disclaimer: i am not a lawyer (i just put their kids though college ;)

You said you wanted to address the legality of it, but then you started throwing around this "logic" thing...

Let's ignore "logic" for the moment and just address the legality.

EEOC has a 'rule of thumb" that your "selection process" must result in an acceptance ratio of protected classes equivalent to 4/5th of the ratio of that protected class in the "qualified applicant pool." (i.e. if 20% of qualified applicants are blue people then you need to hire at least 16% blue people). If the ratio is less then 4/5ths then _prima facia_ this is "adverse impact" ie discrimination (Griggs?)

The "qualified applicant pool" is the ratio of qualified people in the population! not just those who apply.
If any part of the selection process has an adverse impact, even if the end result doesn't then it is discriminatory.

Thus, you need to generate an applicant pool that reflects the qualification of the population in general...

So for Brycevc, if of all qualified people in the SV area, 40% are women, and 60% are men, Brycevc needs to generate an applicant pool that reflects at least 4/5ths that ratio of women.

If the pool does not look like that: discrimination!
The only hope of your argument on this one is the qualification that "For VCs, meeting people they are assumed not to know ahead of time" is a real job qualification, and that since that is 90% white male, then the qualified applicant pool should be 90% white male.... good luck getting that past a judge!! ha!

As for the logic of it all? who knows, lots of lawyers and judges have been working on that for 40yrs... I'm here to build a company (within the legal framework I find myself).

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some references:

http://www.uniformguidelines.com/

Ward's Cove Packing Co., Inc. v. Antonio. 490 U.S. 642 (1989)

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_04...

This was an important decision that affects not only the test developer, but the recruiter, also. In this case, the Supreme Court held that the appropriate recruitment pool to use when engaging in disparate impact analysis was the relevant and qualified group of applicants. If a recruiter is looking for an engineer, the appropriate comparison group is how many engineers are qualified within a reasonable recruitment area.

From the opinion: "Rather, the proper comparison is generally between the racial composition of the at-issue jobs and the racial composition of the qualified population in the relevant labor market. Hazelwood School Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 308."

Connecticut v. Teal, 457 U.S. 440 (1982)

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US...

In the Connecticut case, the State used a multiple hurdle assessment and selection process. Disparate impact was noted at separate levels of the process, but when final selections were made there was no discriminatory impact. The court held that the "bottom line" was not sufficient. Each part of the acquisition and selection process must pass scrutiny. If one part of the process is shown to be discriminatory, then the whole process is held to be discriminatory. Additionally, the court once again gave "great deference" to the Guidelines.