" Surely the goal is to have lots of innovative and successful startups, and the gender of who is founding them is irrelevant." Yes and no. Just as Paul Graham

" Surely the goal is to have lots of innovative and successful startups, and the gender of who is founding them is irrelevant." Yes and no. Just as Paul Graham often says that there could be more startups than there are, and that would be a good thing, I suspect there can be a lot more female-founded startups, and that would also be a good thing. The goal is to have more successful startups, and from the numbers, it looks like there's many women who might otherwise have created a successful company, but don't start one because of lack of awareness/society pressures/etc. In other words, just like pg tries to get more people to try entrepreneurship with his essays, by raising awareness and showing it is possible, more concentrated efforts to raise awareness are needed for groups who are also likely to succeed, but who are harder to get to.