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The Mall Bathroom Test to Identify Entrepreneurs
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- nloadholtes 18y agoUgh. I think the first sentence of the last paragraph sums up the article best: "Maybe this just means that we’re not very good at predicting who will become an entrepreneur."
- nirmal 18y agoIt is a stretch to call this an article. I also think the title should be "The Mall Bathroom JOKE for Identifying Entrepreneurs".
- dpapathanasiou 18y agoThis is a candidate for a downvote.
- d0mine 18y agoRemind me again, what is the male/female ratio among startup founders funded by Y Combinator? And does it contradict the article?
- apathy 18y agoA predictor in a poorly specified model can perform just fine until you look a bit closer and identify stronger predictors, or address confounding factors explicitly. eg. IFF women are more risk-averse THEN less women entrepreneurs IFF time lost to childbirth is a factor THEN less " " In the former case, risk aversion drives the predictor, and linkage with gender makes it appear as though gender is a strong predictor. After breaking the predictor in two, a much more informative fit is generated. Et cetera. I make no claims as to the correctness of the above. But I am dubious that vagina possession is the kiss of death for starting one's own business. Confounding seems likely. Ratcheting up or down the sample size does not address confounding. Are women incapable of becoming successful entrepreneurs? Oprah would probably suggest not. Are there numerous factors working against them? Yes. Far more interesting is to probe which characteristics are overwhelmingly female and which are shared among sexes.
- lpgauth 18y agolol, why would someone even write something like this? everyone knows men is superior :) (kidding!) Actually, I find it surprising that there aren't more women as they are usually way more hard working then men but I guess they don't have the guts to take the risk.
- Mistone 18y agolike the comments in the post say, its one hell of a compelling title, author gets some props for that, even if the content lacks real substance, it was the first thing I clicked in my reader.
- jkent 18y agoIt also assumes that entrepreneurs have time to go to the mall.
- edw519 18y agoIt also assumes that entrepreneurs have time to go to the bathroom.
- radu_floricica 18y agoFor all the blog posts twice the length and half the substance, this actually makes a point, and doesn't take a lot of time to do it. Good enough.
- DaniFong 18y agoI'm not sure this is accurate. The proportion of female founders must have changed over time, while the demand for an extroverted, independent, perspective, confident personality likely remains. And for example in third world countries, it's to a large extent the women starting their own home businesses. And there's really no data here, so all it is is the voicing of stereotypes. Unless some surprise is communicated, there really isn't much information here.
- iloveyouocean 18y agoIf you are reading the comments before the article: Summary - Men are twice as likely to start businesses as women. Other traits are (psychological) are not as good as gender at predicting who will be an entrepreneur. Note: "The Mall Bathroom Test" is a gimmick. Men go into the men's bathroom, women into the women's. Thats it.
- mynameishere 18y agoThere's a very strong correlation between "yes" responses to the question "Are you an entrepreneur?" and that person being an entrepreneur.