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Mitch Kapor challenges high-tech: Create social change

Mitch Kapor
Special for USA TODAY
Mitch Kapor

SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley is not afraid of hyperbole.

Every year we are greeted by a host of new apps that will "change the way we think" about ordering takeout, "fundamentally transform" our shoe purchases or "revolutionize" the way we edit photos.

Often the disconnect between the marketing hype around a new product and what the product actually does is astounding.

But the fact is Silicon Valley has the potential to actually do revolutionary things and create life-changing technologies.

Few industries have the ability to transform society like tech, yet too few companies are asking the questions or working on the problems that would create meaningful social change.

Worse, if they do, they are often not being brought to market in such a way that they narrow the inequality gap.

Here's what I mean: When the EdTech company Tinybop rolled out its Human Body app in 2013, the digitized beating hearts, gurgling guts and gasping lungs quickly captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of young students.

Education professionals and tech critics praised it as a groundbreaking learning tool that helped kids learn through play. It was a Silicon Valley success story, and Tinybop CEO Raul Gutierrez could have left it there.

But Gutierrez knew that many low-income parents rarely download paid apps, and that under-served school districts didn't have the budget to bring it into their classrooms.

So he worked with with Apple on promotions that made the app available for free for limited periods to reach low-income families on a massive scale, making it and other education apps equally available to the the family scraping by on minimum wage as as the two-car family in the suburbs.

Effectively, what could have been a gap-widening technology — a product that only benefits those who can afford it — became gap narrowing.

At Kapor Capital, the venture capital firm my wife Freada and I founded, we are interested in entrepreneurs like Gutierrez who understand how tech can be as transformative as the narrative that Silicon Valley tells about itself.

And that's why we are concerned about diversity in the industry.

Successful entrepreneurs develop products that inspire their passion. They have to. It's that passion that gets them through the long, arduous, uncertain and frightening early days of a start-up.

One simply cannot create a successful company if the founding team is not living and breathing this passion every day.

Tinybop CEO Raul Gutierrez

Silicon Valley is overflowing with companies building photo apps, delivery tools and food truck trackers precisely because of the homogenous nature of the existing talent pool.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Our portfolio is brimming with companies that are solving problems in society because their founders had a personal problem to solve.

Ana Roca Castro created Plaza Familia to bridge the gap of immigrant families like hers, where language gaps prevent parents from being involved in their child's education.

Alex Selig developed SoundFocus, a hybrid of hardware and software that improves the audibility of a smartphone, especially for those with hearing deficits . Alex grew up with congenital hearing loss in a family overwhelmed by the cost of hearing aids. These are profitable business ventures, solving real-world problems.

Fixing Silicon Valley's diversity problems is not just a good thing for entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds; it's a boon for the entire innovation economy. Companies that have an interest in growing and thriving need to embrace the competitive advantage that diversity brings to their team.

That's when the real tech revolution begins.

Mitch Kapor is a partner at Kapor Capital and co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact. Mitch founded Lotus Development Corporation and designed Lotus 1-2-3. He is the also the co-founder of The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation.​

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