Just thoughts #9: Solving DEIB and the startup ecosystem challenges
Visited a couple of DEIB-related events this week. The solution will lie in "How to think differently"?
The content in this article is “handwritten” - and only co-piloted with Grammarly’s spell-checking. I was downgraded to only free version help as I’m out of funds.
The content is free to read; if you want to support my writing work, you may buy my poetry collection on Gumroad here.
Reading these thoughts you are either inspired or you are not. The first rule of reading these thoughts is asking yourself: Why should I think this way?
The highlight of the week: The true insight into DEIB.
I’ve been giving some thought to how to improve my writing. My first thought is that I need to acknowledge that writing helps me think. Tim Ferris talks about first putting your thoughts on paper. When you “see them” you can improve them. I acknowledge copy editing and other proofreading will improve my writing, or it would likely make my writing more understandable when I end up being unintentionally unclear.
As a takeaway from the video, I will take the fact that having a lawyer read your text will improve it significantly as they are trained to interpret law text. The consequence of this is that they take things very literally. I wonder now if I’d prompt AI to proofread my texts as a lawyer, rather than a copy editor, if it would give an output that is different AND especially better? “Better” is subjective, maybe the output will be a text that is better for lawyers.
However, in a world with unlimited AI power. Isn’t it refreshing to read someone's raw thoughts? The unfiltered and unedited text? To counterargue the thought, there must be a reason why editing has existed for so long. What is the appropriate metaphor here “A writer without an editor is…..” Help me fill in the blank by leaving a comment.
I’m intentionally diverging the thought from the headlines as it’s pretty obnoxious. I’m dishing out solutions to a problem that has its origins so deeply rooted in human nature it’s scary. Therein lies the reason why trying to find a solution is intriguing.
I’ll drop the punchline; The common thought that is flawed is that DEIB work is a “finite endeavor” when it is an infinite one. I’d draw parallels with the thought of the “infinite game” made popular in the past decade by Simon Sinek, but has its origins in Carse’s work Finite vs. Infinite games. Here’s an article from WorldQuant summarizing the thoughts about both individual’s work quite nicely.
Questions related to DEIB only differ by one rule; It is only with privilege you think you can “jump out of an infinite game” the way Aviral describes it in the WorldQuants article. I’ll describe my line of thinking through the events I participated in last week.
In this article, I go through some thoughts on my writing and some of the content I consumed this week from the “usual sources.” Furthermore, I discuss my insights from the couple of DEIB-related events I had the opportunity to join. I also discuss some inspirational sources before drilling down on some serious thoughts. Namely, I cover my thoughts on the current efforts of the startup association.
Headlines this week:
DEIB-related events: Two spaces that should’ve been shared.
On the hunt for an artist.
Life advice from my two favorite sources.
The discussion the Startup Ministers and the President should have.
DEIB-related events: Two spaces that should’ve been shared.
The past week I participated in two DEIB-related events. One was Maria01 community breakfast: Best practices for Building Businesses Inclusively and the other was Diversify’s Pre-Summit Nordic RoadShow in Finland. Deidei’s CEO Jasmin Assulin was speaking at both events. I was there for moral support, professional learning, networking, and for you readers to get the summary of “just thoughts”.
During the breakfast, after Josefiina Kotilainen CEO of the Startup Foundation shared the results from the survey I discussed in Just Thoughts #4, the stage was shared by Jasmin Assulin, Sarita Runeberg CEO of Maria01, Kristo Ovaska Founder & Board member (I always want to call him Co-founder, but let’s use the title he uses) and Timo Ahopelto using quite a few titles, but let’s summarize by saying Partner at Lifeline Ventures.
Both Timo and Kristo expressed their concerns and were surprised at how bad the results were. Both stated how they thought “we were over” these discussions. Timo shares some stories from what Slush did and how he’s actively engaged in discussion with minority representatives in his sphere of communities but doesn’t hear any stories awakening concern. Kristo shared how Sarita (on stage), who was among the first women to work at Smartly.io, had been interviewed in an inappropriate ritual originating from the student culture in Finland. Namely, singing songs containing inappropriate language.
If you’re reading this as a foreigner, here’s a pretty accurate description of university life with some marketing lingo at its most positive depiction, but we also have a thing called sitsit shortly explained in this Reddit thread.
The discussion goes on with some examples about how Slush took steps on inappropriate behavior at the event with a code of conduct, but Timo doesn’t remember to mention Slush also trained employees on handling harassment issues and deployed dedicated harassment contact people for the event to act as mediators. Furthermore, I have to remind Kristo of what sparked Smartly.io's hiring differently. Namely, eBay said they won’t buy Smartly.io’s services as long as there are 10+ white males on the roster and no diversity other than the length of the beards, or the letters in the names (they didn’t say the two later, but someone had made a name counter in the company when I joined with “Lauris” leading the count with #7)
There are quite a few additional corrections and pointers I would’ve liked to make during the discussion, such as Kristo slipping a “you can allow people to make a mistake once” making him sound less heartfelt than the man he is. He would’ve added, if allowed to correct himself that there are some incidents (likely described in the report presented before him being on stage), that you should employ zero tolerance of. Some “mistakes” are unforgivable and you should fire people immediately.
I’m someone who worked for Slush during the worst harassment challenges that were tackled (all credit on the solutions and the firefighting to others in the team, especially Marianne who was CEO at the time), as someone who was part of implementing Kristo’s cultural strategy at Smartly.io, the person who designed many pieces of training Sarita participated in, and someone who currently works alongside Jasmin Assulin I had one question in mind at the moment I needed an answer to from Kristo & Timo.
After everyone on stage starts to giggle out of nervousness I ask ”What resources do you think it takes to make a change? Time, Money, People, Knowledge?” The answer was “To Think differently”. Well with this answer in mind, I go to the next event the next day thinking “How will we get people to think differently, and what part of their thinking needs to change.”
The next day, arriving the next day again at Maria01, but in a different space I almost catch the first panel discussion. On stage, you have Maria01 community manager Annica Sigfrids moderating, Jasmin, Hannu Medina Founder of We Speak Gay, Yesmith Sáches partner at Inklusiiv, and Katariina Jalas HR Director for EY Finland speaking about Building Resilient Organizations - Leadership, Strategy, and Responsibility.
As I hope the recordings will be published I will only highlight the last question which was directed to everyone on stage expressing a desire to give the audience one tip on “building resilient organizations”. Everyone in their own words, basically stated the process is “iterative, it’s never done, and seek help to get started.”
With that in mind, we had the first piece of the puzzle. Kristo & Timo are thinking “It’s done”, “it was something in the past”, and “We fixed this” In other words, they think it’s a finite endeavor. Every stage expert is saying, “It will never be done”.
In between panels, there was a keynote on; An Introduction to Anti-racism by Aminkeng A. Alemanji Ph.D. researcher on the subject, who has launched his app Finland without Racism that helps people educate and learn about the subject as well as allows you to report incidents of racism to the authorities.
If the first panel answered how to think differently, the second panel answered what to start doing. The panel was moderated by Chisom Udeze (her merits are twice as long as Timo’s & Kristo’s combined, but let’s just call her “The main organizer”). Joining her on stage was Senni Moilanen Chair at Helsinki Pride (also sharing on stage that they recently joined Amnesty), Aminkeng, Ursula Koski CTO at Amazon Webservices, and Tania Nathan community organizer, artist, and activist. Discussing the subject of co-creating an anti-racist Finland in the age of misinformation, polarization, and fragmentation.
Chisom dishes some really hard questions and dwells on subjects that Aminkeng reacts to by saying “Let me just unpack a few millennia of racial injustice to answer this question.” They were deep into it. Tania said that trying to educate on the subject discussed at client organizations she feels like adding her therapy fee. Why? It is so hard to talk about the subject through her own experiences.
Ask me in the future why a consulting fee is higher than what you pay your business coach, this will be the answer. In addition to the fact that if you’re serious about making societal change, pay the practitioners so they can make a living in the industry. In a bidding situation pay the highest price to the provider of choice or if in doubt of appropriate pricing, employ the Vicrey Auction assuming you’ve done the work of finding more than two providers.
To conclude this chapter; Chisom makes a couple of very interesting remarks toward the end
We love polarization because it highlights our uniqueness
The work has and will always be about exploring ourselves first.
To the second point. I was standing next to my friend Pierre Jallow. As an individual who used to be a practitioner in the field, he whispered that this is what we’ve been talking about in “these events” for 15 years…. I’m thinking 15 years, and this space is still not shared with the people in the other event. Two events, the same building complex, one day apart, one highlights the problems, and the other discusses the solutions. That is not ok, let’s start with that.
With that thought, here is my Dunning-Kruger curve hitting its high peek on the subject of DEIB.
The thinking that needs to change is that DEIB-related work will never be “done” as it is an infinite endeavor, most people in the world don’t have the privilege of leaving and the work starts with ourselves.
We should love that work because we love being seen as the unique people we are and how we are unique compared to others.
Additionally, we need to understand and see from the perspective of others. Hence, we need to educate ourselves. Ignorance is a choice, not an excuse.
If in doubt were to start, start with exploring your unconscious biases.
On the Hunt for an Artist
was hunting for the background of an artist with 15 Billion streams on Spotify and discussing how artists can reach ridiculous numbers without anybody knowing anything about them. Additionally, he dwells on the morality of the phenomenon. I read the first few paragraphs and I think the streamer he’s looking for likely works for epidemic sounds and this is just another one of their experiments. What does Epidemic sounds do?
”Access the largest music and sound effects catalog of its kind, seen and heard over 2.5 billion times per day. With exclusive soundtracking tools and all rights included. Publish worry-free, worldwide.”
They run analysis on Spotify trend data and produce royalty-free sounds based on it (among the ways they produce music). They could likely automate everything in their production line with the data at their disposal. AI-produced sounds based on the latest trends for your needs immediately. To validate their success they will create a track under a pseudonym artist and watch the numbers soar. How much Spotify plays along is for someone else to investigate.
I’m not calling for a witch hunt, and not judging Epidemic Sounds, I’m a big fan and Oscar is a CEO to be modeled. Here’s a recent live interview he did on discussing the impact of Technology in the music industry, Building a Global brand, Leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Life advice from my two favorite sources
I have two YouTube videos I listen to whenever I feel down, whenever I forget why I make the choices that I do, to just find that sense of inspiration when I can’t find it anywhere else.
The first is Khalil Gibran's poem Do not Love Half Lovers - The last words always hit home.
The half is a mere
moment of inability
but you are able,
for you are not half a being.
You are a whole that exists
to live a life,
not half a life
It has inspired the poem I’ve written that is meant to be shared with friends.
A life worth living is one that is shared.
I am grateful for the opportunity to share it with all of you.
Around you, I feel I am able.
The other is Tim Minchin's inspirational speech “9 life lessons” this week the nbr #9: Don’t rush hit home.
The only sensible thing to do in this meaningless life of ours is to fill it… Life is best filled with learning as much as you can about as much as you can…
This has inspired the quote I use on my LinkedIn bio
Live to learn and you’ll learn to live
I won’t leave you with these sentimental thoughts, I’m going to go out on a direct note.
The discussion the Startup Ministers and the President of Finland should have
I take the time to listen to Jyri & Timo’s Startup Ministers podcasts and sometimes choose to share some feedback privately. Mainly for me to learn and I believe in the wisdom and madness of crowds. They have positioned themselves as a single point of influx in the crowd that is the intersection of business, startups, investors, and politics in the country that is my home.
I’ve written this poem some time ago. Including the note;
My words are the weapon
and my head is the holster
I sometimes tend to pull a “Broken arrow on the battlefield” with my writing and drink my morning coffee with a sense of toxic masculinity feeling like Robert Duvall saying “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. All that’s missing is someone screaming “Good Morning Startup World” on the radio, while readers are thinking “Oh no, he’s at it again”. I get told to “kill my darlings” when people read my writing, to filter out unnecessary noise. I will once my writing gets someone to edit these delirious thoughts, but until then here’s at least one more thought from last week.
The newly elected president of the country Alexander Stubb sent a letter as greetings to the startup community annual ball.
In short, he thanks the community for replacing the fear of failure with optimism and entrepreneurship. Pointing out it hasn’t been achieved with the help of politicians, and that the community has helped him grow as a person. He also remarks that innovation is best created by hundreds and thousands of small challengers. He wished the community well in the future.
Firstly, Jyri & Timo just discussed with the CEO of one of the biggest pension funds, Risto Murto, on their podcast about innovation in the States vs. innovation in Europe. Risto points out that certain innovation requires an immense amount of capital to innovate. There is a reason OpenAI collaborates with Microsoft otherwise the likes of Stargate would not be possible to implement.
You could see especially Timo liked this discussion based on the enthusiasm in his voice. However, I disagree with Risto on one point. When challenged on how we’ll compete (as finns) if we’ll never be able to compete with capital he mentions being able to “think on our feet”. This refers to the ability to think quickly when it matters most. No Risto, saying that the next generation of leaders who have grown up being dopamine addicts should think quickly is not what we want.
Bill Gates famously takes a couple of weeks every year to think slowly. Warren Buffet is notorious for having a paper calendar with absolutely no commitments in it. Any “quick thinking” should happen based on deliberate thinking breaks, derived mainly threw reflection of personal values. Additionally, it always helps to sleep over things when emotions are strong.
How we should be thinking about how to compete is something Jyri points out when attracting the world's best talent, or the “top 1%” as Ramzi Rafih in Robin Capitals blog puts it, “The least racist country wins”.
How we should compete is by being the least racist.
That is how we’ll get the world’s best talent, we have everything else in place, and that is one of three missing pieces. It will be exactly that simple, and that hard.
The second missing piece is discussed in Jyris & Timo’s podcast episode with economist Sanna Kurronen, the startups in the country represent collectively a higher sum than “the old export industries” of the country. Timo repeats his thesis about how long it takes to incubate a startup hub, stating that we’re 8 years behind Isreal where startups are the main driver of the economy.
I think there are plays you can make to fast-track this. If that wouldn’t be true Slush wouldn’t have had the impact it did and still has. The play that should be a startup association should seize existing as such, and a proper political party should be set up. The startup ministers become actual ministers. All operations from the association moved to the startup foundation, where they always belonged.
If there is something you learn from the successful evolution of our ecosystem projects it’s that the players involved become the change they want to see. We can no longer play separate parts and act like we’d get out of this financial hole that is the country’s economy without successful collaborations across all sectors of society.
On this note, I’d like to reply to the country’s president;
“Ärade president. Jag känner mig inspirerad över att ha en finlandsvensk leda vårt land. Tack för visad vänlighet mot ekosystemet som tagit sig så långt som det har utan politikers hjälp. Dock kan vi inte ta oss över nästa etap utan politikers hjälp. Du utrycker dig som om ekosystemet är något du inte är del av. Jag hoppas nästa gång utrycker du dig annorlunda, samt ser till att träffa de som kallar sig Startup Ministrar under ett lämpligt tillfälle.”
Finally, the last missing piece is that Miki Kuusi would stop trying to compete for influence globally and start playing where his influence is truly needed.
“Miki, jos olisin kuolin vuoteella tänään ja minun tulisi miettiä mitkä olisi mun viimeiset sanat jotka turvaisi lapseni tulevaisuuden. Ne eivät olisi kohdennettu lapsilleni tai rakkailleni koska olen jo heille kaiken sanonut sekä kirjoittanut. Viimeiset sanat olisi että voisitko Miki ryhtyä tähän väliin startup ministeriksi, koska muuten pelkään pahoin että myöhemmin sillä ei ole enään väliä meidän lastemme tulevaisuuden kannalta tässä maassa. Olet pari organisaatiota jo rakentanut ja korvannut itsesi jo niin monta kertaa että ei kukaan sua Wolt:ssa tai Doordash:lla tule kaipaamaan, mutta sinua kaivataan nyt eniten kotirintamalla”
Substack is telling me this is long enough, so I’ll try something different to end this lengthy story. I’ll share a joke straight from the family chat of my childhood family. He’s gotten through the hardship of life with the sense that it’s never too soon for a bit of humor. I’ve edited out the first joke I used here, as I learned how problematic it was by using harmful stereotypes, and picked another one instead. I also learned that using the word “cancel: ed” is problematic, and should be completely avoided.
P.s. to my dad “Olha usei uma piada. Eu acho que voce podia escrever essa parte de so pensamentos”
Until next week! Remember to subscribe for more thoughts every Sunday (or Monday?) and get access to an exclusive community of daily “Just Thoughts”!
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