Maybe it takes tech to beat tech.

Or founders who plan to walk their talk even after them become successful, unlike the “don’t be evil” guys.

More entrepreneurs are pursuing social or environmental goals, said Greg Brown, a professor of finance at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina.

Companies like Toms, Warby Parker and Uncommon Goods have pushed this concept into the mainstream by creating successful business models built around helping others. This trend has led to the rise of B Corporations, a certification for companies that meet high standards of social responsibility. The program started in 2007, and now more than 2,500 companies have been certified in more than 50 countries.

Including Afghanistan.

Not all these startups make it and many are choosing to do it sans investors who often start pushing for growth and revenue, social mission be dammed.

And they are slowly succeeding.

Companies like Moka are a reflection of how consumers think as well, Professor Brown said. As people’s wealth increases, they think more about quality and less about quantity. They also consider the social context of what they’re buying.

Others are developing tech to defend against tech.

The “bracelet of silence” is not the first device invented by researchers to stuff up digital assistants’ ears. In 2018, two designers created Project Alias, an appendage that can be placed over a smart speaker to deafen it. But Ms. Zheng argues that a jammer should be portable to protect people as they move through different environments, given that you don’t always know where a microphone is lurking.

These may not be the solution, assuming there is one, but this definitely isn’t.

Rather than building individual defenses, Mr. Hartzog believes, we need policymakers to pass laws that more effectively guard our privacy and give us control over our data.

You have on to consider tech’s actions in Europe to know that laws don’t stop tech.

There’s another potential positive brewing in tech — actually a disruption of sorts.

That’s the long-time coming move away from current ageist thinking.

As brilliant as young coders are, though, the industry can’t survive on technical chops alone. Last year, Harvard Business Review shared that the average age of a successful startup founder isn’t 25 or 30—it’s 45 years old.

Call it a miracle, but investors, the majority over 40, are starting to value the experience that comes with age.

Hopefully, in the long-run, the potential for success will outweigh the hang-up on age.

As a whole, entrepreneurial communities also need to do more to bring diverse groups to meet-ups, panels and speaking engagements. The importance of having more voices at the table can’t be diminished.

Let’s just hope it isn’t too long.

Image credit: Ron Mader

Have you ever wondered what makes a new app fly?

Have you heard of early adopters?

Would it surprise you to know that they make up only 13.5% of the population?

But that small percentage dictates what new products and services you will be able to do on your phone, tablet and computer.

Not 100%, obviously, but close, especially if you are an entrepreneur without “connections.”

Doubly so if you are a woman and triple (or more) for a person of color.

That 13.5% dates back to 2012. Two years later it had doubled to 28%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Still not much considering the outsize impact.

Image credit: Pew Research Center

Poking through  13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

We all have visual prejudices that have nothing to do with race, ethnicity, gender anything obvious. It’s important to know your own or you can’t hear past them. I worked hard to be aware of mine. I had no choice, because, back when I was a recruiter, I occasionally met my candidates. I vividly remember two of them, because if I had met them before I presented them and set up interviews I wouldn’t have, which would have cost me dearly, since both were hired (different companies). Why not? Because they both hit my visual prejudices.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Discrimination comes in many forms.

All of them are grounded in stupidity, but it’s age and appearance that I want to focus on today.

Layoffs are always a time when age is in the limelight, but this time it’s working in reverse.

“The share of older Americans who have jobs has risen during the recession, while the share of younger Americans with jobs has plunged.”

It seems that at least parts of corporate America have learned to see past the obvious.

“…employees whom companies have invested in most and who have “demonstrated track records…tend to be more experienced and are often older.””

So some companies have discovered that years of experience have substantial value when it comes to the success of the company.

But what about appearance? How much is hearing influenced by how someone looks at first take?

What better venue in which to consider this than the original British version of American Idol where the contestants are mostly young, generally good-looking and always bust their tails to make an impression.

How well do you think a slightly frumpy-looking 47 year old woman would fare under the scathing tongue of Simon Fuller?

How much do you think talent would offset the obvious visual assumptions made by both the judges and the audience?

Watch the judges and audience reaction carefully before Susan Boyle performs and how quickly it changes when she starts singing (embedding is disabled on this video); check out some of the more than 50 thousand comments.

Think about what happens when a “Susan” comes to interview; how well do you hear past her (or his) appearance?

Then come back and share your thoughts with us.

PS For a fascinating look at Susan read this article in the NY Times.

Image credit: cwsillero on sxc.hu

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Since the start of this blog 12 years ago, I’ve written numerous times about the sheer idiocy of using age to screen talent. This post mentions several examples that easily refute Vinod Khosla’s ignorant comment on age and creativity, but here is an even better example, since software is supposed to be a young person’s game.

Yukihiro Matsumoto was born in 1965; in 1995 he released the Ruby programming language to open source. Of course, at 30 he was still within Khosla’s window. In 2012 he open-sourced MRuby, in 2014, at the ripe old age of 49 he open-sourced his work on streem, a new scripting language and he is still going strong.

Age as a criteria when hiring is just plain stupid, no matter the size of your company.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

It’s always interesting to see young people following in the footsteps of their predecessors.

Even more so when they hotly deny doing it.

But the frosting on the denial cake is that they are following in some of the stupidest footsteps.

Which they are doing in droves.

Last week I wrote how stupid it is to stereotype 80 million millennials.

Before that is was management’s stupidity regarding Gen X.

Age, however, is the biggest stupid and has been for decades.

For Boomers, the breakpoint for when a person became hopeless and valueless was 30; Millennials raised it to 40.

As bad as age discrimination has been in general, it is far worse in tech.

VC Vinod Khosla crystallized and popularized this mindset back in 2011.

 “People under 35 are the people who make change happen. People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”

That means you can expect no more creativity from Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marc Benioff, Parker Harris and Satya Nadella. (For insight to other fields read the article.)

Not to mention that 32 year-old Mark Zukkerberg only has a few good years left.

There are thousands more at all levels, I just picked recognizable people to better illustrate the stupidity.

The difference between when the Boomers did it and now is the notice and action being taken.

This past week, the EEOC joined a probe behind a federal class action lawsuit against Google filed last month, charging that the search giant “engaged in a systematic pattern” of discrimination against applicants over the age of 40. The suit, expanding upon a related case filed earlier this year, cited data from Payscale that placed the median age of Google’s workforce at 29, with a margin of error of 4%. By contrast, the median age for U.S. computer programmers is 43.

Actually, I will probably find it somewhat amusing to watch founders as they try to meet candidate demand for the compensation and perks of the past few years in today’s do-more-with-less/revenue-based-business-model world.

That also goes for many, not all, by a long shot, tech workers who are looking for those same jobs and perks.

So heed the advice I recently gave a founder who took advantage of my standing offer of free help (both my phone number and email are posted on this blog).

He asked how to land a “star” candidate looking for “yesterday’s” compensation and refused to consider anything less.

My advice was to take a pass, refer him to Facebook or Google hire a reality-based programmer who can do the needed job and was sincerely interested in his product and vision.

The only thing he might lose were a few late night bragging rights.

In short, grow up, get smart and hire talent — no matter its age or color or gender.

Image credit: Ben Sutherland

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Quick. Off the top of your head, what are the chances you’d hire a 65 year-old Black man for a senior management role in your startup?

Unlikely — or flat-out ‘no’?

Next question.

How well could you handle traveling from the Bay Area to Detroit to Toronto back to the Bay Area and then to New York, London and Columbus, Ohio, back to the Bay Are for one night, then to Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong for ten days, with a side trip to Seattle?

That was the recent schedule of the 65 year-old Black guy you probably didn’t hire.

Tough schedule, jumping around all those times zones; think it would dent your 20/30-something system more than the 70+ hour week you brag about?

The guy you didn’t hire is John Thompson, but that’s OK, he already has a job.

He’s CEO of Virtual Instruments, one of several startups he invested in after he retired from his ten year stint as CEO of Symantec, which came after his mandatory retirement from IBM after 28 years.

That little age bias you have would also preclude your hiring Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown (62), Qualys CEO Philippe Courtot (70), Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison (73), Netflix’s Reed Hastings (56) and dozens, if not hundreds, of others.

The interesting (hilarious? ironic?) part is that if you were using most recruiting filtering tools, human or software, their resumes would probably be screened out.

Now just think how much larger your pool of exceptional talent would be if you brought yours and your organization’s biases/assumptions/prejudices under control.

What talent shortage?

Image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

There is much talk these days about ‘values’ and how companies need to base their cultures on them.

Many say that “cultural fit” is used to discriminate against older candidates, people of color, and women.

And that’s likely true if the company doesn’t included diversity and meritocracy as an integral part of their core values.

One recently added core value that isn’t talked about is expediency.

Here’s a great example from Facebook.

On May First, Facebook was accused of sharing information on how/when to reach “emotionally “insecure” and vulnerable teens on its network.” Naturally, the company denied doing it, but just the fact that they can should be very disturbing.

Even if Facebook hasn’t allowed advertisers to target young people based on their emotions, its sharing of related research highlights the kind of data the company collects about its nearly 2 billion users.

Also on May first Facebook announced a new effort to fight fake news — definitely expedient considering how angry people are — better late than never.

Facebook has appointed a veteran from The New York Times to lead its news products division, which is responsible for stopping the spread of fake news and helping publishers make money.

Making money is the number one priority — no matter how often a company says otherwise.

That’s what underlies expediency.

And I doubt it will change any time soon.

Image credit: QuotesEverlasting

It’s always interesting to see young people following in the footsteps of their predecessors.

Even more so when they hotly deny doing it.

But the frosting on the denial cake is that they are following in some of the stupidest footsteps.

Which they are doing in droves.

Last week I wrote how stupid it is to stereotype 80 million millennials.

Before that is was management’s stupidity regarding Gen X.

Age, however, is the biggest stupid and has been for decades.

For Boomers, the breakpoint for when a person became hopeless and valueless was 30; Millennials raised it to 40.

As bad as age discrimination has been in general, it is far worse in tech.

VC Vinod Khosla crystallized and popularized this mindset back in 2011.

 “People under 35 are the people who make change happen. People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”

That means you can expect no more creativity from Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marc Benioff, Parker Harris and Satya Nadella. (For insight to other fields read the article.)

Not to mention that 32 year-old Mark Zukkerberg only has a few good years left.

There are thousands more at all levels, I just picked recognizable people to better illustrate the stupidity.

The difference between when the Boomers did it and now is the notice and action being taken.

This past week, the EEOC joined a probe behind a federal class action lawsuit against Google filed last month, charging that the search giant “engaged in a systematic pattern” of discrimination against applicants over the age of 40. The suit, expanding upon a related case filed earlier this year, cited data from Payscale that placed the median age of Google’s workforce at 29, with a margin of error of 4%. By contrast, the median age for U.S. computer programmers is 43.

Actually, I will probably find it somewhat amusing to watch founders as they try to meet candidate demand for the compensation and perks of the past few years in today’s do-more-with-less/revenue-based-business-model world.

That also goes for many, not all, by a long shot, tech workers who are looking for those same jobs and perks.

So heed the advice I recently gave a founder who took advantage of my standing offer of free help (both my phone number and email are posted on this blog).

He asked how to land a “star” candidate looking for “yesterday’s” compensation and refused to consider anything less.

My advice was to take a pass, refer him to Facebook or Google hire a reality-based programmer who can do the needed job and was sincerely interested in his product and vision.

The only thing he might lose were a few late night bragging rights.

In short, grow up, get smart and hire talent — no matter its age or color or gender.

Flickr image credit: Ben Sutherland

Tech says they’re trying.

Experts love to call it “bias,” “diversity crisis” or some similar polite euphemism.

A simpler, more recognizable and much less politically correct term is bigotry — conscious or not.

Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky calls it discrimination, pure and simple, and wants to eradicate it from his platform.

“When we designed  the  platform, three white guys, there were a lot of things we didn’t think about,” Chesky said to an audience at the conference. “There are racists in the world and we need to have zero tolerance.”

There’s no question that people of color, especially African Americans, have more trouble booking on Airbnb.

There’s also no question that people of color are exercising greater and greater buying power.

As of 2014 Hispanic’s spent $1.3 trillion, people of African decent $1.1 trillion, Asians $770 billion and Native Americans $100 billion.

That’s a whole lot of buying power.

There’s also no question that Airbnb has been slow to recognize/admit to the problem — as has the rest of tech.

In a serious effort to change, Chesky has hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to “craft a world-class anti-discrimination policy.”

“This process isn’t close to being over, but we want to be as transparent as possible along the way because I know we’ve failed on that front previously. I want us to be smart and innovative and to create new tools to prevent discrimination and bias that can be shared across the industry.”

Which makes it likely Chesky is serious, since guys like Holder don’t come cheap — nor are they easy to shut up or buy off if the company isn’t serious.

Hopefully it will help.

But it will more likely be a cold day in hell before anyone or anything changes racist MAP.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Anyone who tracks the startup community hears stories of the stupid criteria investors use when deciding who to fund.

• No strong accents or women with young kids or who are planning on having kids according to Paul Graham of Y Combinator (more on Graham tomorrow).
• An anonymous investor who, although he considered the product and team brilliant, passed because the founder wasn’t Caucasian.
• Age (way off base)

At a guess, I’d say that more than 90% of stupid turndowns are based on standard bigotry.

The other 10% fall in the Stupider category

• Dislike of founder’s alma mater
• Talk funny (Southern, Bostonian, New England, New York, Texas, etc.)
• Grooming bias

Now Peter Thiel has added a new bias that is so silly it calls for a Stupidest category.

Don’t fund anyone wearing a suit.

A slicked-up entrepreneur is inevitably a salesman trying to compensate for an inferior product. Based on this perception, Mr Thiel’s venture fund instituted a blanket rule to pass on any company whose principals dressed in formal wear for pitch meetings.

There’s a basic problem with these kinds of rules.

• No rule can be applied universally, without question and no exceptions.
• Universal rules are just another form of bigotry—one size does not fit all.

But if a suit is a sign of “a salesman trying to compensate for an inferior product” then why does Thiel himself wear a suit?

Flickr image credit: Fortune Live Media

It’s pretty obvious that ageism is alive and well in tech.

As is sexism, which you can see from the email a female CEO received from an engineer she tried to hire.

But far worse are these examples of what women in tech face, exemplified by the latest bit of app stupidity.

“Titstare is an app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits.” –David Boulton and Jethro Batts at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon

Not to mention those who defended it.

“It is not misogyny to tell a sexist joke, or to fail to take a woman seriously, or to enjoy boobies” –Pax Dickinson, co-founder and CTO, Glimpse Labs

Or the incredible level of ignorance and pure stupidity exemplified by White_N_Nerdy on Reddit.

“I’m honestly trying to understand why anyone says that females are ‘needed’ in the tech industry.” He continued: “The tech community works fine without females, just like any other mostly male industry. Feminists probably just want women making more money.”

Being old enough to remember, medicine, research and law were “mostly male” industries not that long ago—as were college and advanced degrees.

In the comments section of the article, many women say that prior to the Nineties women developers and engineers weren’t subject to nearly as much abusive harassment, which matches my memories from when I was a tech recruiter in the late Seventies through the Eighties.

What happened?

Please join me tomorrow for a look at what may be an epiphany of cause and effect for both ageism and sexism.

Flickr image credit: KAZ Vorpal