The StartOut Growth Lab is the brainchild of Thomas Gaynor, the Managing Partner of Nixon Peabody’s San Francisco office and Andres Wydler, the Executive Director of StartOut, the largest nonprofit organisation for entrepreneurs in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. 

Inequality among LGBTQ individuals

The pair made the move after a disucssion about economic inequality among LGBTQ individuals, who, though more likely to be better educated than the general population, also make less money on average than their heterosexual or non-transgender counterparts, according to research. ‘Finding a true sense of economic empowerment is the natural next step from the political progress we’ve made in the last two decades,’ Mr Gaynor said in the San Francisco Chronicle. ‘Access to funding, being taken seriously by reputed capital on the basis of the product you have to offer for the entire community without being considered a sideshow, without being seen as fringe — that is, I think, the ultimate goal.’

Less pay

Gay men earn up to 32 percent less than heterosexual men with similar qualifications, according to information from the American Psychological Association  and up to 64 percent of transgender people earn less than $25,000 per year. And, at tech firms, LBGTQ employees are the group most likely to be bullied, publicly humiliated humiliation or embarrassed, according to a survey by Harris Poll for Oakland’s Kapor Center for Social Impact.

Free residence

As founders take up residence in the GrowthLab, they will be coached, mentored and tasked with creating an aggressive growth plan for their companies, then pushed to attract funding and check off their goals. The programme is free to participating companies.

'Re-create the best of Silicon Valley'

‘The idea is to re-create the best of what Silicon Valley has to offer, which is a mind-set and ecosystem,’ Mr Gaynor said. ‘To create a hospitable, collegial, collaborative home that supports the LGBTQ entrepreneur to be successful without any of the hindrance that usually comes in the form of the LGBTQ tax or discrimination…Our community needs to be successful to benefit society as a whole…We’re not here to support our community for our community only. We’re not building a parallel economy, we just want equal opportunities.’

The startups

Seven startups are participating in the first cohort of StartOut’s in the incubator and they run the gambit of businesses. For example, GPSGay is a social network with more than half a million users in Latin America that looks to connect LGBTQ communities, Vyrill is a company that seeks to help digital marketers and brands to aggregate, analyze and make money from online video and Zeguro is a cybersecurity insurance startup working to insure and protect small businesses against cyberattacks. Then there are Mixalot - a software startup that wants to integrate technology into social events and guide users through by identifying people and points of interest and tracking users’ activity, DwellCity that allows users to rent or invest in upscale housing and Siyea which manages accounts receivable for companies by creating payment plans for customers who are past due.

History of innovation

In 2010, the law firm began urging all of its lawyers around the world to put in at least 40 billable hours of work a year on activities explicitly related to diversity and inclusion efforts, or how the firm recruits, retains and mentors lawyers who are women, racial minorities or LGBTQ.