How do you build a diverse startup? Make it a part of your DNA

In this series, professionals discuss solutions to make the tech industry more diverse and inclusive. Read their stories here, then write your own using #TechTalksDiversity somewhere in the body of the post. For more insights and news on this topic and more, sign up for LinkedIn’s weekly newsletter on startups and venture capital here.

We launched Shift with a sharp focus on building a diverse team in every sense of the word. It’s in our company’s DNA. One of our founders is a woman, the other two are immigrants. We believe attracting and hiring a diverse team is a competitive advantage. And it is one that we have embraced to ensure we retain the best talent possible to prepare for the future.

We are proud that Shift’s senior management team includes many women. Women run our San Francisco and Washington DC markets, oversee people operations, manage our finances, and lead our public relations and policy efforts. We have a female COO and a female board member (an unfortunate rarity in the tech and business worlds).

And we recently had an employee tell us she has never felt more comfortable being a woman in a work environment than at Shift. That is the type of feedback we want to receive, and a company culture staple we are dedicated to continuously building upon.

Being welcoming to immigrants is also something we value. Our CEO and CTO were both born outside the United States. And because of this, our company’s policies were crafted to guide immigrant employees and offer advice for navigating government-mandated processes. As we write, we have five green card applications pending for people on our corporate team. Navigating America’s arcane immigration system is expensive and time consuming, but worth it to hire the type of talent we can only find if we look around the world. Every individual going through the motions plays a critical role and their ability to work directly impacts our success.

But despite thoughtful recruiting, we still have a lot of work to do. And, as responsible members of a growing tech community, we cannot dispute the facts. Women, blacks, and latinos are still underrepresented in Silicon Valley and at Shift. A recent LinkedIn study found that only 13% of VC investors would rate “having diversity in management ranks” to be a bigger concern than “hiring the right people,” and 3 out of 4 investors said that their firms are not supporting any initiatives to increase diversity among founders in their portfolio.

We can, and we must, do better.

So where should we start? For starters companies need to be less defensive and open to constructive feedback. And we should all answer this question: Are successful products built as a result of having a diverse team that discovered something a homogeneous team might not have? Our guess is yes. And we’re doing everything we can to find out.

Take buying or selling your car. Gender, age, and race can lead to a huge variance in the experience and/or outcome. And if we expect to be a successful company we must build a product that truly equalizes every side of the marketplace. It’s something we talk about a lot and it’s a conversation that helps mold a hiring philosophy well beyond thinking about diversity “as the right thing to do.”

Yet it is also true that building a pipeline of diverse candidates is both a statistical challenge as well as a recruiting and operations one. Although the statistics on women in tech is low today, we have not kept up with industry averages. In the mid-1980s, 37 percent of computer science majors were women. Yet by 2012, that number had dropped to 18 percent. This results in Shift and other companies competing for a smaller pool of candidates. We also face the challenge of being a startup in the auto space, and simply, a startup (some women have told us they prefer larger companies with established family policies, even though we actively try to be a super family friendly place).

So how do we solve this problem? At Shift, we are currently focusing on changing the mix of candidates we review, creating an inclusive work environment, investing in our people’s career growth, and working together to raise awareness about tech’s diversity gap. Our goal is to build an environment for every person at Shift to feel like the sky's the limit.

And whether it it is gender, race, socio-economic background, or education, having people with different perspectives not only boosts company morale, it also increases the bottom line. A 2015 McKinsey study found that companies with women and people of color in leadership positions performed better financially.

The data is clear. Diversity provides companies with a real competitive advantage. So let’s work together and do everything we can to build awesome companies that truly reflect the customers we serve.

George Arison in the Co-Founder and CEO of Shift

Minnie Ingersoll is Co-founder and COO of Shift