There are 90,000 Scaled Latino Technology Firms in the U.S. Why Aren’t More People Talking About Them?

As a Latino Business Coach, I’m consistently surprised at how under-represented and invisible Latino-owned technology entrepreneurs are in the American eye. While issues related to Latinos in the U.S are easy to find—on the Internet, in published books and articles, and in social and cultural studies—virtually all of them are about the poor, uneducated, working class, or the plight and politics of undocumented Latinos.

The scarcity of information that is useful and supportive for the 90,000 upwardly-mobile Latino entrepreneurs in the U.S. tells a story of its own, specifically about:

• the aloneness of being an “early adopter” to Latino success and wealth
• our under-recognized unique needs and strengths
• the loneliness so many of us are feeling from a lack of true peers for support 

I graduated from the University of Southern California’s Entrepreneur Program and soon after co-founded a highly successful software distribution company. Based in Palo Alto, California, I was one of very few Latino founders, surrounded mainly by Euro-American colleagues. Coming from a lower income background in the eastside of Los Angeles, that turned out to be the most difficult aspect of entrepreneurship for me to navigate - Sales prospects were often surprised to meet a Latino offering them our products, at times awkwardly giving more eye contact to my white employees even though I may have been the person talking to them; my non-Latino employees were far too comfortable challenging my leadership; and the group of business partners I added referred to me as “the janitor who thinks he owns the place.” The challenges of being a sole Latino in my environment was overwhelming.

The Latino clients I now coach repeatedly share the experience of feeling disconnected and often isolated from supportive Latino peers.

These clients tell me they secretly feel like their entrepreneurial pursuits have left them feeling like they live on their own island. Most Latino entrepreneurs with scaled businesses come from lower and lower-middle income homes. We are the select few who seek out the dream of being our own boss and having a better life than our parents, working harder than most for greater income and wealth. Yet, that means we often have to let go of previous relationships in order to make space for a different future, and that typically includes spending our professional hours amongst colleagues who come from a different culture and class.

We end up straddling two worlds at the same time and not feeling like we belong fully in either one—which is essentially the cost we pay for being socially mobile.

Those of us who are mainly surrounded by non-Hispanic white colleagues have often told me that they never feel like they fully fit in, and they rarely feel their white colleagues understand that. Suggesting that their minority race may be affecting their access to capital or high-paying clients, or that it may create obstacles to market entry is often met with disbelief and defensiveness rather than support and understanding. That reaction discourages them from being open about their struggles in the future. Not feeling safe to share their truths and not wanting to make others uncomfortable, they keep quiet about their frustrations caused by cultural disregard and about being different at all.

Even further disorienting and isolating is when we encounter Latino colleagues who have succumbed to the pressure of assimilation without any awareness that there are healthier ways of developing confidence and success in a white culture. Rather than being cultural allies who uplift us with their pride and mutual support, they discourage us with their arrogant denial of the impact of our race, culture, or skin coloration on how we may get treated or how different our internal experiences are from white colleagues.

Like tacos are different from burgers, we’re different in how we experience the same world and how we communicate in it.

Latino discomfort in white collar business environments may come from being dismissively talked over in business meetings to facing impromptu offensive comments about affirmative action and immigration, to navigating the emotionally triggered and defensive reactions of white colleagues if we suggest our cultural differences are creating difficulties.

Like me, many of my clients had parents who worked manual labor jobs to help us get our education. Our parents assumed that our degrees would catapult us into middle or upper classes and we’d end up living la vida buena. But what they couldn’t possibly know is that having our own companies as Latinos would mean that we’d likely feel like lone wolves in the world -

That in our struggle to stand out amongst others who started out in more privileged classes could even leave us with a crippling lack of belongingness once we got there.

In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell wrote, “It is in fact very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you are born.” Those of us who jumped from a Latino working-class upbringing to a professional entrepreneurial environment in a single generation have accomplished a feat that most of our white colleagues can’t even grasp. Most people from their culture took three to four generations to get to where we have.

We’ve become entrepreneurial influencers and leaders, but…we’re too far apart to influence each other enough.

Crossing boundaries into unknown environments, such as living among upper economic classes or Euro-American business culture, with few professional Latino peers for trusted information and support can make us vulnerable for unhelpful support. Latino business owners can end up with an embarrassing amount of bad guidance when what we need is good, culturally-relevant advice that gives us an edge in our business lives. Instead we’re dealt one-size-fits-all prescriptions from mainstream culture, inadequate coaching, or over-hyped, expensive workshops that usually leave us in the same place we were in just a couple of weeks earlier.

Most of the advice we hear won’t hit the target for Latinos because it was created by and for white-Americans.

Simplistically put, white/Euro-American culture is forward- and future-driven. At its extreme it is highly individualistic and prioritizes a person’s facts and being right instead of prioritizing relationships that naturally breed collaborative solutions; holds external appearances above internal joy; and sees autonomy rather than a community-orientation as the hallmark of adulthood.

But these priorities don’t connect with the upbringing of cultured Latinos. We come from countries that embody a more collectivist orientation. We go to great extents to look out for each other and our choices include how others in our group are affected, at times to a fault. Our deeply rooted familismo means we prioritize our commitment and loyalty to our families, spend much more time with immediate and extended family, and often put the familia above ourselves. Just looking at these generalized differences highlights why advice on the same issue given to people who grew up in such different cultures would not be effective. 

My own life experience, my experience working with countless Latinos over the years, and my research are evidence that we need more culturally specific business support.  

All support has to fit the culture of the person receiving it, and if you’re a person of color, ill-fitting advice can become all too obvious. Professional guidance and advice are most effective when the consultant:

1. understands how our race, culture, and skin color effect our outer and inner experiences
2. aligns with our uniquely individual experiences and culture
3. naturally synthesizes the above to most effectively achieve our immediate professional and personal goals

Powerful and practical leadership advice includes awareness of all the intangible forces that have affected us. That’s not to say that we don’t have many of the same obstacles, strengths, and needs as people from other cultures. We navigate similar work environments as our non-Latino white counterparts. But the reasons we may struggle—whether it’s from feeling a lack of belonging or feeling somehow outmaneuvered by competition, or not owning our seat at the table with confidence—are unique.

Latinos wanting an edge over competition in predominantly white environments, especially those of us from the working class, need strategies that include facing underlying internal and external forces that limit our success. We need a way to figure out the rules that many middle and upper class Euro-Americans were bred to know.  

My new blog will provide that. Its focus will be on upwardly-mobile Latino technology entrepreneurs who want to develop their competitive edge by improving their leadership abilities, strategic planning, and communication skills that empower themselves and engage their employees.

On a larger scale, it’s about helping Latinos as a culture thrive by assisting those of us who are pushing the boundaries of success and expressing our natural leadership abilities. Much of this conversation will be dedicated to aiding high-achieving Latino technology entrepreneurs in managing the unique stressors that affect us in the U.S. marketplace and learn how to use our cultural strengths to our advantage as we navigate towards further success.

I look forward to the journey, and I look forward to your feedback, questions, and especially your suggestions.