By Kim Singh
Asian American Times
August 2001

It is an opinion often expressed that Asian Americans must be very entrepreneurial or open to taking risks since a large percentage of the startups in the Valley are launched by Asian Americans. These tend to be largely Indo Americans or Chinese Americans.

Asian Americans often take this observation in stride and pat themselves on their backs for being on the bleeding edge of startups. This opinion has helped foster the model minority concept even further. There is nothing an Asian American can do that is wrong is the popular opinion. Their kids are so smart. They are so smart. They are all high-tech engineers and all own Porches and BMWs.

Lost in the clamor are some nasty secrets no one likes to acknowledge. These issues are not addressed, not discussed, not even by the Asian Americans themselves, when they congregate at their weekly soirees or at the Asian American business associations, business leagues, and chambers of commerce.

The elephant no one likes to talk about is the glass ceiling. It is a well-known fact that there are a very large number of Asian American engineers working in Silicon Valley. It is not a widely acknowledged fact that very few of the major corporations in the valley have Asian American directors, vice presidents or CEOs. The few Asian American CEOs that do exist are ones who head the companies they helped launch themselves.

Human resources managers at IBM, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard, when confronted with the glass ceiling issue, often volunteer the pipeline theory. That is the very argument that is employed when these very HR managers try to explain why there are so few African American and Latino engineers in their companies.

There is enough anecdotal evidence that has logged case after case of Asian American engineers and high-tech managers who leave these major corporations after putting in 15-20 years of service to start their own companies. These very fine engineers and managers are often underappreciated and often overlooked in promotions, especially when they seem to getting to those rarefied levels of very senior management.  It is painful to hear even today from these HR managers and recruiters that Asian Americans lack the management skills or the temperament to manage large numbers of executives or staff. The fact that these very Asian American entrepreneurs launch their companies successfully and then grow their companies to employ often several thousand engineers and managers prove the “nay-sayers” wrong.

The Asian American Public Policy Institute is currently engaged in research with professors at Stanford University to gather data on this very problem. AAPPI is also looking at the venture capital aspect of startups. The research is looking at gauging whether Asian American entrepreneurs have any easier or tougher time in accessing capital in the Valley.

Singh is director of the Asian American Public Policy Institute and the current CEO and president of Megabyte Corporation.  He was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year award by Inc. Magazine, Merrill Lynch and Ernst & Young LLP.