WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Participants include representatives from more than 30 companies that have pledged to make their technology workforces more representative of the US population, the White House explained in an earlier press release.
"Currently just 3 percent of American venture-capital-based startups are led by women and only around 1 percent are led by African-Americans," US Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday.
Smith added that female entrepreneurs start companies with 50 percent less capital than their male counterparts and just 4 percent of US-based venture capital investors are women.
Despite extensive White House efforts to organize the event and invite more than 700 participants from 170 nations, officials emphasized that the biggest takeaway from the conference will be through networking accomplished when individual entrepreneurs gather in a single place.
