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Leap Spins out of YC
- cbcowans 8y agoHi! Leap is spinning out of YC today as an independent company called Elpha. I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of Elpha and am here to answer questions. Thanks!!
- mariedm 8y agoHi Cadran, congrats on Elpha and this new birth! I'm Marie and I also created a place to support women in this industry, Women Make. I was wondering, why did you change the name?
- cbcowans 8y agoThank you, Marie! We landed on Elpha by riffing on the word alpha and the notion that we want to create a place where women come first. We combined alpha with the French word for she (“Elle”) to create ellepha and then shortened it to elpha from there.
- mariedm 8y agoFunny, I'm actually French! Nice name anyway :)
- jedberg 8y agoDid you have any concerns over brand confusion with Elfa, the shelving system owned by the Container Store, which markets itself heavily to women (and yes, I see the rich irony in that :) ).
- kl2931 8y agoHa, we chose the name Elpha by riffing on the word alpha and the idea that we wanted to create a place where women come first. We combined alpha with the French word for she (“Elle”) to create ellepha. We shortened it to elpha from there. Plus, the .com was available. :)
- btilly 8y agoFYI, the link in your profile to http://elpha.com/invitations/join-hn http://elpha.com/invitations/join-hn does not appear to be working.
- cbcowans 8y agothank you! It should be: http://elpha.com/invite/join-hn http://elpha.com/invite/join-hn Just fixed it.
- swampthing 8y agoCongrats Cadran!
- cbcowans 8y agoThank you!
- soneca 8y agoCongrats and good luck! Two questions: Would it be helpful for women in tech in Brazil? (wondering if I should refer it to my colleagues here) Is it for profit or non-profit organization now?
- kl2931 8y agoThank you! And yes, many of our members are based outside of the US, and we'd love to have more international members to broaden the perspective and discussion topics. And we're a for-profit company. :)
- stonogo 8y agoThis looks to be a really great resource. I'm curious to know what your business plan is; I'm very interested in how to make a community platform like this sustainable without compromising user privacy. This is especially important when the community is focused on disadvantaged or minority groups, and I'm always on the lookout for the Right Answer. Have you written on this topic before?
- cbcowans 8y agoReally good point and question! We don't have all the answers and it's something we're actively thinking about. Our goal is to focus on providing access and opportunities and use that as our guiding light. I think especially as members of those underrepresented groups, it makes it a bit easier to reason about what kind of products members will feel comfortable with. We are building for ourselves after all!
- ForrestN 8y agoCongratulations! Do you have a policy regarding non-binary or genderqueer people? And are there any steps you're planning to take to keep your community free of TERF transphobia? I'm curious about building a gender-based community in 2019.
- ForrestN 8y agoWoah! Even after so long on HN, I'm surprised by multiple downvotes for even a question that merely implies an interest in inclusivity for non-cis people.
- sctb 8y agoThere is little that can be gleaned from voting, especially early on. It's just plain noisy and you don't know what someone is objecting to. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ForrestN 8y agoAgree to disagree in this case, wherein I believe two or more people's gestures do communicate something real regardless of the eventual balancing out. Thanks for the reminder.
- gammateam 8y ago> It's just plain noisy and you don't know what someone is objecting to. Then why does it rate limit the poster who might have spurred a discussion and wants to find out? They can't even post anymore until hours after the discussion died down even though little can be gleaned from the reason anyone downvoted them? There is some conflicting logic going around
- lucisferre 8y agoIt could be your use of the term TERF which is pretty loaded and has been associated with calls for violence against women.
- efm 8y agoI attempted to sign up a long time ago, when the only authentication was through FB, which I don't have. So, the email address is in your system but I'm not a member. I cannot sign in or up. Is this something you can fix? I would contact you directly for support.
- kl2931 8y agoYes, please email us hi@elpha.com!
- Cenk 8y agoCongrats on your relaunch! The new landing page is fantastic. I love the "Remind me" function for upcoming AMAs.
- cbcowans 8y agoThank you so much! Glad you like it :)
- briantmaurer 8y agoAs not-a-female, what can we do to learn from this community?
- kl2931 8y agoYou can read our AMAs with industry experts, and we have more public content coming soon.
- Alex3917 8y agoThe literary typeface for a UGC site is a bold design choice. On its own it suggests static content and lack of community, but then that's balanced by all the social flair on the AMA cards so I think it works. But very tricky to pull off. :-) It's interesting in general that the design language for signaling "for women" (and "exclusive") is so incongruous with the design language of UGC.
- Cenk 8y agoI really like the typeface, it’s one of the first things I noticed. It‘s Chiswick Sans, by the way: https://commercialtype.com/catalog/chiswick_sans https://commercialtype.com/catalog/chiswick_sans
- kl2931 8y agoHappy to hear that! :)
- kl2931 8y agoHi, designer/cofounder of Elpha here. Thank you for the comment! It is tricky to design a UGC site for women, and we aim for friendliness/neutral than feminine. Glad you like Chiswick!
- Alex3917 8y agoYeah I think neutral has gotten a lot easier to pull off in the last five years just because of all the design resources put out by Google, Apple, and MS. Even though I don't like Material as a strict design language, just the fact that it's clearly explained and all the resources behind it are free is a much better starting point than being more limited to reverse engineering existing sites and picking up their biases along the way.
- kl2931 8y agoCan't agree more! There are only 3 of us, and we have so much to do, resources like material design really help us speed up the design & dev process.
- GoRudy 8y agoWhat kind of community / forum software is being used?
- kl2931 8y agoElpha is built on Rails and is using React on the frontend.
- telesilla 8y agoThis looks wonderful but it requires a LinkedIn profile - I'm not on any social media so it means, I don't get to join?
- kl2931 8y agoYou can definitely join - you can put in your website, or anything other link that we can verify your identity. Let us know if you run into any trouble hi@elpha.com
- androidgirl 8y agoWas just wondering this! That is great news and thank you for posting this here. Maybe it can get mentioned in the FAQ too?
- kl2931 8y agoSure, that's a great idea. We will fix it in our sign-up form as well.
- mharroun 8y agoIts always good to see more communities like this spin up. I am actually the CTO of https://fairygodboss.com https://fairygodboss.com a company that is also a community, content resource, and job search platform but targeted at all professional women. I am a guy (the founders are female) but join this company because I saw the lack of women in this space...especially in the leadership/management level and wanted to help in this mission. If you're ever interested in speaking with me or one of our founders we always try to keep in close contact with those in this space.
- exodust 8y agoOn the elpha.com FAQ I see the reason for enforcing real-identities: "Real identities allow us to build lasting, trustworthy connections". Reminds me of corporate mission statement fluff. A more honest reason would be "we need to verify your gender". Just say that. We all know that's the reason. Also note the irony of the "Diversity & Inclusion Strategist" on front page of a community where men are not welcome. I'm all for supporting women in tech, but feel creating communities where you must be a woman 'else break' is not progressive or modern. The alternative? Make communities where women are at the top and stay there, but all are welcome to contribute.
- alliecat 8y agoThere are a million and one online communities where men are welcome. Let us have just this one, please?
- exodust 8y agoMy comment is one bit of opinion in a terabyte stack. You don't need (and won't get) 100% support from every bit on every forum. If by "us" you mean women in general, you're assuming women in general want such a place where only women are allowed. If you are successful, then a pattern may emerge where more places are set up that exclude groups based on gender or other differences. If it were bathing facilities or medical clinics and so on, where the needs of women-only services are based on practical reasons and obvious differences, nobody would question it. When the service is "technology", there is nothing inherent to that medium that warrants gender isolated services. I'm male, but I don't comment or code from that point of view. I wouldn't want to frequent a place mainly intended for women coders. But I wouldn't want to be stopped at the door either. It's wrong to do that, which is why we have laws protecting against such discrimination. I believe a good-faith model and honesty system would serve you better in the long run rather than official gender verification, which is quite a hard-lined approach. Good luck with it anyway.