00:00welcome to the a 16z podcast I'm Michael
00:02Copeland we talked a fair bit about
00:04getting more girls to code and we wanted
00:07to hear about the issue from some hacker
00:09girls directly hi I'm miss Ouma from
00:13Nigeria um please David from crossover
00:16states Nigeria I'm Jackie Lainey and I'm
00:19from hissy-fit Brazil I'm so meditation
00:23and I'm from India the voices you just
00:25heard our four high school girls
00:27representing some of the finalists in
00:29this year's Technovation coding
00:31competition and as you'll hear also
00:33representing the future of tech we had a
00:36chance to sit down the jetlagged
00:38software engineers in San Francisco
00:40before their final presentations at the
00:42competition to hear about the mobile
00:44apps they created the culture of coding
00:47in their home countries and what's
00:48coming next for their nascent software
00:50empires the apps themselves were
00:53designed and built by the teams to
00:55address a particular problem that each
00:57of their communities faces so the team
00:59from Nigeria tackled the increasing
01:01trash in their home cities by building a
01:03mobile app that provides on-demand trash
01:05pickup you can think of it as a
01:07marketplace of trash haulers connecting
01:09to people that need their trash picked
01:11up so after lots of brainstorming we
01:14decided to come up with the app that's
01:16to help users that's who helped people
01:18to sign up color cards to come to their
01:20different houses and pick up the trash
01:22the Brazil squad designed a game to
01:25teach kids better water usage habits for
01:28their parched region of the country
01:30in our country there's a lot of water
01:33but in some states and cities people
01:37suffer with the lack of it in our group
01:40one member of the group she suffers with
01:43this problem every two days so we
01:46decided to choose that thing and we made
01:48a game for children so they could learn
01:52how to save water in their house and the
01:55Indian team engineered a marketplace for
01:57a part of the Indian population that has
01:59the toughest time finding work people
02:02with disabilities so what we tried to do
02:05is make a platform to connect people
02:07with disabilities to NGOs who can
02:09provide them with trainings and also
02:13provide them with job opportunities so
02:17we did that by creating a sign-up page
02:19for all three contenders where they
02:22could put in their advertisements for
02:25jobs and trainings and where candidates
02:27could search for these jobs through our
02:29search portal mobile is the key to it
02:32all the girls say for them mobile is
02:35simply the natural outlet for their work
02:37for reasons of reach ease-of-use and
02:39competitive advantage it just makes
02:42everything easier and brings everything
02:44to your doorstep so you just have to
02:46click and then everything is done we had
02:49a slider which would increase the font
02:50size and we had a text-to-speech option
02:53which were both accessibility features
02:55which were going to make it easier for
02:57people with disabilities being mobile
02:59based it has a larger market reach
03:01considering India is the third largest
03:03growing market for smartphones and while
03:06it may seem that everyone on the planet
03:07already has a smartphone bristling with
03:10the latest apps there are plenty of
03:12people in their home countries who don't
03:13these girls say so how to reach them
03:16with a mobile app to solve for that the
03:18team from Nigeria for example is taking
03:20a sort of hybrid digital and analog
03:23approach putting up Flyers with phone
03:25numbers that people can call from any
03:26phone to tap into their trash hauling
03:28marketplace we are said the fact that we
03:31have poor people so we actually plan and
03:35doing something that accommodates
03:37everyone who have the printouts flyers
03:39and on the Flyers you have contacts
03:41phone numbers and the address so even
03:44though you do have a mobile phone to
03:46sign up you could as well call and
03:47everything will be recorded in a
03:49database and will come to your help talk
03:51for very long with all these girls and
03:53you can go down a rabbit hole of
03:55features they want to deploy or the
03:57problems they face sinking their
03:58database with Google Maps or the
04:01difficulty in getting their apps live in
04:02the App Store in other words they took
04:05like every other software engineer
04:07except they aren't they are still a
04:10relatively rare breed both girls from
04:12Brazil and India allowed that there was
04:14a healthy group of coders in their
04:15schools girls too as Jacqueline he
04:18proudly pointed out but when asked if
04:21they are typical in Nigeria summers
04:23response was straightforward and
04:26No not every um it's not an average girl
04:32in Nigeria that codes okay it's very
04:34rare because in Nigeria it's it's a
04:38developing country so it's all these
04:40opportunities that just for the boys and
04:43masculine gender so it's very rare for
04:45girls to actually lanes such yeah the
04:48field we are not saying flicker forward
04:52fortunately the Nigerian team which
04:55ultimately took the top prize in the
04:56competition has a plan for proving that
04:59negative contingent back home wrong back
05:01down in a country before we came over a
05:03lot of people actually had what we are
05:06doing and there was so so happy they
05:09wanted to join they were accidents how
05:10would the joint so when we go back would
05:14creates like a public enlightenment like
05:16a campaign and then world
05:18organized girls who would come over I
05:22wanna learn coding and that way we hope
05:25to increase the number of girls in our
05:29country who actually want to do coding
05:31and it definitely doesn't stop there
05:34all the girls have plans to keep their
05:36budding software empires going well they
05:38knock off graduating from high school
05:40and then what happens next what happens
05:42according to these four girls is what
05:45ultimately changes the tech industry
05:47around the world we all plan to continue
05:49being developers and coders to solve
05:52more problems which are already in our
05:55communities and of course find better
05:58ways to solve these problems I intend to
06:01do computer science University so in the
06:06future I want to continue to programming
06:08in coding so the way I could help more
06:13people with more apps actually my team
06:15members and I are thinking of other
06:17things we could come up with so for now
06:20we have four other ideas so as the
06:23projects director we are trying to see
06:26how we can proceed come up with small
06:28projects that will help our community so
06:31it's not going to stop here we're going
06:33further we are going to learn coding hi
06:36I'm a soma from Nigeria
06:39I'm please David from crossover states
06:42Nigeria I'm like aleni
06:44and I'm from Mississippi Brazil I'm so
06:48meditation and I'm from India from Menlo
06:50Park California USA I'm Michael Copeland
06:53for a 16z thanks for listening
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