandemic from
Speaker 1: UM I want to say, starting in March, and from
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of big tech companies down to like
Speaker 1: some smaller ones, but ones that are significantly funded. And
Speaker 1: and in some cases you could see the names of
Speaker 1: the people and a cursory glance of that the names
Speaker 1: and the department that they were in. And it was
Speaker 1: h people, it will salespeople, it was d I people,
Speaker 1: it was all the people were typically people of color
Speaker 1: and women congregate the most in those departments. And you
Speaker 1: could look at some of the names and it was
Speaker 1: very clear I could probably guess what this person is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But that's that's the thing. It's like, you have people
Speaker 1: who are doing it independently you have, you know, actual
Speaker 1: magazines and press asking the question, there's only so long
Speaker 1: that you can hide this information. There was a blog
Speaker 1: post you did about social media and it being an
Speaker 1: extension of white privilege, and it was a white privilege
Speaker 1: in the office, and I specifically wanted to hone in
Speaker 1: on this one line you wrote. It said, Um, there's
Speaker 1: an added layer of complexity when you add tech and
Speaker 1: social media to this mix. Now you don't just get
Speaker 1: to know your colleagues in the workplace, but also by
Speaker 1: their digital presence and what they choose to comment on
Speaker 1: or avoid. And I particularly asked this because I hire people.
Speaker 1: And I wonder because the first time I see a resume,
Speaker 1: I gotta look at Facebook, I got to look at Twitter.
Speaker 1: I want to see what you're talking about and who
Speaker 1: are you really beyond this resume that you gave. And
Speaker 1: I wonder your thoughts on how this continues to play
Speaker 1: out and the complexity in tech. I think that the
Speaker 1: complexity with it is like oftentimes you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: working with these people who are also building the tools.
Speaker 1: And one thing that they did at Facebook is as
Speaker 1: soon as you accept your offer, I think within forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, of me accepting my offer. Um my soon
Speaker 1: to be colleagues sent me Facebook requests and I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: are we doing it? I don't know. I don't And
Speaker 1: my husband specifically said, why don't you just create the
Speaker 1: limited profile function and add them to that? And I said, honestly,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a lot of work, Like that's me
Speaker 1: maintaining essentially to digital presences on one plant. For him,
Speaker 1: that's too much work. If you look, get what you're getting.
Speaker 1: So if you like I remember that might have been
Speaker 1: like the second or third week that I was working
Speaker 1: there and that man who had that really cute mud
Speaker 1: shot with the blue eyes and everyone loved him, and
Speaker 1: I posted something about it and my general counsel swiveled
Speaker 1: his chair because he sat at the next bank of chairs,
Speaker 1: and he was like, so that's what you like. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got jokes calling okay? And I said, look, I
Speaker 1: don't want to know. I don't want a felon necessarily.
Speaker 1: I don't want him like, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: cute picture. Cute what's what they calling prison bay or
Speaker 1: something's in prison but that's the thing. Well, prison bay
Speaker 1: ended up coming up. He became a model and married
Speaker 1: like a millionaire, so he won, I guess so. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where you know, at
Speaker 1: any other workplace, nobody would have seen that because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't if you send me a friend request and like
Speaker 1: you just remain in purgatory. So I think it is
Speaker 1: the digital presence of you know, what are the things
Speaker 1: that you choose to comment on and what are the
Speaker 1: things that you ignore? And it's not like people don't
Speaker 1: notice that. So whether it is you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: acknowledge that there was a string of people that were
Speaker 1: killed by police or armed vigilantes in the case of
Speaker 1: a mod Aubrey. If there you don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about that, or you don't speak on that, or you
Speaker 1: don't notice it, but you hear us talking about it
Speaker 1: in the break room or something, or you hear us
Speaker 1: talking about it outside of work, and you happen to
Speaker 1: just you know, join in with something like that, but
Speaker 1: you don't say anything. Don't think that when you walk
Speaker 1: away that we weren't talking about the fact that you
Speaker 1: didn't say anything. And you know, I've been in other
Speaker 1: workplaces where something like that will happen, and you know,
Speaker 1: people will just completely turned pivot and run from the conversation.
Speaker 1: And but I've also been in a workplace. But then
Speaker 1: this is one of the people that I say was
Speaker 1: a great, great ally. When I was at Facebook is
Speaker 1: this guy named Mark. And it was after Mike Brown
Speaker 1: had been killed, and I just didn't you have an
Speaker 1: open workspace? And I just didn't want to. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to stand there all day and sit there like
Speaker 1: where people could come up to me and act like
Speaker 1: this didn't happen, like you're just coming and you know,
Speaker 1: talking to me about whatever, and I just I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about that. So I went and locked
Speaker 1: myself in an empty conference room, and he went around
Speaker 1: the floor to all the conference rooms looking for me,
Speaker 1: and then when he did, he just knocked on the
Speaker 1: door and I was like sure. He was like, I
Speaker 1: just want to know if you're okay. And I was like,
Speaker 1: how how long did you go around this building? He
Speaker 1: was like about ten minutes, and he's like, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to know if you were okay because I
Speaker 1: saw you earlier this morning and then I didn't see
Speaker 1: you again, and I was like, honestly, no, I'm tired
Speaker 1: of this. It's exhausting, and he was like, I know.
Speaker 1: I was like, if you want to talk, let me know,
Speaker 1: But like, that's the kind of thing like that. I
Speaker 1: clearly I noticed that versus everyone else who acted like
Speaker 1: it didn't happen, Versus a different colleague who was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: somebody was shot byl I don't even know. Okay, Like
Speaker 1: you have the luxury to not did not know or
Speaker 1: did not care. And that's what I mean by the
Speaker 1: extension of that versus you see people hopping conversations about
Speaker 1: politics or something else and then it's like, oh, he
Speaker 1: has a different view than I thought, or she is
Speaker 1: probably a Karen and yeah. I mean you just look
Speaker 1: at that stuff and you notice it and you just
Speaker 1: file it away in the back of your head. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's what I mean by the extension of like
Speaker 1: you get to when they say bring your whole self
Speaker 1: to work. First off, I don't agree that necessarily everyone
Speaker 1: should bring their whole self to work, And I don't
Speaker 1: know one should bring a hundred. If you're gonna get
Speaker 1: as close as you want, maybe bring eight. Even then,
Speaker 1: that eight I think is reserved for certain types of people,
Speaker 1: and those types of people tend to be straight able body,
Speaker 1: white man. Yeah. Um, I was intrigued by your post
Speaker 1: the computer generated apocalypse that never happened? And I wonder
Speaker 1: where you see this particular trajectory progressing, um with regards
Speaker 1: to like social media, AI, venture capital even and if
Speaker 1: we stay on our current path, there are something that
Speaker 1: would say, you know, the wealth gap gets brought, the
Speaker 1: minority communities get hurt even more than they are. Is
Speaker 1: this the same thing as the apocalypse that never happened?
Speaker 1: Or where do you see this progressing as we continue
Speaker 1: to go down the road of AI and certain people
Speaker 1: getting funded versus other groups of people getting funded and
Speaker 1: and the and the like. Um. I think what you
Speaker 1: could say in that case, I wouldn't say it would
Speaker 1: be a computer generated apocalypse that never happened. I would
Speaker 1: say computer generated apocalypse that did happen. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think we we all saw it. It all happened in
Speaker 1: real time with you know, disinformation all over everyone's social
Speaker 1: media platforms. It's still happening in terms of just the vaccine,
Speaker 1: and people don't want to take the vaccine because well
Speaker 1: I read they're putting microchips, Like where are you all
Speaker 1: getting this? But it's one of those things that if
Speaker 1: you know you are using not you to sational outlets
Speaker 1: to get your information, which I don't think is necessarily
Speaker 1: always a bad thing. But like, I'm not taking any
Speaker 1: type of, you know, medical advice from Alex Jones on
Speaker 1: Info Wars. It's just not ever gonna happen. And I
Speaker 1: definitely don't need Tucker Crosson to tell me that COVID
Speaker 1: isn't isn't really real and I don't need a vaccine
Speaker 1: while you were vaccinated, sir. So to me, it's we've
Speaker 1: seen this already happen in real time and it's still
Speaker 1: continuing to happen. And I think if there isn't any
Speaker 1: type of actual regulation, I don't know that you we
Speaker 1: can prevent it from getting worse. You. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: already thrown an election and now you're getting people sick.
Speaker 1: So it's it isn't that it's not happening. It is happening.
Speaker 1: The question is how do we stop it? And I
Speaker 1: think the best answer that you have for that is
Speaker 1: and I don't know that social media companies in particular
Speaker 1: will like the answer or is right now, they are
Speaker 1: distinguished as platforms, which means they're not subject to certain regulation.
Speaker 1: But if you publishers now they have a responsibility and
Speaker 1: but they don't want it, which I could understand. Their
Speaker 1: attitude is, well, we're just the mechanism and the portal
Speaker 1: for which you post and share whatever cat videos, pictures,
Speaker 1: or your kids or Trump lost the election or he
Speaker 1: won the election, whichever you choose, and they don't want
Speaker 1: to be responsible for having to take down information about
Speaker 1: Oh well no he won the election of stolen and
Speaker 1: you know those were loving tourists that visited on January six,
Speaker 1: Like they don't want the responsibility of that, which I understand.
Speaker 1: But at some point you can't just continue to proliferate
Speaker 1: all of this, like you can't. It's that's essentially the equivalent,
Speaker 1: the digital equivalent of throwing a rock and hide in
Speaker 1: your hand. That's also why I there's another social media
Speaker 1: company that I like a lot called Telepath, because you
Speaker 1: actually have to use your real name and picture or
Speaker 1: you cannot participate versus Twitter. It's like somebody would a
Speaker 1: cat photo and like don one, two, three four, and
Speaker 1: he's calling you everything but a child of God. So
Speaker 1: I think if they're some of that would be started
Speaker 1: if people could not hide an anonymity. There was this
Speaker 1: period during COVID and right after the murder George Floyd, Um,
Speaker 1: where black people, I feel like, had this window of
Speaker 1: opportunity to capitalize is the wrong word, but for the
Speaker 1: sake of his conversation, capitalized on the attention that we
Speaker 1: had from VESI, capitalists, from corporations, for people who finally
Speaker 1: saw that we weren't crying wolf all these years, but
Speaker 1: that were they were actually actually systemic issues that kept
Speaker 1: us from being able to progress in many different use
Speaker 1: of our lives. Um is that window now close? Are
Speaker 1: we are? We? Are we so far past it to
Speaker 1: where they don't have to talk about it anymore, they
Speaker 1: don't have to pay attention anymore. That is a good question.
Speaker 1: And I've thought about this for a while myself. Um I.
Speaker 1: My prediction was that it was probably gonna be over
Speaker 1: either after the election around January, after inauguration. I would
Speaker 1: say it's not closed, but it's closing. And the reason
Speaker 1: being is, um, I think there's a course now at
Speaker 1: a different added element to it, where you have all
Speaker 1: of these voting restrictions being written into state laws, and
Speaker 1: you also have these two Democratic senators who refused to
Speaker 1: do away with the filibuster in order to right right
Speaker 1: that wrong and get federal legislation passed. Like they don't
Speaker 1: want the John exactly, they don't want for other people.
Speaker 1: They definitely don't want the George Floyd Policing Reform Act.
Speaker 1: But I think as long as those things are still
Speaker 1: churning and on the table, the windows still open, And
Speaker 1: I would just say it was like it was open
Speaker 1: like this last summer, and it's probably open like this now,
Speaker 1: So it's it's there. It's just closing. But I also
Speaker 1: think that that's on us to like keep forcing it
Speaker 1: and keep pushing it. Black Tech Green Money is the
Speaker 1: production of Black and the Afro Tech, The Black Effect
Speaker 1: podcast Network, and nine Hired Media. It's produced by Morgan
Speaker 1: Debonn and me Well Lucas, with additional production supported by
Speaker 1: Love Visas Lewis. Special thank you to Michael Davis. Since
Speaker 1: the carsa von Jan you know like the Wine. Yes
Speaker 1: that's his real name. Learn more about my guests and
Speaker 1: other technist as the end of it is an afrotech
Speaker 1: dot com. The video version of this episode will drop
Speaker 1: the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week, so
Speaker 1: I'll tap in joining Black Tech green money, leave us
Speaker 1: a fire star rating on iTunes. Go get your money,
Speaker 1: peace and love,