We recently gathered a group of founders together for an intimate discussion with Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO of TaskRabbit and founding member of Softbank’s $100 million Opportunity Growth Fund. Structured as a fireside chat between Stacy and Fuel’s General Partner Leah Solivan, the conversation covered topics both important and uncomfortable.
Pulling from her enviable track record of diversity and inclusion - an impressive 60 percent of the company’s leadership is women, 48 percent of its employees are Hispanic, African-American, Asian, or two or more races, and 16 percent identity as LGBTQ - Stacy shared valuable insights about how companies can drive substantive change during this pivotal moment.
You can watch the full webinar below.
As Stacy pointed out during the chat, this is as much a social justice issue as it is an economic equity issue - the tech industry is one of the greatest creators of wealth in our society. Changing the face of tech changes economic inequity. “We have been innovative in so many ways - we sent a rocket into space a few weeks ago,” she said. “We can do this, people. We just have to sit down, put some targets on it, and make it happen.”
What specific actions can founders and CEOs take immediately to walk the walk on building diversity into their teams and cultures? By no means should your actions be limited to just the steps listed below, but these key takeaways from Stacy’s comments can serve as a checklist for how to get started now:
Identify and take ownership of the problem.
The most important step anyone running a company can take? Acknowledge that there’s racism within your company. It’s not that you put it there intentionally. It’s just that nobody leaves all of themselves at the door when they walk into work. A society plagued by systemic racism doesn’t hang out in the lobby when people come to work. Once you admit to yourself that the problem extends to your own house, you can claim your role as a person who is in a position to help solve it. That’s when you can start leading your team and culture toward a more diverse and inclusive future.
Take the time to revisit your values.
We’re in a seismic moment. Any time conditions change massively, it’s imperative for a company to examine the values by which it operates. Going through the process of examining your company’s values brings people in the company together, forces you to examine the moment, and helps you whip your values into governing principles instead of just words to paint on the office wall. You may end up with the same exact list, you may tweak a few small things, or you may find yourself with a completely different list - but whatever you end up with, it will be a product of this moment.
Put systems in place to embed values into company culture.
Once you have your values, you have to have systems in place to make sure you’re living those values. These systems can take many shapes - they can be folded into peer reviews or performance reviews, and/or they can become an element of evaluating total performance when considering promotions and merit increases. TaskRabbit created a “Culture Rockstar” award based on its values as a way of making their importance visible to the entire team. Importantly, the whole team votes on the Culture Rockstar. Meeting this moment requires you to put your values into action.
Formalize your commitment with partnerships.
Many early stage startups feel that diversity and inclusion efforts have to come later. When you have low headcount and low budget, it’s easy to feel like you aren’t in a position to move diversity metrics. But whether you have 2, 20, or 200 people on staff, you can set up a minority internship with CODE 2040. You don’t need to be on a hiring spree to partner with the network of black engineers at Dev Color. Making intentional moves toward diversity by partnering with organizations committed to promoting racial equity in tech is within any company’s reach.
Set real targets.
Just the notion of quotas makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable, so make things easy by just rejecting this premise outright. Instead of thinking about progress in terms of quotas, think about it in terms of targets. In this world of high growth startups, we set revenue targets, growth targets, target budgets. We do this because targets change behavior. So start by setting hiring targets that include diversity goals - let this be a target you work toward just like your revenue goals.. If you work with recruiters, require them to bring a diverse slate of candidates to the table by arming them with a target to hit.
Make the hiring managers the owners.
To truly prioritize diversity targets within your team, it’s essential to put them in the hands of the hiring managers themselves. Instead of centralizing this goal within your people ops department, distribute its ownership to the people actually running each team. The individuals leading engineering, marketing, sales, ops, support are the same people who should be responsible for reaching diversity targets. In addition to making sure targets are represented in every function, this simple shift can quickly boost the focus, importance, visibility, and efficacy of diversity initiatives within an organization.
Set up affinity groups.
One of the most effective initiatives at TaskRabbit has been setting up affinity groups for employees. Employees nominate the groups, which include black, pride, veterans, interfaith, and even introvert groups. The people ops team helps put the structure for each group in place and supplies some budget (which is nice but not necessary), and a member of senior leadership is nominated to champion each group. The groups themselves are self-managed - organizing activities like speakers, activities, movies nights, book clubs, or even just discussions. When inclusion initiatives come from the bottom up instead of the top down like this, it brings a genuine energy for acceptance that's impossible to replicate.
Make the space for discussion.
Sometimes the path forward starts with a real conversation. After the killing of George Floyd, TaskRabbit broke into small groups to discuss the event. With some ground rules in place, each group started with a simple question of “how are you?” with each individual getting two minutes to give their answer. This gave people the space to go beyond the surface answer and led to more meaningful discussions. Follow-up questions of how to support each other in this moment, and what steps should be taken in terms of actions, donations, and company initiatives came later. Fostering this type of open environment helps strengthen cultures by encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work, acknowledging that outside events get carried through the office door, and letting colleagues engage with one another on a deeper level.
Extend your culture to your customers.
For tech companies, customers often play a vital role in product development, so be sure to ask yourself where your feedback is coming from. Diversity in user research helps you build stronger, more inclusive products. And when you have some customers who don’t agree with your values? While you can’t change a customer’s behavior or heart, you can let them know where you stand. It’s important that leaders put their values forward for all to see and truly stand for something.
Pay closer attention.
A habit that every single person working within the tech industry can build is to simply pay attention to how certain moments may be different for you than for your colleagues. In a fundraising meeting? Notice who gets the brush off and who gets the serious questions. Your colleagues don’t have the options to tune these things out - they hear and feel these things viscerally. Behaviors like this won’t change overnight, but the more people we get tuned into them, the sooner we can stamp them out. That makes being aware of where they exist and how pervasive they are within this industry a habit worth cultivating.
Black Girls Code is an organization changing the face of tech, starting at the early stages. Fuel donated $100 on behalf of each participant in this discussion and you can donate more right here.