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It is worrying that her actions might lead to blow back for female founders. A lot of the unicorn scams that have been discovered since 2015 were headed by wome

It is worrying that her actions might lead to blow back for female founders. A lot of the unicorn scams that have been discovered since 2015 were headed by women; Theranos, uBeam, and now Quintillion. WeWork is changing this, but these examples are objectively talked about more in the general ecosystem than all the other scams that have broken since 2015. - Hampton Creek was buying their merchandise to boost numbers and get better shelf space in stores. - Mozido raised $314M and the founder was indicted for fraud. - Not a startup, but Mark Rothenberg spent his LPs money on parties and sex instead of investments. - Bouxtie engaged in fraud to continue to get funding by fudging numbers. - Crescent Ridge Capital Partners was a ponzi scheme - WrkRiot forged wire transfers This list is long and illustrious, and only to grow. But will people just remember the few female founders who were scammers at the time? Will people forget the dozens of counter-examples? Even more importantly, what's going on in the minds of the traditional venture capitalists? Venture capital is more herd-like than anyone wants to admit. Will they remember these schemes and overfit their model? Will female founders find it harder to get funding in the future? --- There are already a few heavily downvoted comments on this thread harping on this "theme" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21223462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21223462

magashna 7y ago
It may be due to some of the media coverage for those companies led by women are "Wow! Billion dollar startup is led by a woman! Can you believe it!" so it's much easier to attack that point. It may not be their fault, but more the media looking for superheroines. There are already plenty of successful female business leaders. Look at IBM, PagerDuty, AMD. They probably don't get the coverage they deserve because they're not a supposed unicorn with some miracle elixir.
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rchaud 7y ago
I read a couple of articles on the case, and it doesn't seem like Pierce was the founder of Quintillion. She previously had a role as FCC advisor. She's a crook sure, but to think that this will have blowback on female founders is a bit of a stretch. They certainly face institutional barriers and negative stereotypes, but "more likely to commit fraud" isn't what VCs are usually thinking when they turn down female founders.
perl4ever 7y ago
"but these examples are objectively talked about more in the general ecosystem" I don't think those three should be grouped together, as I heard a lot about Theranos but nothing about the other two. And there's a reason other than Elizabeth Holmes being a woman for Theranos to occupy a large space in peoples' minds - their fraud involved the operational side of a medical business, which is a violation of trust that anyone can relate to as a consumer.
- rasz 7y ago
  you never heard about uBeam scam? get a load of this: https://youtu.be/t1R9IQF0Y9s?t=28m5s https://youtu.be/t1R9IQF0Y9s?t=28m5s
rasz 7y ago
Dont forget LuLaRoe.

magashna 7y ago

It may be due to some of the media coverage for those companies led by women are "Wow! Billion dollar startup is led by a woman! Can you believe it!" so it's much easier to attack that point. It may not be their fault, but more the media looking for superheroines. There are already plenty of successful female business leaders. Look at IBM, PagerDuty, AMD. They probably don't get the coverage they deserve because they're not a supposed unicorn with some miracle elixir.

deleted 7y ago

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rchaud 7y ago

I read a couple of articles on the case, and it doesn't seem like Pierce was the founder of Quintillion. She previously had a role as FCC advisor. She's a crook sure, but to think that this will have blowback on female founders is a bit of a stretch. They certainly face institutional barriers and negative stereotypes, but "more likely to commit fraud" isn't what VCs are usually thinking when they turn down female founders.

perl4ever 7y ago

"but these examples are objectively talked about more in the general ecosystem" I don't think those three should be grouped together, as I heard a lot about Theranos but nothing about the other two. And there's a reason other than Elizabeth Holmes being a woman for Theranos to occupy a large space in peoples' minds - their fraud involved the operational side of a medical business, which is a violation of trust that anyone can relate to as a consumer.

rasz 7y ago
you never heard about uBeam scam? get a load of this: https://youtu.be/t1R9IQF0Y9s?t=28m5s https://youtu.be/t1R9IQF0Y9s?t=28m5s

rasz 7y ago

Dont forget LuLaRoe.