The White House Calls for More Inclusion in Tech
Only a few weeks after President Obama made technology a focus of his Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, he’s again looking to the future of the tech industry – but this time, he’s shifted his attention toward home, with the White House’s first-ever Demo Day.
Rather than the general call for support of emerging business like the one that characterized last month’s GES, Demo Day – another component of the President’s Startup America initiative aimed at encouraging high-growth entrepreneurship in the US – is specifically focused on fostering greater inclusion in tech, particularly among women and minority founders. The White House says that only 3% of VC-backed startups are helmed by women – this, despite findings released last week by First Round that showed that their female founders performed 63% better than their male peers. Beyond that, only 1% of VC-backed startups can claim an African American founder.
As the White House explained in a release this morning, today’s Demo Day will differ from a typical demo event, in that rather than pitching prospective backers, a “diverse group of entrepreneurs from all across the country – including those underrepresented in entrepreneurship like women and people of color – will come to the White House to ‘demo’ the stories of their individual innovation journeys to date,” in order to “exemplify how we can ‘grow the pie’ by including all Americans in our innovation economy.”
To that end, representatives from over 40 VC firms will be in attendance today and are expected to commit to specific plans to aid tech inclusiveness, alongside deans from more than 100 engineering programs who are committing to retaining a diverse student body. Tech giants like Amazon, Xerox and Microsoft are also expected to detail plans that ensure diversity in their hiring and recruitment practices.
The agenda for today’s event also includes naming 116 winners of two Small Business Administration prizes: the Growth Accelerator Fund “for startup accelerators, incubators, and other entrepreneurial ecosystems,” and the President’s “Startup in a Day” initiative designed to enable local government to cut red tape for entrepreneurs in their jurisdiction.
Read the White House’s Demo Day fact sheet here for more details on what’s in store.
