Get in, and then tear down the establishment. Sound familiar?

In America, thanks to political correctness, it’s been working overtime for decades. Multiculturalism is a one-way street. Or when was the last time you saw “diversity” in a chinese restaurant? Or any “minority owned” business. Only whites must conform to the numbers game.

“Once I get inside, I will do my best to completely explode it from the inside”

As a white male doing business in India, see how far that mindset will get you. Or better yet, try it in some of the countries in the middle east. Not a chance. You play by their rules – and be grateful – or you don’t play at all.

And no one complains.

As for me, I work in mesh networking and muni wifi. I have all types of ideas. I get involved in WiFi electric meter reading. But the 2.4 GHz 802.11 frequency is so full of interference and such that WiFi metering is not fully mature yet. So I cannot leverage the MuniFi network and build other business applications to prove the model. So I would love to devlop products that work on let’s say 900 MHz or other frequencies that can seamlessly interact with the 2.4 Ghz 802.11 via Mobile IP Protocol for session persistance. And would love to get VC money to do this. Or how about developing “guadian RFID” for at risk students in need of a reminder of where they should be (studying and not fooling around)…or using the “avatar” ecosystem to simulate a business model in a real (simulated) environment. My buddies in China told me that they are already offering “avatar” services and people are paying someone to maintain their avatar on a 24 hour basis while the person is working!

I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it in terms of race or gender (though many women I know have assured me that the female experience is very different), but I will say that the desire to feel like part of the “in” crowd and the pain of feeling excluded still apply, and in spades.

Everyone knows that there is an in crowd, especially in Web 2.0. Heck publications like VentureBeat, GigaOm, and TechCrunch act as de fact gatekeepers (though I admit that Matt is probably more egalitarian than Om or Mike). And while that status makes the insiders feel good, those on the outside looking in can’t help but feel envious of the incredible feast of opportunity that always seems out of reach.

The Pope who had refused the Madona from Caravagio in Florence was asked who likes it-perhaps nobody but everybody likes very much the wonderful girl who was the model of Caravagio.

This was an art piece…A R T… but what do I know-VC’s were in Saigon’s Chu Chi tunnels in 1968-69-and now they are some of Silicon Valley’s most productive folks-
M

That’s a fair critique. I probably should have held off on the piece, until I fully understood the entire context. Unfortunately, we may never know the full context.

Er, the standards of modern art are not those of journalism. Taking a quote ‘out of context’ could just as well make an installation great as ‘mediocre’.

And if the quote was out of context — who got it wrong? The SFChron presentation is:

“But Mayfield Fund venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said that despite his success in Silicon Valley, he still sees a white male circle of insiders that he can’t penetrate, with exclusive dinner parties and country clubs that he isn’t part of.”

That *doesn’t* indicate that the “white male circle of insiders” is specifically in/about Silicon Valley. It *could* be read consistent with the Mayfield explanation. In contrast, this VentureBeat post’s leading paragraph portrays this as a “provocative remark about Silicon Valley”.

So maybe it’s neither the video nor the SFChron who got the context wrong — but VentureBeat, who after all “haven’t seen it for ourselves yet.”

7 are female, 6 are Asian. 18 of 22 are “techies”, with degrees in science, math, or engineering, and operating experience in tech companies. 3 are MDs. Is there a doctor on your team? See http://www.kpcb.com.

I would not want this type of immature, so called VC on my board team.

http://orangedaysnews4.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-venture-capital-is-trying-to-get.html

excert:

“The gambit is paying off for some investors. Venture capital firm Mayfield Fund recently made it a point to introduce goateed 29-year-old Chamath Palihapitiya, whom the firm was thinking of hiring, to an entrepreneur it was trying to court — Greg Tseng, the 26-year-old co-founder of teen-chat Web site Tagged Inc. He was impressed with Mr. Palihapitiya’s knowledge about teens and Web instant-messaging, a business Mr. Palihapitiya was at the time managing at America Online.

Later, a Mayfield investor told Mr. Tseng that Mr. Palihapitiya had decided to join the firm. “That definitely was a factor in our decision to go with Mayfield,” says Mr. Tseng, who collected $7 million in funding from the firm in February. Allen Morgan, a 53-year-old managing director at Mayfield, says Mr. Palihapitiya was snapped up for his experience not his youth.”