Business Improvement and Social media

 The Myth of Meritocracy

The myth is that anyone can come from anywhere and achieve great success in Silicon Valley if they are skilled. It holds that those who “make it” do so due to their excellent ideas and ability, because the tech scene is a meritocracy where what you do, not who you are, matters.

There is some truth to this statement. To a certain extent, there is a lower barrier to entry in tech than in some other industries. Having a famous father or coming from an old money family would not necessarily be an asset as it might in banking (it wouldn’t necessarily hurt, either). And certainly the highest status in the tech scene comes from one’s job rather than family name, although wealth factors considerably into status.

I frequently heard variations of the saying “everyone wants to take the pretty girl to the dance,” which refers to the tendency venture capitalists have to cluster around popular deals. (The prevalence of this phrase is very revealing of who is in these meetings.) In reality, everyone wants to be in business with young, white, male entrepreneurs with connections to high-status people, a pedigree from certain companies, a well-known mentor. Sharon Vosmek, CEO of the nonprofit Astia that helps fund women entrepreneurs, identified “systematic and hidden biases” in technology funding:

VCs hold clear stereotypes of successful CEOs (they call it pattern recognition, but in other industries they call it profiling or stereotyping.) John Doerr publicly stated that his most successful investments — and the no-brainer pattern for future investments — were in founders who were white, male, under 30, nerds, with no social life who dropped out of Harvard or Stanford.