Last week, Alex Blumberg hosted an episode of Gimlet Media’s Startup Podcast (you should listen to it btw) where the company pulled back the curtain on their diversity stats. While we see big tech companies diving into this data semi-regularly, we hadn’t seen a younger company like Gimlet do it.
And so it inspired us to take a look at our data and see how diversity looked at CB Insights.
It’s worth noting upfront our “policy” on diversity.
It is that we don’t have a policy on diversity. We want the best people for each and every role, and we know that the best people come from many backgrounds.
And so while diversity isn’t a policy, we’ve learned it’s just smart business.
As a result, we’re holding our own for a 69-person company operating in a fin tech industry that is burdened with a “white males apply here” stereotype.
Here are the figures.
Gender at CB Insights
Overall, we have 21 females on the team, which is 30% of our team. For basis of comparison, this is on par with Google whose workforce is 30% female and Facebook whose figure stands at 32%. Not bad, but we can (and will) do better.
But in Tech (where we define “Tech” as engineering and product management), we fare extremely well versus the same two giants where exactly one-third of our team is female.
Ethnicity at CB Insights
CB Insights is two-thirds white. Overall, Google and Facebook are more diverse in this regard.
However, within our tech team (as defined above), our team beats the marks of Google and Facebook.
Age at CB Insights
Warning: anecdote ahead. Despite the fact that ageism doesn’t garner a ton of attention in startupland, I’d bet it’s as prevalent as gender and ethnic bias. So while I don’t have anything to compare our figures against because companies rarely pay attention to this topic, here is a chart of our age range distribution.
What now?
We are doing and plan to do things that we believe will help us attract the best talent. As a natural consequence of doing these things, we believe we’ll also build a more diverse team. Some of those things include:
- Keeping the interview panels diverse
- Ensuring that “not a culture fit” is not code for “isn’t like us” in the hiring process
- Continuing outreach to to pockets of untapped talent that startups tend to ignore
- Measuring diversity on a periodic basis to see how we’re doing
- Focusing on our culture and being very clear through words & actions about what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior
While we understand that massive companies like Google and Facebook are paying attention to this, we do think it’s healthy for the next Googles, Facebooks, etc. to start thinking about this issue early as well.
If you have any questions or have done things in your organization that have proven effective, I’d love to hear from you.
Also, we’re hiring like crazy (plans to go from 69 to 120 this time next year). If you want to join a team of smart people who are using data and predictive analytics to take on the Pundit Industrial Complex, check out our jobs page.
Related: Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to present our Venture Capital Human Capital report to Google and The White House. The numbers in the report are alarming. Fortunately, others including the NVCA are carrying the torch forward through their own diversity reporting initiatives.