Diversity, inclusion, and innovation—Oakland style

Mitch Kapor, an early investor in Uber and founder of Kapor Center, will open up Vator Splash Spring

In 1970, African-Americans made up 13.4 percent of San Francisco’s population. As of the 2010 census, that number had dropped to just 6.1 percent. More recent figures show it still dropping.

This pattern alone represents a larger cultural shift occurring in the city by the bay, which, as any resident can tell you, is undergoing a silent but vast transformation thanks to the rich and booming tech culture. As a result of new offices opened up by tech giants like Salesforce, Twitter, and Google—not to mention the hundreds of startups opening up their own small offices across SoMa—more and more employees that fit the makeup of a tech company are moving to the city.

According to data shared in the Atlantic yesterday (via San Francisco's Diversity Numbers Are Looking More and More Like a Tech Company's), it comes down to this: people moving to SF tend to be younger, white or Asian, and have higher degrees. People moving out haven’t the same college degrees, and they tend to be older and black or Hispanic.

But what about the other city by the bay?

Even since the dot-com boom, Oakland has had its own piece of the technology pie. After Ask.com (founded in 1996) and Pandora (founded in 2000), the newest tech giant slated to move into Oakland is Uber. It’s no secret that the ridesharing company, with over $8 billion in venture capital and a valuation reportedly as high as $62.5 billion, largely chose Oakland because rents in San Francisco had simply grown so astronomical.

The question is whether the tech boom—and the gentrification that comes with it—will alter Oakland in the same way that it has San Francisco. For Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and her team, the hope is that Oakland will be able to retain its core values and character even while new money and business flows in.

“This has got to be about two parts. The first part is Uber moving into Oakland,” said City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, when Uber confirmed its move. “The second part is Oakland moving into Uber. And by that, I mean taking in our values and our ethos.”

Thanks to one of Uber’s earliest investors, Mitch Kapor, that just might be possible.

Kapor Capital, the venture capital investment arm of the Oakland-based Kapor Center for Social Impact, this year launched The Kapor Capital Founders’ Commitment. Explicitly defined across "Four Actions," the Commitment aims to make diversity and inclusion crucial criteria for technology companies from their earliest stages of growth. The companies in the graphic above represent all those that have made the commitment so far.

“We have a $25 million commitment to invest in diverse companies, from 2015 through 2017,” said Brian Dixon, partner at Kapor Capital, in an interview with VatorNews. “So we’re investing roughly $8.3 million per year. What’s interesting is that 50 percent of those dollars will go to teams that have a woman or person of color founder on the team. That’s something we take pretty seriously and are excited about.”

A cynical investor or entrepreneur might argue that it’s just another thing to worry about, besides building a minimum viable product, attracting customers, and establishing a path to profitability. But for someone that values Oakland’s values of diversity and inclusion as much as innovation, it’s a worthy effort. It’s another way of saying that growth should be for humanity’s sake, not just for growth’s sake.

We’ll be continuing this conversation this Thursday at Vator Splash Spring in a fireside chat with Mitch Kapor, so be sure to register here!