Unicorns
If you look up “unicorn” online, Wikipedia says it’s a start-up company valued at over $1 billion. Beyond the sky-high valuation, unicorns have other similarities in company culture — Casual dress code, young employees, exposed brick walls, local food, dog-friendly offices and open-concept work spaces. Sounds cushy, doesn’t it?
Dan Lyons — Disrupted: Ending Bro Culture and Bias in Startup-Land
Writer for HBO’s Silicon Valley and author of Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
As Dan Lyons introduced his session last Friday, he verbalized every hunch I had about Luxury Retreats. Dan told the story of his transition as a Newsweek journalist to the second oldest employee at Boston-based tech company Hubspot. He emphasized the catalytic effect that Susan J. Fowler’s article on sexual harassment at Uber had on highlighting the prevalence of bro culture in start-ups. Bro culture is a corporate culture that favors men, young white men, at the expense of women, people of colour and older people.
In Disrupted, Dan recounts his time at Hubspot as being a mix of working at a frat house, Montessori kindergarten and Scientology church. Just like every other start-up, Hubspot was home to a cool and kooky office… Bright, basic colours. Beer on tap. Nap rooms. Beanbag chairs. Dogs running around. A weekly push up club.
He wondered how a company that spent so much time doing NPS surveys and telling its employees they were happy could have such a low retention rate. And just like the top 16 unicorns in the world today (among them, Uber and Airbnb of course), Hubspot was a cesspool of bro culture where more often than not, the odds are stacked against women, people of colour and older folks.
To prove his point, Dan showed an almost-hilarious 4x4 slide of the 16 unicorn CEO headshots. In my mind, I knew just how similar this slide looked to the executive team at my own company. To say that I was fired up after Dan’s talk would be a gross understatement. The thousands of miles between Austin and Montreal protected me from storming into our CEO’s office with the notes I just scribbled.
Chris Sacca — Shark, Billionaire, Activist
The following morning, I woke up feeling a little more diplomatic, hoping I’d hear some other perspectives to help me form a well-rounded and solution-oriented mindset. My prayers were answered that afternoon in a talk with Chris Sacca, a self-made billionaire best known for his role as an investor on ABC’s show, Shark Tank.
Chris was outspoken about the need to promote and hire diversely at the highest levels of any company. A few years ago, Chris was attending a TED conference in Santa Barbara, California. He arrived at the dinner a bit late and was disappointed to find all of his top picks had fully occupied tables. Reluctantly, he sat down at an empty table next to a small, Indian woman named Shivani Siroya. Shiv told Chris about her company Tala, a mobile and data-driven solution to “change the way credit scoring and financial services work around the world.” Chris claimed he was so enthralled by Tala that he didn’t have a bite of his dinner that night. When he asked her who coded the project, she responded with, “Me, Chris. Coding’s not that hard if you’re willing to spend some time on GitHub.”
TLDR: Chris is now an investor in Tala, a company that expressly hires women and people of colour in STEM positions. Chris’ takeaway message was meant to appeal to the most heartless, money-making grinches out there. Even if you’re not progressive and don’t see the human value of injecting culture at the highest levels of your company, you should at least understand that diversity and inclusion are proven to be directly correlated to the bottom line.
“Frankly, if you don’t invest like that, you must just hate money.” — Chris Sacca
Between Dan and Chris’ talks, I felt like we had covered most of our bases here. Dan raised awareness about bro culture and Chris sealed the deal with a call to action for company decision-makers. As most things go, I had only one question: What about me?
Zanele Mutepfa — Professional Women of Colour Meet-Up
Culture and Diversity Manager at adidas America Inc.
I’d like to think I’m a pretty proactive gal. As a friend, I’ll let you rant to me about ‘what I wouldn’t believe’ your boss said to you today, but pretty soon after, we’ll be keeping it moving to what YOU will do about it. I needed to take my own advice and I had a gut instinct that burning bras at the workplace on the Monday after SXSW wasn’t the way to go.
The universe came through for me again with Zanele Mutepfa’s meet up for professional women of colour. In clusters of 4 or 5, founders of small businesses, documentary producers, moms, CPAs and yoga teachers chatted around small, circular tables. One woman worked as a producer for Oprah for five years! (Side bar: Could being one degree of separation from Oprah be my biggest success at SXSW?)
One major take-away was the notion of “building a chair” for someone else at the table — The idea that if you are able to get your foot in the door at a meeting, gala or conference, to request a plus one and double the voice for diversity and inclusion in the room.
Brian Chesky — CEO and Head of Community at Airbnb
As timing would have it, I found out that just last week, Brian Chesky expanded his title from CEO to CEO and Head of Community. The title is intended to celebrate the community of hosts as the irreplaceable and human core of the company. Still, I am optimistic that this will have positive top-down effects in continuing to ensure that diversity and inclusion are at the forefront of our internal operations both at Luxury Retreats and Airbnb.
As a young employee, seeing (and meeting) kick-ass women like Aoife McArdle, Kim Rubey and Belinda Johnson have a significant hand in running the show at Airbnb is incredibly motivational.
It’s my hope that transparent communications like diversity reports and global updates at Airbnb are just around the corner for us at Luxury Retreats. To me, fostering a company with faces as diverse as the global community of hosts and guests we serve is what I’d call a ‘win-win.’
Fast forward to being back to reality on Monday morning, my life is no longer as glamorous as attending big-name talks and meeting new folks at SXSW. I’m back at work in Montreal, catching up on emails and missed meetings. I should get back to it…This gal’s got a hell of a lot of chairs to build.
