Tag: Diversity

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Dear Sophie: Help! My H-1B wasn’t chosen!

Sophie Alcorn
Contributor

Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

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Dear Sophie: What should I know about prenups and getting a green card through marriage?
Dear Sophie: When can I finally come to Silicon Valley?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.
“Your questions are vital to the spread of …

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Three ways VC firms can construct sustainably diverse portfolios

Leslie Feinzaig
Contributor

Venture capital has a diversity problem: Data show that Black and Latinx founders received just 2.6% of overall funding in 2020. Women-founded teams received nearly 30% less funding in 2020 than they did in 2019.
For decades, a close-knit community of brilliant but like-minded individuals built a system of pattern recognition. It produced high-growth companies with homogenous leadership teams. They called it meritocracy. Those of us who didn’t fit the profile were told, or were left to assume, that we didn’t have what it takes.
When a founder needs funding but investors don’t think they “have what it takes,” …

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Dear Sophie: What should I know about prenups and getting a green card through marriage?

Sophie Alcorn
Contributor

Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

More posts by this contributor

Dear Sophie: When can I finally come to Silicon Valley?
Dear Sophie: What type of visa should we get to fundraise in Silicon Valley?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.
“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge …

Read More

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EQT Ventures promotes Laura Yao to partner; hires Anne Raimondi as operating partner

EQT Ventures, an investment firm based in Europe, which has raised over €1.2 billion ($1.4B USD) announced that it has promoted Laura Yao to partner. At the same time, the firm announced it recently hired Anne Raimondi, former SVP of Operations at Zendesk as operating partner.
The company is based in Stockholm with offices in London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Luxembourg. Yao is based in the U.S. office in San Francisco, where she has been working for three years prior to her recent promotion to partner. She says that the company tends to hire people with operator experience because they …

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R/GA Ventures announces its new Coalition Venture Studio to support Black founders

Design and marketing consultancy R/GA is expanding its Venture Studios program with the launch of a new Coalition Venture Studio focused specifically on supporting Black-led and Black-owned startups.
The initiative is led by R/GA Entrepreneur in Residence Davyeon Ross, a Black entrepreneur who founded sports analytics company ShotTracker. The startup (which is backed by TechCrunch’s parent company Verizon, specifically Verizon Ventures) was part of R/GA’s Dodgers Accelerator, and Ross attributed much of ShotTracker’s success to connections made by the agency.
“From that perspective, I got this firsthand view of the power of R/GA …

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Dear Sophie: When can I finally come to Silicon Valley?

Sophie Alcorn
Contributor

Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

More posts by this contributor

Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the H-1B, O-1A and EB-1A?
Dear Sophie: Can you demystify the H-1B process and E-3 premium processing?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.
“Your questions are …

Read More

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Brian Brackeen returns as an advisor to facial recognition startup Kairos following his ouster as CEO

Brian Brackeen, the founder and former CEO of facial recognition startup Kairos, has made his way back to the company following his ouster in 2018. Brackeen is now chairing the company’s scientific advisory board, where he’ll help to address and eliminate issues of racial bias from the technology.
While that’s not the company’s explicit mission — it’s to provide authentication tools to businesses — algorithmic bias has long been a topic the company, especially Brackeen, has addressed.
But what happened in the time leading up to his ouster and the events that followed was quite the whirlwind.
In 2018, …

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Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the H-1B, O-1A, and EB-1A?

Sophie Alcorn
Contributor

Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

More posts by this contributor

Dear Sophie: Can you demystify the H-1B process and E-3 premium processing?
Dear Sophie: Tips for filing for a green card for my soon-to-be spouse

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.“Your questions are vital to the spread …

Read More

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How a Lack of Sponsorship Keeps Black Women Out of the C-Suite

Before 2021, only one Black woman had been CEO of a Fortune 500 company. If we want to see more Black women step into the C-suite, and specifically into CEO positions, they must be sponsored into positions that offer a clear path to the top along with direct advocacy and support. Sponsorship requires leaders to vouch for the merit and legitimacy of protégés as potential successors, and has proved to be a powerful tool for elevating male leaders. Black women, however, find it harder than their white male counterparts to attract sponsors. But leaders and companies can address this by re-imagining the …

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How Pariti is connecting founders with capital, resources and talent in emerging markets

According to Startup Genome, Beijing, London, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Tel Aviv are some of the world’s best startup ecosystems. The data and research organisation uses factors like performance, capital, market reach, connectedness, talent, and knowledge to produce its rankings.
Startup ecosystems from emerging markets excluding China and India didn’t make the organisations’ top 40 list last year. It is a known fact that these regions lag well behind in all six factors, and decades might pass before they catch up to the standards of the aforementioned ecosystems.
However, Pariti, a Kenyan B2B management startup founded by Yacob Berhane …

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