Startup Week delivered on diversity-inclusion promise

Women and minorities, historically underrepresented, are now a growing part of small businesses startups.

Gender and racial diversity flowed through dozens of Twin Cities Startup Week events last week that celebrated, examined and showcased fledgling businesses.

Diversity is part of what makes America better at work — from cubicles at suburban Best Buy, which hosted 20-plus sessions of the national Blacks in Technology inaugural conference Saturday, to the intrepid folks who turn boarded-up storefronts into ethnic restaurants, workout studios, business incubators and art shops.

A woman whose parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s from India for more opportunity was a winner of the Minnesota Cup.

Black men and women who run firms that range from transportation to software to a craft-brewed-beer delivery service and a large Minnesota construction firm were feted at the “$1 million Challenge for Minority Entrepreneurs” sponsored by MEDA, the minority-business counselor.

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