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Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?

• Mz 16y ago
  I'm female. I started an application at some point, mostly for the process involved in thinking things through, and contemplated whether or not I thought applying would be realistic. I ultimately decided, no, that's not really the right path for me. But I hang out here a fair amount. (I made a wish list at some point and one of the items on it was something like "Get feedback from Paul Graham" (another was "get feedback from Millard Fuller", er, who happens to be dead it turns out). Decided I didn't need any special favors, I could just keep reading pg's articles and also hang here. So far, so good. Still don't have any answers for the impetus behind the Millard Fuller wish. Que sera, sera.)
  • limedaring 16y ago
    > I ultimately decided, no, that's not really the right path for me. Did you continue to start/continue a business, or was the path you decided on a non-entrepreneur path?
    • Mz 16y ago
      I still hope to figure out how to support myself via some kind of online income. I am 45, a lot older than most of the YC applicants as I understand it, I have a very serious medical condition and two grown sons who still live with me. I have lived in the SFBA previously, in Fairfield about 45 miles from San Francisco (halfway between SF and the state capital). My sons are very against returning to Cali. I liked it but I have my reservations. I think I need to go someplace that meets my health needs. Keeping myself (and my sons) well is my highest priority and it is very clear in my mind that this is the single most important criteria for me ever having any kind of financial success. I have figured out how to get myself (and my oldest son, who has the same diagnosis) well when doctors and most of the world believe it cannot be done. I joined HN to ask how to quickly learn a programming language. I did this more than a year ago, shortly after I got off the last of my medication and finally had a clear head for the first time in many years, but I still have not learned the first thing about a programming language. The reason for the request for info on a programming language: I have concluded that I need a more information dense means to convey what I know. The written word on my website is just not cutting it. Only people who aren't already deeply rooted in current views of the problem seem able to use it at all. Everyone else is openly hostile. I think a simulation (aka game) could potentially solve the problem. But I still do not know a programming language and I am still working full time and still have a significant time burden in terms of continuing to get well. I have never met a single person who was as sick as I was and came back the way I have. So I have zero yardstick for judging how long this "should" take. I will get there when I get there, thus I am in no position to make promises to outsiders in terms of deliverable timeframes. I also waffle a lot between this idea and other interests. The massive open hostility I have gotten for trying to help people doesn't go over terribly well with me. I often wonder if I should bother to try to solve this issue or if I should go off and try to live the "normal life" I always wanted now that I am nearly well enough to do something like that.
      • jlees 16y ago
        Thank you for sharing and I hope it all works out for you. It's refreshing that you clearly understand your situation and are working with it. I remember you from another thread on learning programming -- keep perservering and I am sure the HN community is happy to help with your efforts. At least, I am.
      • herdrick 16y ago
        That's a really good idea. What's the diagnosis and what is your view on it that you want to get across? (If you don't mind me asking.)
        • Mz 16y ago
          I was diagnosed with "atypical cystic fibrosis", which is a relatively mild form of CF. I made a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes. CF involves a miscoded protein called the CFTR. The protein handles trafficking of certain molecules into and out of the cell, one of which is sodium chloride (salt). The misprocessing of salt is such a well known trait that a "sweat chloride" test is the most common test for the condition, yet doctors hardly address it at all. I found that consuming a good quality sea salt high in brine (a mixture or other minerals) and the right fats and carbs so it absorbs properly can reverse a lot of my symptoms. CF also generally encourages the body to be extremely acidic. I found that addressing PH balance and correcting it back to normal also does a lot to reverse symptoms. My reading has indicated that both of these factors -- PH balance and salt/mineral balance -- being extremely out of whack inside the cell will promote misfolding of proteins. This suggested to me that if you can address those issues, you can get the body to produce more functioning CFTRs and thereby get the body to function closer to normal. And, in fact, my son and I do function a lot closer to normal as long as we stay on top of the PH balance and get adequate amounts of good quality sea salt. We also engage in a lot of practices to reduce exposure to microbes, toxins, etc. For me, it is more complicated than that because I was so very sick, so I had to address a lot of complicated infections and stuff. But my son had not been on antibiotics for over three years prior to being diagnosed, so it is clear to me that the right kind of support from an early age can drastically reduce the issues this disorder causes (at least in most cases -- in some cases, the CFTR is completely missing and I assume that would be different). Most medical intervention is focused on drugs and surgeries and vaccines. There is very little nutritional information available. Most research seems to be drug studies and the standard wisdom doled out by CF doctors is to eat great quantities of junk food because it is high calorie, high fat, and high salt. A "high calorie, high fat, and high salt" diet is the current state of the art advice for people with this disorder and I think it does a lot of harm. Instead, I went for aggressive nutrition to reverse a lifetime of nutritional deficiencies and began getting healthier and getting off all the drugs. It's complicated and playing around with these ideas when you have no idea what you are doing can cause problems, so I understand why it goes over so badly with other people. A more information dense means to safely convey how this works looks to me like the only means to get more people to adopt this approach.
• Jun8 16y ago
  This is a wonderful area that you've addressed, definitely beats going through thick, heavy binders of invitation examples to select one. I wish this was around when I got married.
  • limedaring 16y ago
    Thanks, just got to launch now... :)
• jedwhite 16y ago
  Not me. Co-founder (3-person team) is @mediamum who is doing a PhD as a Research Assistant at the School of Computer Science at CU (alum include David Morin from Facebook and Woz). She's doing research into the use of social media for crisis communications (hurricanes, wildfires etc) in the Crisis Informatics Lab there. Doesn't hang out on HN so much (must be startup and PhD getting in the way). Interestingly, Woz got kicked out of the CS school at CU for hacking side projects on the timeshare system as an undergrad - something other schools might have encouraged, and which CU today I am guessing would also not frown on the same way.
  • blackguardx 16y ago
    To which CU are you referring?
    • philwelch 16y ago
      Woz (if we're talking about Steve Wozniak) was an alumnus of University of California, Berkeley. I don't know that he studied CS or got kicked out, though.
    • seehafer 16y ago
      University of Colorado at Boulder. Like the commenter above notes, Dave Morin and in earlier times the Woz are alumni. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak (search for Colorado)
    • jedwhite 16y ago
      Yep, as noted above it's University of Colorado. Woz's autobiography iWoz includes a few interesting stories about it too.
  • follower 16y ago
    > She's doing research into the use of social media for crisis communications (hurricanes, wildfires etc) in the Crisis Informatics Lab there. Oh, interesting. Do you know if she did any research into the use of Twitter etc for communication after the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand?
• Female 16y ago
  I'm a relatively active HN user. This is a throwaway, because I'm not "out" as a girl on HN. I have not applied, and I'm not going to, because my husband would never let me spend 3 months in SF by myself (and he has a job where he couldn't come with me.) And this is not a hypothetical, we've discussed it and he put his foot down.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • bkrausz 16y ago
    May I ask why you're hiding your gender on HN? I know of many potential reasons, just curious what yours is.
    • Female 16y ago
      Honestly? You're all so anti-sexist it sickens me. Whenever a female posts, you put away the boxing gloves and take out the kid skin gloves. The only people that actually say negative things are the unapologetic sexists, and no, I don't like that either. But it doesn't bother me as much. So it might just be my imagination, but just to be safe I prefer to be one of the guys for my recreational forum activities.
      • peteforde 16y ago
        Bullshit! I support your right to portray yourself in whatever light you can muster, but there's no shortage of critical thinkers on Hacker News. The phenomena that you're describing is often called "othering" and it generally sums up nicely as "a room full of dudes bending over backwards to be so accepting to a woman that it's creepy". It is a real problem. However, I know I'm not the only person on here who couldn't care less what your gender is. I want to respect you for what you produce, and I'm not going to mince words if I think something is goofy. Being a radical is tiring and it's not cool to put the onus for change on women, who I suspect get worn down demanding equality. I know that I would. Yet, there are times and places where major gains come only from sticking your neck out once in a while. Being a woman on HN might be one of those places.
• iamelgringo 16y ago
  My wife and I are applying for this winter session. She's been co organizing the Hackers and Founders SV, SF and Berkeley meetups with me for the past 9 months. And, she's the primary reason that our membership has tripled in the last 9 months. She works quietly in the background and makes everything run like clockwork. I've recruited her as my co founder for several years. And, she just signed on three months ago. We're building a financial news search engine at http://Newsley.com/search http://Newsley.com/search.
  • geuis 16y ago
    I've met iamelgringo a couple of times ath the H&F meetups. Top-notch fellow. Good luck on getting accepted!
  • helwr 16y ago
    the search doesn't return anything on Goog. pls fix
    • iamelgringo 16y ago
      I hear ya. It's an alpha that we just released last week. We have a _lot_ of work to do before it becomes actually useful. Thanks for the feedback, though.
  • nkassis 16y ago
    That's pretty cool. If my current idea fails, I'd like to come with something me and my wife can do. It probably would have to be something related to books if someone has an idea ;p
    • limedaring 16y ago
      I think my boyfriend and I would kill each other if we ever started a company together, even though we have really complimentary skill sets. Oh well.
      • iamelgringo 16y ago
• shelly 16y ago
  I'm a girl (and an engineer), and I applied for the summer round this year with http://wordchuck.com http://wordchuck.com. I never got a response from YC after submitting my application, which was a bit disappointing. I haven't had any trouble launching and getting traction on my own, so don't get discouraged, no matter what happens with YC :) That said, WeddingType looks like a terrific idea, and I hope you do get accepted!
  • tonystubblebine 16y ago
    Love the idea of wordchuck as a stand alone business. How's it going?
    • shelly 16y ago
      Thanks! It's been incredible so far. I just opened up the beta last week, and have enough people using it that I can be confident I'm not wasting my time. The trickiest part has been having to juggle the biz dev and the coding. And finding time to sleep :)
  • limedaring 16y ago
    That seems really odd, they seem to take pride in responding to everyone, even if it's a nicely worded negative response. Thank you!
    • HaloZero 16y ago
      It's something that a lot of tech companies do and honestly, it's courtesy. Even a simple copy and pasted email would be better than nothing for the person on the other end waiting.
  • gruseom 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure YC make a point of responding to all the applications, so this was likely a technical glitch. For example, I distinctly recall that the response we got ended up in my Spam folder.
• jlees 16y ago
  Good luck @limedaring! You know me, but to weigh in: I am XX, applied three times (once as solo founder), got one interview, didn't get into YC, found my way to the Valley (from the UK) anyway. I intend to apply again in future if the startup I'm working on turns out to be the right sort of thing for it, and especially if I can team up with other hackers, especially a couple of people I've known a long time (last time my cofounder was non-technical and I had met him while looking for a cofounder). Gender balance or anything like that has never, ever been an issue for me with things like YC. Currently doing Women 2.0 Labs where it is a tacit issue, which would be interesting to contrast when I do go through YC. I know of another woman who is applying this round and has not posted in the comments yet.
• ahoyhere 16y ago
  At Startup School a few years ago, I pitched my idea to Paul and he invited me to apply for the summer class even though I'd missed the deadline. I against it. That whole "dropping out of high school and college" thing pretty much proved how much I chafe against what I consider hoop-jumping and YC was too much hoop-jumping for me. Didn't stop me though: http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/ http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/ (Different product than the one I pitched.)
  • limedaring 16y ago
    Really dislike people who downvote because they disagree, rather than arguing against. Very passive aggressive. Can you expand on the hoop jumping and YC with some specific examples? I'm sincerely curious.
    • ahoyhere 16y ago
      It's all really summed up in "Startup School," don't you think? You have to move somewhere (Cambridge) for 3 mos, for very low resources, and the whole thing just smacks of a system -- for people who claim they want to buck "the system." Sure, it's less controlling than regular investment but a whole lot more than a bank loan.
      • limedaring 16y ago
        Actually you move to the Silicon Valley, not Cambridge anymore. Technically, having living expenses to cover 3 mo in SV would make most out-of-state startups happy. :) $17k for 2 founders to last 3 months doesn't seem that bad to me personally, but to each their own.
        • ahoyhere 16y ago
          So, are you interested in "discussion" so you can justify your choices, or did you actually want to know why I didn't do it? "Actually" everything I said is true, because it is about my decision, when I made it.
• sbowles 16y ago
  I am a woman and I applied for this round along with my male co-founder. I'm moving back to SF from LA at the end of this year, specifically because I recognize it is a better location for my startup. Although I still have a decent network in the Bay Area to tap back into, I do value the mentorship and camaraderie a program like YC could offer an early stage venture. When I described my startup or did a demo of my app for other people at Startup School, I was impressed by the intellectual generosity. People gave a lot of great feedback, freely. Acceptance by YC won’t make or break my startup, but it would make networking and fundraising a little easier as it implies a certain ‘quality’ stamp. FYI, if you haven’t read it, Illuminate Ventures’ whitepaper on the performance of female founders in tech relative to male founders, it is an interesting read: http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/ http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/. You’ll have to request the whitepaper via email, but they respond quickly.
• katieben 16y ago
  I'm female and I've applied for the winter session. (: Rock on!
  • limedaring 16y ago
    What did you apply with?
• abraham 16y ago
  I have an application submitted for the current round with my sister. She is not active on HN as working on her PhD currently takes much of her time. She is awesome though.
• patio11 16y ago
  Not female and also not applying this go round, but congratulations on your launch. This and related spaces desperately need product innovation, while so much of our collective effort goes to creating an iPad-enabled FourSquare for dogs.
  • mkramlich 16y ago
    great, patio11 gives away my stealth startup doh! :)
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• curlyque5000 16y ago
  I'm applying with my long-time boyfriend. We've been working on our app for about a year now. It's a social media management application that helps companies measure and optimize their return on investment from social media marketing. http://www.socialblazeapp.com http://www.socialblazeapp.com We're actually about to launch a public beta soon. Go female founders! :)
• SabrinaDent 16y ago
  I'm female and my co-founder is also female. I bring the design and the marketing; she brings the tech. We didn't apply this round because we're already edge case candidates and a conflict with the schedule made us pretty much a non-starter for winter. We're older than the average YC applicants by a couple of decades and we have partners, kids, dogs and mortgages that complicate things slightly. My co-founder has primary custody of her school-aged son and absolutely cannot relocate to SF for three months. I can go though, and would be delighted to; my husband would be equally delighted to hold down the fort here. Unfortunately, I have an immoveable commitment in February, so the winter schedule just wasn't going to fly. We're going to apply for the spring instead, and we're looking forward to the process.
• pmjordan 16y ago
  Not this time, but applied with a female cofounder previously. (no interview, pretty sure it was a combination of technically unproven idea and no terribly impressive achievements between us so far; also, lame video) The application wouldn't really have improved much at this point, as developing the product part-time didn't work out (too many distractions from consulting customers). Instead we've been focusing 100% on consulting to get some cash to keep us going, now transitioning to 100% product dev. Might apply again once we get some traction with a beta.
  • limedaring 16y ago
    > also, lame video Since the videos don't have to be that polished, what do you mean?
    • pmjordan 16y ago
      I think we tried too hard, and it came over unnatural and pitch-y.
• saifa 16y ago
  Good luck girls! Remember you can make it, look at indinero's story...
• kfool 16y ago
  My sister applied for the Winter 2011 batch with me as a co-founder. Frankly, her idea puts to shame all ideas I've ever had. In my opinion, women possess a unique perspective of what people may want. With 99% of founders being male, it sounds that women founders are likely to introduce unimaginable ideas. I may have pushed her a bit to apply, and she may have needed the push, but she had no trouble filling a well thought-out application. (I am dying to see the response)
• sheena 16y ago
  I'm a female co-founder (Mockingbird - http://www.gomockingbird.com http://www.gomockingbird.com). My co-founder is a guy. We interviewed with YC last year, though we didn't end up getting funded. Best of luck with weddingtype and your application; whatever the outcome, I think the process itself can't help but be useful.