Likes & Launch
Month
In the tech community there has been a lot of talk about diversity, gender ratios and the trouble with homogenous perspectives. Equality is always a worthy topic and should be a constant topic until we find it.
The challenge with reading a lot about these issues is that they teach us more about what not to do than how to encourage the right things.
How do you empower all employees to be part of the solution, not just police bad behavior?
When you’re growing your company, you need to find people with the skills where you have holes. That requires you to seek out people unlike the current people on your team. Diversity makes sense.
I’ve heard more conversations about how to be mindful about diversity as an organization grows. One common question is, how do you take action and empower all of your employees to participate? The answer is different for every company but the best place to start is by taking inventory of what’s currently happening:
Take inventory.
Who do you believe is doing a good job? Is it one person? Are there multiple people? Are you one of them? These are your diversity ambassadors.
Diversity Ambassadors are great but they can’t do it alone. They can’t be in every conversation. They can’t be the only ones on this mission. It won’t work.
Everyone needs the diversity ambassador mindset.
If everyone has the conversation, it doesn’t fall on the minority group to speak up for minorities. If everyone in your company knows that people should be treated equally, everyone will participate equally in upholding the mission.
Start the conversation in your company. Use a public forum or an anonymous survey. It’s up to you but have the conversation:
This can make people uncomfortable. It can be an awkward situation for any group that feels under- or over-represented. And there likely isn’t an easy answer on how to solve it. But it’s a future worth working towards.
A number of these discussions have already started. I’m curious to hear what you’ve seen work well or go wrong within your organization. Please let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
Over the past few weeks, the future of the open internet has come into sharp focus, as the FCC’s 2010 open internet rules were struck down in court, and then plans for new rules from the FCC came into public view. Amidst fears that the internet is f**ked, debate has raged about what this all means for internet users, entrepreneurs and investors.
Today, we are joining a group of about fifty leading VCs to voice our concern to the FCC as they consider how to proceed — specifically, regarding the impact that we expect a retreat from open internet rules to have on internet innovation.
It’s undeniably clear that the Internet has been an insanely fertile platform for innovation and investment over the past ten years. It’s less well understood that during that time, internet access providers have operated under a de-facto state of open internet policy (dating from this 2005 FCC memo), even before the 2010 formalized open internet rules were announced.
This open market environment has made it possible for tiny startups to build global platforms. For example, it allowed Foursquare to get to 100,000 users on $25,000 dollars and Tumblr to reach millions before they hired their 10th employee. They were able to compete on equal terms with the largest incumbents, and gain the love of users purely on the merits of their service.
And we’ve seen how the shift in the mobile landscape from a carrier-controlled market to an app platform market, with the launch of the iPhone in 2007, has blown open the mobile market for innovation and investment. We’ve also seen how, as mobile app platforms exert more control and restrict access to the market, the cycle of innovation slows.
So today’s letter states our hope that the FCC will weigh all available options when considering how to maintain the most competitive, vibrant market possible for internet applications.
You can read the letter here (also embedded below). We pulled this together quickly over the past 24 hours, and weren’t able to directly reach as many VCs and other investors as we would have liked, so will gladly welcome additional signatories throughout the day today before we formally file this with the FCC tonight. Email nick [at] usv [dot] com if you’d like to join.
This debate is just picking up, and it will be critical for everyone who cares about innovation on the internet to wrap their heads around this issue, and engage on it, as the FCC runs its rulemaking process through the summer and fall.
If you’ve missed what’s going on at the FCC - I’d encourage you to read the Open Internet Investors Letter.
Help keep the internet open.