Also, there was this from the Daily Beast:The launch of startup Bodega outraged the internet on Wednesday following reports that the founders wanted the business to replace small convenience stores, often called bodegas.
The co-founders, former Google employees Paul McDonald and Ashwath Rajan, issued an apology for offending those who felt its mission targeted entrepreneurial immigrants..
. . .
"... Even though I looked at this name for several months pre-launch, why didn't I anticipate the ways it could be interpreted?" he wrote. "It didn't occur to me that some people would see the word and associate its use in this context with whitewashing or cultural appropriation."
The company's product includes pantry boxes stocked with non-perishable, convenience store items, that are placed in locations shoppers frequent such as gyms and dorms and buildings. Users unlock the box with an app and are charged for whatever the cameras record them taking.
Setting aside whether it's a good business model for a moment, if I were going to launch a start-up with that description, I would think "Bodega" would be a perfect name for it. Or is the problem not with the name, but with the mission itself? If it's a defense of small business owners generally and a protest against automation, I think I would understand it a little better (but not necessarily agree with it).Silicon Valley has never met an existing product they won’t reinvent and claim; somewhere, a room full of 24-year-old dudes named Chase are probably drawing up plans for a potassium rich oblong yellow fruit you can open with an app. Bodega was no different. The startup, founded by two Google alumni, aimed to make real-life mom & pop bodegas obsolete by placing unmanned kiosks containing frequently-purchased convenience items in apartments and gyms and other places with heavy foot traffic. Users could download an app to purchase the items without even having to go into a store. They explained to Fast Company that what they were doing was fine; they’d talked to focus groups. Some of the groups even contained Latinos.
The backlash against the dumb startup and it’s dumber founders was so intense that before the end of the day, the pair felt compelled to apologize. Perhaps they had talked to the wrong Latinos. Perhaps they didn’t understand how beloved the corner store is to vast swaths of the population. Perhaps some things don’t need to be disrupted. Perhaps disruption is usually an annoyance.
My gut reaction is, maybe it's a stupid idea, but whitewashing and cultural appropriation? I thought bodegas were pretty much mainstream urban fixtures today, and I wasn't aware they were anyone's cultural sacred cow. Also, I have a real issue with citing "cultural appropriation" as a negative thing. Cultural appropriation is pretty much how we grow as a society. It's the bedrock principle on which 95% of the good things about this country are based. But now people have to apologize for it?
Maybe I'm missing something here, so I'd be very much interested in other perspectives.