Silicon Valley start-up weekend for Latinos by Latinos

OAKLAND, Calif. – Carolina Huaranca says she never saw herself as an entrepreneur until she took part in her first start-up weekend in 2011.

During those three intensive days spent brainstorming new technologies, she realized she was not the only one. Huaranca was one of just two Latinos in a room of 100 people. 

Nonetheless, she gave birth to a start-up – and a mission: to one day bring together Latinos so they, too, could have a shot at a career in the tech industry.

Now as one of Silicon Valley's few Latina venture capitalists, Huaranca is making good on her promise by helping host Startup Weekend Oakland: Latinx Tech Edition. Over the weekend, the 54-hour event drew dozens of Latinos who designed, built and pitched their start-up ideas to assembled venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs.

"Generational wealth will be created in tech, and I don't want my community to be left behind," Huaranca said.

Huaranca's efforts come at a critical moment for the tech industry, which is grappling with its lack of racial and ethnic diversity, especially Latinos. By 2060, more than a quarter of the U.S. population will be Latino, representing more than $1 trillion in economic power and a major opportunity for the tech industry to appeal to a tech-savvy group with its products and services.

Yet in Silicon Valley tech companies, Latinos comprise a distinct minority, making up 6% of employees, versus the 22% of employees in non-tech firms in the area, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. At major Silicon Valley tech companies such as Google and Facebook, that percentage is far smaller.

Too few Latino tech entrepreneurs, investors

Even more striking: Latinos are rare in the ranks of tech entrepreneurs and investors. Less than 1% of venture-backed start-ups has a Latino founder, according to CB Insights, even though Hispanics drive new business formation in the U.S.

As a tech investor, Huaranca says she's dismayed she gets so few pitches from Latino tech entrepreneurs. "Latinx" start-up weekend, she says, is designed to change that by giving Latinos access to the networks and the industry they hope to join. Pronounced la-teen-ex, Latinx is a gender-neutral term Huaranca uses to put the spotlight on the intersectionality of the Latin-American identity across race, gender and language.

The breadth of that identity poses its own challenge: How to organize a community that is so diverse? The Latino community has been a "voiceless majority" because the conversation on diversity in tech "is focused on gender, or it's focused on race," Huaranca said. "But this community is an ethnicity, and it's every race. It's black. It's Asian. It's Latino. It's white. It's indigenous."

Huaranca's own family reflects that "racial complexity. My great grandmother is Afro-Peruvian on my mother’s side. My grandmother on my dad’s side is half Cantonese-Peruvian. My last name that I wear as a badge of honor is Quechua, an Incan dialect," she said.  

Huaranca found support for her vision at Kapor Capital, where she focuses on early-stage investments. She joined in 2016 after consulting for a Kapor Capital portfolio company.

"Everything I have done has been centered on a concept of access. This has always been my north star," she said.

Access is the raison d'etre of Kapor Capital. The venture capital firm is led by technology veterans Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein, who advocate for diversity in tech, particularly racial and ethnic diversity, from their home base, a recently renovated building in downtown Oakland, one of the nation's most diverse cities. 

On Saturday afternoon, conference rooms and the rooftop deck there teemed with entrepreneurs and technologists, hunched over laptops and notepads, hashing out ideas they would present the following evening to a panel of judges, everything from boosting inclusion and empathy in the workplace using artificial intelligence and virtual reality to creating a system for U.S. investors to lend money to small-business owners in Mexico.

Among the participants: Karen Rodriguez-Ponciano, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student who came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was in high school.

Rodriguez-Ponciano says technology is "a very powerful tool if you know how to use it or leverage it." The "Latinx" start-up weekend, she said, offered a unique opportunity for Latinos to "create solutions for our community and empower each other."

"Tech offers just so much opportunity but I feel like not a lot of us have the chance to experience that," she said.

Unequal access to opportunity

Until last weekend, Nilton Serva had never experienced that opportunity the tech industry offers. 

The 19-year-old aspiring entrepreneur from Antioch, Calif., is turning his life around after being incarcerated. A community college student, he learned about the start-up weekend from his college computer science club and he switched his shifts at Costco to attend. His team, one of six in the start-up competition, embraced his suggestion to create a platform that connects at-risk Latino youth with mentors and resources, an idea inspired by his personal struggles.

"I was really nervous the whole weekend," he said. "I'd never been to an event like that. The closest thing was my middle school assembly."

He says he walked away with new hope that he can lift his fortunes and those of other young Latinos.

"I feel like I used to have a closed mind-set," Serva said. "Now I feel like I have a growth mind-set."

Huaranca's brother, AJ, flew out from New York to be one of the advisers helping the competing teams such as the winner, Team Prezta, which came up with a service to help friends and family borrow and lend money and get paid back without the usual social awkwardness.

"What was hugely powerful for me was to see this room filled with all these young  minds, all these young Latinos that are wanting to better themselves," said Huaranca, a software engineer. "I never got the opportunity to see that or experience that myself. But seeing it now is just awesome."