Technology start-ups pledge to increase US diversity

Technology start-ups from Airbnb to Zynga have pledged to improve diversity by hiring more women and minorities to make their workforces more representative of the American people.

More than 30 companies have signed a “Tech inclusion pledge”, which includes publishing annual data on the composition of their workforce, divided by function and seniority, and publishing goals to recruit, retain and advance employees from under-represented backgrounds.

At the start of President Barack Obama’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Silicon Valley, Megan Smith, the US’s chief technology officer, said even more start-ups had signed the pledge at the last minute.

“Making sure all Americans matter no matter where they came from is important and its smart economics,” she said.

Only 3 per cent of venture-backed start-ups were led by women and just 1 per cent were led by African Americans, Ms Smith said, while female entrepreneurs start companies with only half as much capital as their male counterparts.

Box, GitHub, Lyft, Pinterest and Spotify were among the other start-ups that signed the pledge to increase diversity in technology, following in the footsteps of larger tech companies including Apple, Google and Facebook, which all began publishing diversity reports in the past couple of years.

“We will treat this goal as a top management priority and business imperative, because tapping the full measure of talent from across the country is critical for the long-term success of both our individual companies and the nation as a whole,” they wrote in a letter to Mr Obama.

Other organisations also announced initiatives to promote diverse entrepreneurs ahead of the summit, which is designed to connect foreign start-ups with US technology leaders.

Making sure all Americans matter no matter where they came from is important and its smart economics

Calstrs, the pension fund, will work with portfolio companies to build better pipelines of leadership talent from universal backgrounds so boards have a wider selection of candidates for the future. The Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, a statewide pension plan, plans to invest $220m in minority and female-owned private market managers.

This is the seventh annual summit. Earlier summits were focused in Muslim majority countries as part of US state department’s outreach efforts.

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications for President Obama, said previous summits had helped connect businesses run by youth and women with more than $1bn in capital.

“It cannot be overstated the grip Facebook, Google and all of the start-ups located in this area have on the imagination of people around the world,” he said. “This is an aspect of American society and values that are universally admired and aspired to around the world.”