Well, over 90% of getting funded by VCs is stuff that happens before birth, so yes, that is literally true.

Michael, what you've just written is a gratuitously negative comment[1] that adds nothing. Guess what, 99.999% of getting funded happened in Earth's prehistory of 4.5 billion years, at any point during which things could have gone differently and precluded humanity and culture. Out of the remaining 0.001% - 45,000 years - scarcely ten thousand consisted of the establishment of western civilization and only the scant past few decades have established an Internet and a culture where literally anyone in the western world with an idea can start making it a reality, on a physical (if not cultural) level - i.e. physically nothing is required that the average person cannot access. Physically you do not need access to anything except knowledge and culture, which are actively working to take away. You are stealing.

The way to expand this opportunity is not to focus on the first 99.99999% of history, but the next ten years. You add nothing and take significant amounts away from that. I'm sick of your negativity. Here's a fact: I'm not asian, but asians are far more likely to get funded. SO WHAT! How does that change whether I'm taking the time to build something?

Michael go build something. Anyone can call people names. People should downvote your negative comments on sight. Besides being policy here, anyone who is downvoting you is literally creating good in the world. Because you are actively preventing the expansion of a culture of building. We might not have the power to get a sixty year old who had to go work early in life and received no formal education funded, regardless of this person's merits or ideas. But we can - and should, are required to - downvote you, and contribute to a positive culture where in five years, when that person is sixty-five, and has spent the past five years building something, he can be.

[1] the definition of which is that it is not new, not useful, not insightful, and adds absolutely nothing while being negative. Similar to if you said to a commenter: "by the way YOU SUCK at every skill, when compared to Mozart at music". This is undeniably true, he started at the age of four and specialized very hard. It is a comment nobody would disagree with on a literal level. It is also an absolutely worthless comment that adds nothing: the only reason anyone would write it is so that they could say the word "YOU SUCK" and then weasel out of it. Of course you should get downvoted, so hard you delete your comments which add nothing. Go build something, Michael.

Using a throwaway account to attack someone is not cool. If you have the balls (or the equivalent for the other gender), stand up and make the comment in your own name.

(same user, I lost the pwd). I wouldn't touch Michael's negative comments, nor do I want to prop up criticism with a username. he needs to just stop posting gratuitously negative thing about startups (most of what moves him to comment), which are not constructive, and it's up to the rest of us to downvote gratuitously negative things until he learns that this is not the forum for them, unless he starts phrasing them constructively. the other respondent already tried to make this about me ("Until you're a successful founder from a bad family background and no history of founding startups, no ivy league education"...) so I am glad that I didn't get into this under a normal account. this does not seem like a productive thread.

Notice how other people in this thread can level criticisms at both the topic of discussion and towards one another while flying their own handle?

Notice how you cannot do this?

given that my main point is that this level of discourse is totally inappropriate for hackernews, there is no reason I would engage in this. it's like feeding a troll. if there were something substantial to discuss, that would be a different story.

Until you're a successful founder from a bad family background and no history of founding startups, no ivy league education, and no nest egg to fall back in your 20s, you shouldn't make such aggressive rants.

You're being quite ridiculous.

All he said was that people's success and failures are to a large degree determined when they are born, which is true. The genes you're born with, the socioeconomic demographic you're born into, your parent's level of involvement, etc are all determined before you're born. That's factual. It is only with extreme effort and perseverance that one can counter acts of fate. It is possible, just unlikely.

How does Michael expressing this truth justify your personal rant against him?

(I don't think you should be downvoted for your question).

If he had phrased it the way you just did (in your middle paragraph) it would have been fine. He didn't, he just posted something inflammatory. so your middle paragraph is a lot better, it took thought rather than just writing down a literal truth. (it is also something nobody would disagree with, including me, and you certainly wouldn't have been downvoted for it.) If you had been the one to write the comment, I'd have also appreciated your suggestions as to what can be done about it systemically. your paragraph is quite productive, and an important point.

as a matter of fact, what do you suggest we do? (I mean concrete steps.) should funds try to set quotas for minorities, for example? (this is a genuine question, and I'm asking you littletimmy.)

What should we do is a really difficult question.

It will require a multi-pronged effort, ranging from trying to implement better labor laws to improve parental involvement and reduce stress among the poor, better community health plans to counter poor nutrition, better public schooling through investing in teacher's salaries etc. Maybe after 20 years of doing that we're going to see minorities improve their standards.

But considering that any such long-term approach will be blocked immediately by the free-market enthusiasts, I fear there is nothing much that we can do. That raises a more important question: is fight against the machine even possible?

Ah, your response is good but very wide and 'systemic', i.e. what society as a whole can do over decades. But in the meantime, VC's are free to make their investment decisions, so I was wondering what you thought they should do differently to make a difference, today. Should it be quotas or minimum investments for people from alternative backgrounds? Or, what can VC's do to help level the playing field? If they receive smaller amounts of dealflow from alternative backgrounds, it's hard for them to apply their usual methods of investing... i.e. they might not even get access to opportunities from those backgrounds. what, then, could be done?

I didn't get your rant until this comment thread really showed me what kind discourse you're looking for and how the other poster was being inflammatory. On your side.

Now, on this topic, maybe it would be possible to establish a matching fund (maybe crowd-sourced, angellist style?) that gives some amount of matching funding in order to incentivize those VCs investing in demographic outliers, lowering the potential economic risks to investing in first-time, first-generation founders and non-Stanford/MIT grads.

I see your point. Honeslty, there is probably nothing VCs can do to solve this problem. They are but a small snowflake in this avalanche.