Interview Preparation

there are lots of the advantages of having a diverse workforce, but, as inBeta founder James Nash points outYou can’t just take your homogeneous workforce, add diversity, shake it up, and hope for the best.

Often something subtle gets in the way of diversity in startups: Companies rely on employee referrals at first, but if the makeup of a startup is no longer diverse, referrals aren’t going to change that. .

That’s for startups. In the world of venture capital, things are more pronounced: A warm introduction is the only way to get in front of investors in many venture capital funds. That’s great for people who are already hooked on the startup ecosystem, but you don’t have to look very far to realize that this is not a very diverse group of people.

For many companies, employee referrals are one of the main ways to attract new talent. All of that is fine until you stop to think about who your new hire is likely to know best. It doesn’t take many turns through that particular mill until you end up with a relatively homogeneous group of people with similar education, socioeconomic backgrounds, and values.

If that’s what you’re optimizing for, great! Well done. If not, maybe it’s time to stop being lazy and question why warm introductions are still common practice.

My question has long been: What are you optimizing for by relying on references? If you spend some time thinking about it, I bet you’ll discover some uncomfortable unintended consequences.

Let’s talk about what we can do about it.

The situation in VC

If you read any guides on startups or how to raise money (including mine, although I also try to cover cold emails and cold introductions), you’ll find that you need a “warm introduction” to land a meeting with a VC. Given the above parallel with hiring, that’s a problem.