June 25, 2016•Update: July 05, 2016
By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
The tech industry needs diversity and viewpoints from around the world, President Barack Obama said during the keynote address at a tech summit that drew 1,700 technology entrepreneurs from 170 countries around the globe.
“It turns out that starting your own business is not that easy,” he said. “That it can be especially difficult for women and young people and minorities. You deserve the same chance to succeed as everybody else.”
Obama said diversity in hiring is extremely important for an industry as influential as technology.
A White House report released in advance of Obama's address showed that only 3 percent of start-ups funded by venture capitalists are headed by women and only 1 percent are led by blacks.
The Obama administration coordinated a group of 30 companies, including Intel and Airbnb, to pledge to increase diversity within their workforces.
This year, companies including Twitter and Facebook have released employee diversity reports, which show that the ratio of women and minorities within their workforces are far out of sync with representation within the general population.
"Dozens of top tech companies are committing to make their technology workforces look like America,” he said.
The president also discussed government censorship with Mai Medhat, the CEO of Egyptian startup .
Like many countries have recently, Egypt’s government is now pursuing online censorship measures.
“It is hard to foster and encourage an entrepreneurial culture if it’s closed and if information flows are blocked,” Obama noted. “What we are seeing around the world oftentimes is governments wanting the benefits of entrepreneurship and connectivity, but also thinking top-down control is compatible with that, and it’s not.”
Obama also participated in a panel discussion with several young entrepreneurs and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
And he met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and AOL co-founder Steve Case -- both of whom also spoke at the summit.
Known as the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, the event is held annually at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
This year, the summit included tech workers from Africa and the Middle East and for the first time in the event’s seven-year history, a contingent from Cuba attended the event.
During his discussion with Obama, Zuckerberg championed a philanthropic view of business.
"Entrepreneurship is about creating change, not just creating companies,” Zuckerberg said.
Obama left Silicon Valley and flew to Seattle, Washington, where he is scheduled to attend fundraising events through Saturday.
