Google and Startup Grind, a global organization for supporting startup founders, have signed a three-year partnership that will aim to diversify the tech industry by funding and mentoring more entrepreneurs who aren t the usual white, male suspects.
Google for Entrepreneurs, the company s funding arm for entrepreneurs, and Startup Grind announced the partnership on Wednesday, during Startup Grind s annual conference in Redwood City. Startup Grind, which started in Silicon Valley in 2010 and is run by Derek Andersen, has for years received funding from Google for Entrepreneurs. But this new stage of the partnership will emphasize using those funds to improve diversity in tech, said Mary Grove, director Google for Entrepreneurs.
The diversity effort is the latest push by the tech industry to include more women, blacks and Latinos in its largely male, white and Asian ranks. Under fire from advocates and the public, tech companies, startup accelerators and other tech organizations have recently made more of an effort to build a tech workforce that looks more like the general population, and not the Stanford University campus.
Even Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who founded Khosla Ventures and, more recently, the target of a high-profile lawsuit from a surfing organization after Khosla for years blocked public access to a beach south of Half Moon Bay, weighed in on the diversity issue at Wednesday s event. (Khosla lost the suit but still hasn t opened the gate that restricts beach access.)
In an interview with Andersen, Khosla said too many women are leaving the STEM fields, not pursuing computer science degrees and exiting the tech force early in their careers.
And that s a shame, because we are losing half our talent in a critical area, here and overseas, he said.
