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Please reread the essay. She was not "a girlfriend with an English degree" he "brought on to handle marketing." > Y Combinator is fundamentally a nexus of peop

Please reread the essay. She was not "a girlfriend with an English degree" he "brought on to handle marketing." > Y Combinator is fundamentally a nexus of people, like a university. It doesn't make a product. What defines it is the people. Jessica more than anyone curated and nurtured that collection of people. In that sense she literally made YC. You seem to be assuming that pg wrote this essay to boost YC's reputation. Actually it feels like he wrote it to correct an injustice. A large one, I'd add, considering it's gone on for most of a decade.

erroneousfunk 11y ago
Okay, I stand corrected. She was his girlfriend with an English degree and a background in marketing who was brought in to "curate and nurture a collection of people." I'm not commenting on whether or not the injustice was corrected -- I think it's important to give recognition to peoples' contributions and achievements. It still seems fairly tone deaf, all things considered.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  That's not what the article says: "Jessica and I decided one night to start it, and the next day we recruited my friends Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell." At least in the article, it's pretty clear that they decided to start the company together, and then brought on a couple other friends. (I've read elsewhere that the actual story was more like Jessica was looking for jobs at VC firms, the VCs were dragging their feet, and so PG was like "Fuck it. We'll start our own.") "Brought her on to handle marketing at YC" is something you're injecting into the text, it's not anything that they wrote.
  - erroneousfunk 11y ago
    You're right, she was not brought in to handle the marketing. She did have some marketing-type roles within the community, however her position was far more broad than that. However, I believe that my original point still stands, in that, the post is poorly-worded, and stresses odd parts of her personality and role in the company that, I believe, does not reflect well on YC and Paul Graham in particular, given his past boneheaded statements about women in the industry.
- brchsiao 11y ago
  What do you find tone deaf about it? I'm unable to extract this message from the essay: "No, really, my girlfriend was around to be the work mom and handle the social stuff!" It reads more to me like "despite all she's accomplished, the press is never going to do her justice, and if no one's going to, I will."
tedks 11y ago
Yes, I think the comment-parents point is that it doesn't really speak well of YC, and so doesn't really address any injustice.`
- dang 11y ago
  That comment merely repeats the injustice, in a weird and creepy internet way. Fortunately users flagged it.
  - tedks 11y ago
    Well, I suppose it's your job to defend YC and remove anything that reflects badly on them on this particular social media platform, but I'll just have to say that I found pg's essay very patronizing and misogynistic. It did not do anything to make YC appear more "diverse" or feminist in my view and if anything did the opposite. The only thing that's weird and creepy about this entire thing is the rampant misogyny and anti-feminism in the entirety of the tech community and the central dogma that literal tokenism can solve these problems.
    - dang 11y ago
      That's not my job, nor did I remove anything. That you denounce an essay giving Jessica credit for her work as "patronizing and misogynistic" while defending a comment that was not only both of those things but cartoonishly so, probably takes the cake for this thread.
      - tedks 11y ago
        > That's not my job, nor did I remove anything. Potato potato, as they say. >that was not only both of those things but cartoonishly so, probably takes the cake for this thread. I think you're misreading the comment parent, which summarizes the gist of the article and points out that the reading most people will get at first tack is not very charitable towards Jessica. I agree with the comment parent that the article is quite tone-deaf. The whole "she was the mom of the group" is just plain cringeworthy. You seem to be reading the comment parent as if he's saying "big deal, she was just his girlfriend" but what he's actually saying is, saying "she was a great mom to all of us" is a horrifically tone-deaf anti-feminist statement. I could be wrong of course but that's my charitable interpretation of the comment parent. It's almost exactly the comment I came here to write, so if the author's intentions are different it's hard for me to see that past the surface-level obviousness of what they're saying.

erroneousfunk 11y ago

Okay, I stand corrected. She was his girlfriend with an English degree and a background in marketing who was brought in to "curate and nurture a collection of people." I'm not commenting on whether or not the injustice was corrected -- I think it's important to give recognition to peoples' contributions and achievements. It still seems fairly tone deaf, all things considered.

nostrademons 11y ago
That's not what the article says: "Jessica and I decided one night to start it, and the next day we recruited my friends Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell." At least in the article, it's pretty clear that they decided to start the company together, and then brought on a couple other friends. (I've read elsewhere that the actual story was more like Jessica was looking for jobs at VC firms, the VCs were dragging their feet, and so PG was like "Fuck it. We'll start our own.") "Brought her on to handle marketing at YC" is something you're injecting into the text, it's not anything that they wrote.
- erroneousfunk 11y ago
  You're right, she was not brought in to handle the marketing. She did have some marketing-type roles within the community, however her position was far more broad than that. However, I believe that my original point still stands, in that, the post is poorly-worded, and stresses odd parts of her personality and role in the company that, I believe, does not reflect well on YC and Paul Graham in particular, given his past boneheaded statements about women in the industry.
brchsiao 11y ago
What do you find tone deaf about it? I'm unable to extract this message from the essay: "No, really, my girlfriend was around to be the work mom and handle the social stuff!" It reads more to me like "despite all she's accomplished, the press is never going to do her justice, and if no one's going to, I will."

tedks 11y ago

Yes, I think the comment-parents point is that it doesn't really speak well of YC, and so doesn't really address any injustice.`

dang 11y ago
That comment merely repeats the injustice, in a weird and creepy internet way. Fortunately users flagged it.
- tedks 11y ago
  Well, I suppose it's your job to defend YC and remove anything that reflects badly on them on this particular social media platform, but I'll just have to say that I found pg's essay very patronizing and misogynistic. It did not do anything to make YC appear more "diverse" or feminist in my view and if anything did the opposite. The only thing that's weird and creepy about this entire thing is the rampant misogyny and anti-feminism in the entirety of the tech community and the central dogma that literal tokenism can solve these problems.
  - dang 11y ago
    That's not my job, nor did I remove anything. That you denounce an essay giving Jessica credit for her work as "patronizing and misogynistic" while defending a comment that was not only both of those things but cartoonishly so, probably takes the cake for this thread.
    - tedks 11y ago
      > That's not my job, nor did I remove anything. Potato potato, as they say. >that was not only both of those things but cartoonishly so, probably takes the cake for this thread. I think you're misreading the comment parent, which summarizes the gist of the article and points out that the reading most people will get at first tack is not very charitable towards Jessica. I agree with the comment parent that the article is quite tone-deaf. The whole "she was the mom of the group" is just plain cringeworthy. You seem to be reading the comment parent as if he's saying "big deal, she was just his girlfriend" but what he's actually saying is, saying "she was a great mom to all of us" is a horrifically tone-deaf anti-feminist statement. I could be wrong of course but that's my charitable interpretation of the comment parent. It's almost exactly the comment I came here to write, so if the author's intentions are different it's hard for me to see that past the surface-level obviousness of what they're saying.