Encountering ignorance in business
Sometimes the tells are obvious and frustrating
I grew up in a household filled with love. My parents instilled in my Brother, Sister and I from an early age that all people are created equal and no one has the right to pass judgement on anybody. In terms of race, creed, or religion, it was taught that we all have the same hearts inside and all of our blood runs red.
I am currently working on one of the most innovative and exciting disruptive startup projects imaginable. I am blessed to be a partner with five absolutely brilliant African American women, and the only thing that is stopping our project from taking off is venture capital.
We’ve had a couple of meetings with VC’s and there is one image that I can’t get over. It was one of the guys (who was white) staring at the Zoom camera and saying ‘’We need to talk about finance, I guess that’s your role Alan.’’ I felt like throwing up. He constantly seemed to ignore the Founders. One of our partners has a Law Degree and is an MBA, why did he assume it was my role to discuss finance? We also have a very accomplished CFO. When he had questions why did he keep addressing them to me? He listened to our presentation and at the end, he had no comments or suggestions, he said he’d get back to us and that was it. Never heard from him again. The funny thing is our group was not surprised…
