This year, I took over the leadership of Seattle Startup Week (Oct. 2-6) from the reigns of Dave Parker. When I asked Julie Pham of WTIA and Andrew McGee of the Greater Foundation to co-captain the Diversity and Inclusion track again this year, they told me they’d only do it if they could experiment and shake things up.

They are joined by Alex Samano, a serial entrepreneur and product development guru. Samano is the co-founder of Life Dreams, a consumer-facing financial planning platform. He attended the Black and Brown Startup Leaders panel organized by Julie and Andrew at last year’s Seattle Startup Week.

Below is a conversation about stories behind designing this year’s Diversity & Inclusion track for Seattle Startup Week. You can also read their interview with my predecessor Dave Parker from last year, when Andrew and Julie first designed the Diversity & Inclusion track.

Julie Pham (JP): Hey Andrew, Brandy is in charge this year and she wants us to organize the Diversity & Inclusion track again. What do you think?

Andrew McGee (AM): Yes, let’s do it, but how can we make it better this time?

JP: Last year, we worked really hard to organize panels with diverse entrepreneurs and tech leaders, but what surprised me was how not diverse the audiences were. Most of the people who were at the Black and Brown Startup Leaders Panel were black and brown people. And you were one of four non-Asians who attended the Diversity Among Asians panel. The audience members at the Women Who Stayed Panel were mostly women.

AM: Yeah, It showed me that even though we worked really hard to get people to be open to different perspectives, they gravitated to hearing stories by people like them. The panelists were great but I was disappointed in the audience makeup.

JP: It just shows how hard it is to get people out of their silos here. We were singing to the choir. So, what do we do this year?

AM: Let’s think about how we can really integrate the theme of startup entrepreneurs too.

JP: That’s a good point. What about instead of having diverse startup entrepreneurs talk about diversity, we have them talk about how they developed their products?

AM: Hmm, if we do that, the audience can learn what it really takes to come up with a product idea and how to build it.

JP: We can have early stage startup leaders from diverse backgrounds. Last year, I was introduced to Brett Heising of Brettapproved.com, a website to help rate hotels on how accessible they are for those with physical handicaps. Brett himself is in a wheelchair. Since we focused on race and gender last year for the D&I track, there wasn’t a place for Brett as a caucasian man. But with this new theme, Brett would be a perfect example of someone whose personal background influences the solutions he’s looking for in his own life and how that actually applies to a lot of other people.

AM: I like this idea a lot more. By having entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities in tech talk about their product first, we normalize the presence of diverse entrepreneurs and move away from identifying someone as ‘the black entrepreneur,” or “the woman entrepreneur,” and get to “the entrepreneur that makes a cool product. Oh, and he’s also black.” They can talk a little bit about how their personal background influenced why they are doing what they’re doing, but they are first and foremost an entrepreneur.

JP: Yes, and a few female entrepreneurs I know have been telling me how tired they are of being asked to speak on panels about how hard it is to be a woman in tech. Also, by having the focus be on the product, the entrepreneurs will also get useful feedback from the audience.

AM: This will be great for high school students going through the Greater Foundation program, because then they see see actual role models.

JP: And aspiring entrepreneurs will actually see how much work it takes to build a product and a company. This sounds like a fun way to approach the Diversity & Inclusion track this year.

Here is the series’ description:

Product Development and Startup Story with Diverse Startup Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs’ personal backgrounds can influence the products and services they build. In this Diversity & Inclusion series, we’ll get to meet with startup founders who come from communities underrepresented in tech. In each session, a different entrepreneur will share their startup stories and their process for product development. The entrepreneur will then lead the audience in an interactive discussion on how to test their ideas, identify a target market, and quickly size their revenue opportunity, using their own company as an example of the product development cycle.

Check out some of the program’s talks during Seattle Startup Week 2017:

Xiao Wang of Boundless
Monday, Oct. 2, 530 – 730pm, Hing Hay Coworks
Register here: http://sched.co/BtJb

Anna Steffeney of LeaveLogic
Tuesday, Oct. 3, 1 – 3 pm, The Square, Galvanize
Register here: http://sched.co/BtJV

Brett Heising of brettaproved.com
Wednesday, Oct. 4, 4 – 6 pm, The Square, Galvanize
Register here: http://sched.co/BtFf

Cassandra Gholston of PartnerTap
Thursday, Oct. 5, 230-430 pm, 3rd Floor Learning Lab, Impact Hub
Register here: http://sched.co/CBia

Baba Mallum of KaJi
Friday, Oct. 6, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm, 3rd Floor Learning Lab, Impact Hub
Register here: http://sched.co/BtJc