This panel will be a wide ranging discussion of our cult of the technical founder and how it may be aggravating our diversity crisis. While much has been made of technology's diversity issues and the need for more young women and people of color to be technically trained, is this obsession with technical skills the wrong way to inspire the next generation of young founders? Is our prioritization of technical talent and the obsessive cult of the technical founder breeding a startup culture that doesn't appreciate the diversity of talents required to succeed?

From Y Combinator's preference for at least one technical cofounder, to the boom in teach-yourself-to-code classes, startup culture telegraphs its preference for hard skills in its CEOs and founders. But are we accidentally alienating the next Steve Jobs (notably not an engineer) with our rhetoric? If a founder sets culture, is an engineering-centric founder pool harmful to building and sustaining diverse startups?