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CTA Announces $10 Million Fund Commitment to Women, Diverse Founders and Diverse Leadership Teams
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced today at CES® – the world's largest and most influential tech event – that CTA will invest $10 million in venture firms and funds focused on women, people of color and other underrepresented startups and entrepreneurs.
"To continue to evolve and grow, the tech industry needs more equal access to venture funding," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CTA. "Various research reports indicate diverse teams make better decisions and achieve greater profits. At CTA, this is one more tool we are deploying to help promote diversity in the technology industry."
CES revokes award from female-founded sex tech company
Sex tech has been done at the Consumer Electronics Show. This year, however, seems to be different, with the organization behind CES, the Consumer Technology Association, revoking an innovation award from a company geared toward women's sexual health.
The CTA revoked an innovation award from Lora DiCarlo, the company behind a hands-free device that uses biomimicry and robotics to help women achieve a blended orgasm by simultaneously simulating the G-spot and the clitoris. Called Osé, formerly known as Vela, the device uses micro-robotic technology to mimic the sensation of a human mouth, tongue and fingers in order to produce a blended orgasm for women.
"Vela does not fit into any of our existing product categories and should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program," CTA Senior Manager of Event Communications Sarah Brown said in a statement to TechCrunch. "CTA has communicated this position to Lora DiCarlo. We have apologized to the company for our mistake."
[...] As Lora Haddock, founder and CEO of Lora DiCarlo, notes in an open letter today, CES has recognized products like ones from B.sensory and OhMiBod, which won the Digital Health and Fitness Product category in 2016. CES also allowed a virtual reality porn company to exhibit at the show in 2017, as well as a sex toy robot for men to exhibit in 2018.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday January 10 2019, @01:17AM (13 children)
So if I start a company with a $colour LGBT female as CEO I'll get three time the funding? In that case if there are any $colour LGBT women reading this, please PM me, I have a business proposition...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @01:36AM
For $10 million I'll get a Kenyan birth certificate (apparently not too hard), a sex change operation and still get to chase skirts. Sending PM now!
ps. call me 'consumer' and I won't be customer
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:56PM (11 children)
You're not joking - that's exactly how it works. Same for government contracting, at least in the US. You must have a certain number of minority and/or women-owned businesses. Lots of which are shell companies, set up explicitly to get contracts like this.
As I once read somewhere, paraphrasing: I was once considered hopelessly liberal, for insisting that people be valued as individuals rather than by the color of their skin. Now I am considered hopelessly conservative, for exactly the same reason.
How about we just fund worthy enterprises, and forget about people's plumbing, coloration, or sexual identities - none of which have anything at all to do with their competence?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:57PM (4 children)
You're hardly the only one that thinks that way. There's basically no help for middle-class white men when it comes to just about anything. We don't have the opportunities that the rich have for connecting with resources, and we get none of the help that lower class people do or various minorities.
And don't get me started on people of color, which is more or less a code word for people who can't figure out how to fit in and aren't smart enough to figure out how to change the system either. It's amazing how Hispanics tend to stop using the term to describe themselves when they actually figure out how to work within the system. Not that Hispanics is even a real thing in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:16PM (2 children)
Why would a "middle class" white man need help with anything? You're middle class. Just sayin'.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:42PM (1 child)
Clearly any human may need assistance from time to time.
But, the claim that white main can't avail themselves of the social safety net is a complete lie. Food stamps, employment assurance, etc. are all available.
Sure, many private organizations may choose to focus their charity on specific causes. But, they can spend their money however they want, right conservatives?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @07:41PM
I use the pink main, Kirby.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:56PM
You wanna know why this is being done to you? Here's why: the elite think of you *exactly the same way* they think of the very "people of color" you're ragging on.
Do you get it now? You and them are precisely the same to the elite. You're both n*****s to the elite. You are being manipulated to punch down and make it easier for the rich and greedy to fuck you over rather than joining hands with the PoC you have such a problem with and punching up with your combined weight.
Understand something: you have far, far, far more in common with the poorest, sickest, most drug-addicted black single mother from Detroit than you do with a single one of these mega-wealthy sociopaths. You are not a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire; you are being gaslit by them to be their shock troopers in their war on the poor, which threshold keeps creeping further and further up every year. Open your eyes and realize who your true enemies are.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:40PM (5 children)
Because business as usual isn't working. To continue to do the same thing and expect a different result is crazy.
Also, this is a private organization. Who are you to tell others how they should spend their own money. If you don't like it, feel free to not be a member.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Thursday January 10 2019, @06:19PM (4 children)
Actually, it's working really well, from a societal perspective. The rate of poverty is getting lower and lower, and the rate of poverty decline is accelerating. And that's all due to valuing individuals and creating hierarchies of competence.
Can we do better? Sure, there are always problems. Corruption and bias will never be completely eliminated. But we should be working on those edge issues, not just trying to create a system where we can be biased against different groups.
What this kind of effort is doing is NOT trying to fix issues around unfair biases (it's explicitly calling for bias), nor to create equal opportunities. It is looking to create equal outcomes, a dangerous proposition. Because everyone has different interests, capabilities, and conscientiousness. If you cast those aside because you want equal outcomes from people that are not really interested in tech, are not as competent as others, and not willing to work as hard, it's going to create a dystopian society. You can't get around the Pereto distribution, it's a law of nature. There's no way to make everyone the same.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 10 2019, @06:30PM (3 children)
Well good for you. You have a different opinion on how to make the world a better place than they do. Go ahead and start your own charity focusing on men's issues and I promise to not complain about where you send your money.
Or, donate some money to charities that focus on men's issues if you feel the funding is not equal. Might I suggest the Prostate Cancer Foundation. [pcf.org] Or, Is it bad they're trying to cure a disease that only effects men?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @09:40PM (2 children)
> Go ahead and start your own charity focusing on men's issues and I promise to not complain about where you send your money.
Tell that to Earl Silverman.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:04PM (1 child)
Tell that to Earl Silverman.
Never heard of him until now.
Sounds like he ran his charity until he couldn't afford to anymore (then killed himself).
Nobody stopped him from running it. Nobody stopped anyone from donating.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday January 11 2019, @12:00PM
I am a crackpot