Importance of Creating Space for Minorities in Tech — Calvin Brown // Kairu Consulting

Quotes

• “I've been doing this and tech since 96, I was about 26 years and it's still a surprise like, oh wow, this guys in tech, like this is some form of new thing that's happening, having been around that period of time.”

• “... there is an enormous black population. I myself have a group of 11 to 1200 people called Black Men Coding... just to say, ``Hey, we're here and they have all these amazing talents...”

• “I don't think that it's just people's perception because you're like, wow, there's never been a black person to do this one thing before. But me having that conversation doesn't mean that we're less talented about it.”

• “There's two issues that are happening here. One, there is real world social injustice… and two, there is the influx of social media that allows these movements to gain steam and notoriety rightfully so in the vast majority of cases.”

• “I pay tons of taxes, right? So I pay for school and my kids don't even go to those schools. So that space that was created for that in my father's lifetime, who's still alive. Wasn't available to everybody.”

• “I will never think that I was just that smart to figure it all out. It's the timing I happened to be born at the right time. I started at the beginning of the .com boom.”

• “It was just so many things that lined up. But what happens to the kid that's born two years later or 13 years earlier, that opportunity didn't exist. So I have to create that opportunity.”

• “It's one of the greatest spaces for minorities to function, simply because if you were to go on any of the sites like Upwork or Upwork or Fiverr, you have no idea who's on the other end.”

• “I don't necessarily go to black VCs to get money for a new product, but just occupying that space, being in San Francisco for those pitch meetings, it's all white kids, white kids, not men. They're like 22.”

• “... think about the.com phase. They were giving kids 10 and $50 million for the weirdest ideas. What percentage of those black ideas made it to be funded at that level?”

• “Not everybody can get a laptop and this is not a black or white thing. Like it's a socioeconomic issue.”

• “All you need is a laptop. You just need that first 500 bucks. Well, 500 bucks means something that's a lot different to my kids in the suburbs of San Francisco than it means to somebody that's living in rural Alabama or wherever it might be.”

• “I could turn the corner from where I lived and find somebody who's a good example of being successful in the technology industry. That isn't always the case everywhere in the world.”

• “I do want to add that the reason that I believe I am successful is because I had a relative who has an IT consulting company… just being able to see that the light bulb went off like, oh, I see how this works.”

• “So I just have the community there. We do free training for those who are interested...”

• “It's a www.meetup.com forward slash black men coding. And essentially it's free to join. Just join. We have a topic every Wednesday.”