Tech Entrepreneurs React To CNN's 'Black In America' (VIDEO)

Last night CNN premiered the fourth and latest installment of their "Black In America" series, "The New Promised Land, Silicon Valley. The much talked about program garnered attention from various tech enthusiasts and bloggers on the alarming statistic that about 1 percent of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of 2010 were African-American.

To further pursue the discussion, Emmy Award winning media personality and Digital Lifestyle Expert Mario Armstrong hosted a webcast panel, "Innovation Nation", immediately following CNN's premiere featuring tech entrepreneurs, including Wayne Sutton (featured in the documentary), to examine the role of Black America and technology.

Check out the special rebroadcast of "Innovation Nation" above.

Comments

[Rocki 79]

01:53 AM on 11/15/2011

The Blacks In The Silicon Valley documentary was unfortunately very shallow and failed to give any historical context about how we have in fact excelled in the technology industry. If you want to get just a taste of what we Blacks who live and work in Silicon Valley have done, Google search John Thompson of Symantec, Eric Kelly of Overland Storage or Kenneth Coleman of Silicon Graphics. It saddens me that CNN and O’Brien relied solely on limited information provided by white people or that provided by the group of young adults that were temporarily relocated to Mountain View. It is very strange that Black locals who would have loved to share the facts of our accomplishments were not invited to participate. I mistakenly expected more from professionals.

[Miss UG]

09:22 PM on 12/18/2011

Well put, because someone like me watching this for the first time was shock. I never heard of those guys you are talking about, but will research them.

Thanks for the information on successful black technology professionals.
Miss UG

[thebearclaw007]

04:56 PM on 11/14/2011

I'm wondering why they couldn't get any funding from rappers, or BET, or Ophra?

[Shy Mukerjee]

01:16 PM on 11/15/2011

The same reason all white people don't automatically get funding from pop musicians, NBC, or Bill Gates.

[thebearclaw007]

01:33 PM on 11/15/2011

And?

[junmhoon]

12:51 PM on 11/14/2011

I thought CNN's 'Black In America' special was Great. I didn't care for the guy from Tech Crunch commenting that he didn't know or hasn't seen any AA Entrepreneurs in the Valley. Well, I've been there a few times and have met with many. It's obvious that we need more tech entrepreneurs in this space like yesterday. I spoke with a friend this morning who's a investment banker about the need and he agreed. His firm is going to look into setting up an incubator here in Chicago for Black Start-Ups. By the way, did anyone watch 60 min. last night? They did a Great piece on Freeman Hrabowski, the brother who runs University of Maryland in Baltimore. He sees the need and is working on it.