Walker is black. Silicon Valley, for the most part, isn't: Research shows that only about 1 percent of tech entrepreneurs in that section of Northern California are African-American.
"There just aren't as many folks who look like me in the industry," the 29-year-old told All Things Considered host Audie Cornish.
Until last year, Walker ran business development for Foursquare, the social networking app that now has some 40 million users. He was then handpicked by a team of heavy-hitting venture capitalists to work on his own big idea. Walker wants to create the next Twitter, the next Spotify. In short, the next big idea.
Now established in Silicon Valley, Walker is also working to tackle the tech industry's dearth of diversity. He's set up an internship program called Code2040 to bring black and Latino engineering undergrads to the Valley.
