5 ms·

JL on Female Founders

41 points by theoneill 18y ago

johnrob 18y ago
I'd have to think that making a start up succeed is so hard that any gender barrier, whether perceived or real, would seem minor in comparison.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  One of the principles that YC is founded on is that many of the very best founders were sitting on the fence. So even if there's some minor force pushing one group of people backwards instead of forwards, you'll discover a big difference in the number of people on each side.
Xichekolas 18y ago
From what I gather it's not so much that female founders are turned away from doing startups as they just never turn towards it to begin with... anybody out there with thoughts on why? I have often wondered this. If one assumes the prototypical founder is a hacker, and the stereotypical hacker was a nerd in school... then we come back to: why aren't more nerds female? Are little girls discouraged from tinkering and making things in favor of other activities? I'm asking seriously, as I am a guy without sisters, or really any close female relatives, so I have no idea how girls are raised.
- aasarava 18y ago
  I don't think there's a single culprit. Now, I'm not a sociologist, and I'm simplifying here, but it seems to me that it starts in childhood with the selection of toys and judgments on character that parents and family members apply. Boys get Legos, girls get dolls. This gets reinforced in grade school where perhaps girls are rewarded more for excelling in "creative" activities while boys are subtly steered in a different direction. In high school, science and history books are almost devoid of women. Meanwhile television and movies continue to portray stereotypical views of women. By the time college and career roll around, you've got both subtle and explicit forms of discrimination to contend with -- not to mention a complete lack of role models at the CEO and founder level in Silicon Valley. So the cycle continues.
vaksel 18y ago
actually if you think about it, women would actually have a leg up when it comes to getting funding etc. Since there are so few of them, they have a much higher chance of actually getting to talk about their idea in front of VCs who want to see what they have to offer.
- jnovek 18y ago
  Why does there being fewer of them increase their likelihood of getting an opportunity to pitch? Because they are a curiosity?
  - vaksel 18y ago
    Well I wouldn't use that exact word, but it works.
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      I really don't think that being a curiosity helps much.
      - vaksel 18y ago
        hey if it gets you in the door to give a presentation to a VC, more power to you
        DaniFong 18y ago
        Presentations are a cost. If they won't lead to funding, they give information to the VCs, they waste your time, and they get your hopes up and then slowly disappoint you. If being a curiosity gives a negative first impression, this likely outweighs any additional time to speak.
mixmax 18y ago
I think that natural selection might explain it. What characrerises reproductively successful men? Or, to put it another way, what qualities do women seek in a mate? Women tend to prefer dominant men of high status with lots of money, and there is little reason to believe that their ancestors differed. For much of human history male status came from being a skilled hunter and warrior and from the ability to influence others through muscle or wit. This history has left men more disposed than women to strive for status and engage in the risky, competitive and sometimes aggressive behaviour often required to do a successful startup. Women with a taste for winners would likely be in a position to pass their preference on to more children than would women with a penchant for failures. Women would not ordinarily enhance their reproductive success through direct competition and risk-taking. Indeed, it would promise little reproductive payoff and could be a very dicey strategy because a bad outcome would imperil a woman's future reproduction and the well-being of existing children. Instead, women, to a far greater extent than men, have enhanced reproductive success by looking after their children as they grow up, resulting in stronger bonds between mother and child than between father and child. This explanation also hints at the fact that women would make good CEO's of large corporations where security is more important than risk taking. Note: this isn't in in any way meant as a degradation of women - merely a possible explanation of the cause.
- jkent 18y ago
  From a Darwinian perspective, you are of course right. I think that potential pregnancy is a factor. The hours traditionally worked by startup founders could be detrimental to health, and the inability to take prolonged breaks from work at CEO level is probably a deal-breaker. (Some of the best salespeople I know are female, particularly in consultative selling.) RE-EDIT: Sarcastic thanks for the downvotes. And sincere thanks to whoever upvoted. I feel better!
  - jnovek 18y ago
    I think that most intelligent women are capable of not getting pregnant while developing their startup.
    - 18y ago
jnovek 18y ago
So, geeks are mostly male right now. It makes sense that geek startups will be mostly male, as well. It's very difficult for women to break into any field that is male dominated. The fact is, just being different causes a woman to be treated differently in a male-dominated environment. That makes it hard and un-fun. This is exacerbated by the fact that some guys really are jerks, and enjoy exerting the power that comes with picking on someone in the minority -- women, in this case. If something is more difficult, there are fewer people who are willing to do it, regardless of gender, race or creed. So when women break into a male dominated profession, it first it starts out at a trickle; just those who are very brave. I really hope that this changes pretty soon. Women have a lot of things to bring to the table that men don't -- namely, they're (on the average) familiar with a lot of markets that men aren't (on the average) as familiar with. There's a lot of money to be made there, and a lot of cool new stuff to be invented.
sanj 18y ago
No one's going to even suggest sexism? Or the fact that many, many people (men and women) look at any woman between 25 and 40 and expect them to leave to have a baby and raise a family?
- mhartl 18y ago
  Women have stormed the academy in most fields, and around half of new medical doctors are female. I think it's time to retire knee-jerk sexism as the main explanation for the lack of women in tech. While I'm confident that women face more barriers than men, it's dubious that sexism is sufficient to explain such extreme numbers. The same goes for math professors, Wall Street traders, and the NBA for that matter. More smart women choose to become doctors or lawyers, it seems, than to study physics or to roll the dice on a startup. And a lot of those 25-to-40 year old women want to have a baby and raise a family, even if it means a less resume-impressive career. (My sister, an M.D. who specifically chose a family-friendly ophthalmology specialty, is one of them.) And what's wrong with that?
- whacked_new 18y ago
  Traditionally speaking, don't most people have (their own) kids and raise families? If so, then post-menopausal women have significantly less "value," whereas a childless man hitting jackpot at age 70 can still build a new one from scratch. If having a family fits into one's life equation, the strategies involved are much different, sexism or not.
helveticaman 18y ago
This is sad, but from a biological perspective, it's oddly tautological. Men are organisms that run huge risks in hopes of huge payoffs, while women run smaller risks for more certain rewards. One could consider a male lion to be an entrepreneur, and a lioness to have a steady job. However, in nature both strategies are equally successful, while in the modern world being an entrepreneur is more effective. On the flip side, men are incarcerated much more frequently than women, and for similar reasons. This is somehow not as surprising.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
dilanj 18y ago
The numbers alone don’t work out. 48% of the class or 06 at MIT were female (up from like 2% back in the day) and most of them were serious hackers. Yet today almost all of the girls who didn’t go to grad school are working for either one of the big tech companies (Oracle, M$ etc) or an investment bank. With the whole goddamn responsibility of keeping humanity alive on top of them undoubtedly there’s a genetic disposition for women to be more risk averse. That though probably does not matter as much because women have clearly been extremely competent in pretty much every other field now for decades. So the problem has to lie in social conditioning. Cultural expectation and etiquette has always been the most powerful destroyer of human potential in both men and women, from the day they are born (and thus being most effective at it) Heard this joke? Why do baby boys wear blue and baby girls wear pink? Cos they don’t have a fucking choice!
bootload 18y ago
"... By nature, startups are very non-discriminatory ..." I don't know about that, maybe in a homogeneous ideal Startup. Startups by nature tend to be a blended team soup of testosterone, technology and immaturity. Of the three I don't know which is worse. Testosterone is vital because it gives drive and competition. But has the downside of cruelty and bullying. Technology circles also tend to attract a certain cloistered male culture (online or in meat-space). Hostile to difference and eager to argue. The nastiness occurs in arguments over technology is in part due to the makeup of Startup founders, Homo logicus. There is a Coding Horror article discussing Coopers observations if you are interested ~ http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000091.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000091.html The last of the Startup ingredients is "immaturity". There's a reason the term "grown-up" is bandied jokingly around Startup-up culture. It has less to do with "Age" and more to do with understanding how the "real world" works and how to deal with it. Put the founder team under enough stresses, let them get tired (because they are working hard) and put before them a decision that has to be made, now! Now place any male founder in this environment and tell me if "discrimination" of some sort will not happen. Let alone a female. It's no co-incidence that a question in the application asks how long the founders have know and presumably worked together. Because this is a sort of heuristic of future success. It's interesting that Mitch Kapor discussed the issue of poor behaviour in Startups (but not specifically with founders). Behaviour that would never be tolerated in big business at StartupSchool '07 ~ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/106570486/Startup_School_2007-Mitch_Kapor.mp3 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/... [ approx 20Mb] Kapor was most proud of the culture created where good behaviour resulted in a non-discriminatory workplace. It must be easier to do this when you build a 1000 employee company and have a Business background and wide experience.
axod 18y ago
If you want to make a startup, you do it. If you want to raise money, then sure, you do run the risk of not being able to. I think that could be for many reasons. These days though bootstrapping is well within most peoples reach, male or female. There are no excuses.
jdavid 18y ago
So I wanted to make sure no-one posted this view point before. 1stly in a modern 1st world country like the US or Japan birth-rates have been falling for along time. I think this a strong indication that gender roles are becoming less important in culture. Additionally you can see this in the current political strife on similar topics. So to put all of those things aside, lets just look at the numbers. Marquette the school I went to had an engineering degree program with 40-60% female. It was the highest in the country while I was attending, and the topic of choice ..... Biology. So, I had the chance to ask many of them why they chose that field and the response was ALWAYS, that they wanted to help people. I think ability is not the root here, but it is the drive, and I think the women out there that have the personality and the drive to be entrepreneurs do not have an economic model that matches their interests. I am willing to bet that as greentech becomes a viable industry to start a company you will see more women entering the entrepreneurship game. So, if it is still some sort of preference to help people and the world, why is that so? I don't know but thank God someone wants to do something more. I think that if you are going to support a climate for female entrepreneur's you are going to have to find a way to create a community (YC seems to be a good start) and a way for the process to feel personable rather than abstract. Jessica, maybe you can organize a few geek dinners to get female entrepreneurs together talking about what they would of like to have had when they were starting a company? I am sure you will find it much different than what the guys needed.

41 points by theoneill 18y ago

I'd have to think that making a start up succeed is so hard that any gender barrier, whether perceived or real, would seem minor in comparison.

DaniFong 18y ago
One of the principles that YC is founded on is that many of the very best founders were sitting on the fence. So even if there's some minor force pushing one group of people backwards instead of forwards, you'll discover a big difference in the number of people on each side.

Xichekolas 18y ago

From what I gather it's not so much that female founders are turned away from doing startups as they just never turn towards it to begin with... anybody out there with thoughts on why? I have often wondered this. If one assumes the prototypical founder is a hacker, and the stereotypical hacker was a nerd in school... then we come back to: why aren't more nerds female? Are little girls discouraged from tinkering and making things in favor of other activities? I'm asking seriously, as I am a guy without sisters, or really any close female relatives, so I have no idea how girls are raised.

aasarava 18y ago
I don't think there's a single culprit. Now, I'm not a sociologist, and I'm simplifying here, but it seems to me that it starts in childhood with the selection of toys and judgments on character that parents and family members apply. Boys get Legos, girls get dolls. This gets reinforced in grade school where perhaps girls are rewarded more for excelling in "creative" activities while boys are subtly steered in a different direction. In high school, science and history books are almost devoid of women. Meanwhile television and movies continue to portray stereotypical views of women. By the time college and career roll around, you've got both subtle and explicit forms of discrimination to contend with -- not to mention a complete lack of role models at the CEO and founder level in Silicon Valley. So the cycle continues.

vaksel 18y ago

actually if you think about it, women would actually have a leg up when it comes to getting funding etc. Since there are so few of them, they have a much higher chance of actually getting to talk about their idea in front of VCs who want to see what they have to offer.

jnovek 18y ago
Why does there being fewer of them increase their likelihood of getting an opportunity to pitch? Because they are a curiosity?
- vaksel 18y ago
  Well I wouldn't use that exact word, but it works.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    I really don't think that being a curiosity helps much.
    - vaksel 18y ago
      hey if it gets you in the door to give a presentation to a VC, more power to you
      - DaniFong 18y ago
        Presentations are a cost. If they won't lead to funding, they give information to the VCs, they waste your time, and they get your hopes up and then slowly disappoint you. If being a curiosity gives a negative first impression, this likely outweighs any additional time to speak.

mixmax 18y ago

I think that natural selection might explain it. What characrerises reproductively successful men? Or, to put it another way, what qualities do women seek in a mate? Women tend to prefer dominant men of high status with lots of money, and there is little reason to believe that their ancestors differed. For much of human history male status came from being a skilled hunter and warrior and from the ability to influence others through muscle or wit. This history has left men more disposed than women to strive for status and engage in the risky, competitive and sometimes aggressive behaviour often required to do a successful startup. Women with a taste for winners would likely be in a position to pass their preference on to more children than would women with a penchant for failures. Women would not ordinarily enhance their reproductive success through direct competition and risk-taking. Indeed, it would promise little reproductive payoff and could be a very dicey strategy because a bad outcome would imperil a woman's future reproduction and the well-being of existing children. Instead, women, to a far greater extent than men, have enhanced reproductive success by looking after their children as they grow up, resulting in stronger bonds between mother and child than between father and child. This explanation also hints at the fact that women would make good CEO's of large corporations where security is more important than risk taking. Note: this isn't in in any way meant as a degradation of women - merely a possible explanation of the cause.

jkent 18y ago
From a Darwinian perspective, you are of course right. I think that potential pregnancy is a factor. The hours traditionally worked by startup founders could be detrimental to health, and the inability to take prolonged breaks from work at CEO level is probably a deal-breaker. (Some of the best salespeople I know are female, particularly in consultative selling.) RE-EDIT: Sarcastic thanks for the downvotes. And sincere thanks to whoever upvoted. I feel better!
- jnovek 18y ago
  I think that most intelligent women are capable of not getting pregnant while developing their startup.
  - 18y ago

jnovek 18y ago

So, geeks are mostly male right now. It makes sense that geek startups will be mostly male, as well. It's very difficult for women to break into any field that is male dominated. The fact is, just being different causes a woman to be treated differently in a male-dominated environment. That makes it hard and un-fun. This is exacerbated by the fact that some guys really are jerks, and enjoy exerting the power that comes with picking on someone in the minority -- women, in this case. If something is more difficult, there are fewer people who are willing to do it, regardless of gender, race or creed. So when women break into a male dominated profession, it first it starts out at a trickle; just those who are very brave. I really hope that this changes pretty soon. Women have a lot of things to bring to the table that men don't -- namely, they're (on the average) familiar with a lot of markets that men aren't (on the average) as familiar with. There's a lot of money to be made there, and a lot of cool new stuff to be invented.

sanj 18y ago

No one's going to even suggest sexism? Or the fact that many, many people (men and women) look at any woman between 25 and 40 and expect them to leave to have a baby and raise a family?

mhartl 18y ago
Women have stormed the academy in most fields, and around half of new medical doctors are female. I think it's time to retire knee-jerk sexism as the main explanation for the lack of women in tech. While I'm confident that women face more barriers than men, it's dubious that sexism is sufficient to explain such extreme numbers. The same goes for math professors, Wall Street traders, and the NBA for that matter. More smart women choose to become doctors or lawyers, it seems, than to study physics or to roll the dice on a startup. And a lot of those 25-to-40 year old women want to have a baby and raise a family, even if it means a less resume-impressive career. (My sister, an M.D. who specifically chose a family-friendly ophthalmology specialty, is one of them.) And what's wrong with that?
whacked_new 18y ago
Traditionally speaking, don't most people have (their own) kids and raise families? If so, then post-menopausal women have significantly less "value," whereas a childless man hitting jackpot at age 70 can still build a new one from scratch. If having a family fits into one's life equation, the strategies involved are much different, sexism or not.

helveticaman 18y ago

This is sad, but from a biological perspective, it's oddly tautological. Men are organisms that run huge risks in hopes of huge payoffs, while women run smaller risks for more certain rewards. One could consider a male lion to be an entrepreneur, and a lioness to have a steady job. However, in nature both strategies are equally successful, while in the modern world being an entrepreneur is more effective. On the flip side, men are incarcerated much more frequently than women, and for similar reasons. This is somehow not as surprising.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

dilanj 18y ago

The numbers alone don’t work out. 48% of the class or 06 at MIT were female (up from like 2% back in the day) and most of them were serious hackers. Yet today almost all of the girls who didn’t go to grad school are working for either one of the big tech companies (Oracle, M$ etc) or an investment bank. With the whole goddamn responsibility of keeping humanity alive on top of them undoubtedly there’s a genetic disposition for women to be more risk averse. That though probably does not matter as much because women have clearly been extremely competent in pretty much every other field now for decades. So the problem has to lie in social conditioning. Cultural expectation and etiquette has always been the most powerful destroyer of human potential in both men and women, from the day they are born (and thus being most effective at it) Heard this joke? Why do baby boys wear blue and baby girls wear pink? Cos they don’t have a fucking choice!

bootload 18y ago

"... By nature, startups are very non-discriminatory ..." I don't know about that, maybe in a homogeneous ideal Startup. Startups by nature tend to be a blended team soup of testosterone, technology and immaturity. Of the three I don't know which is worse. Testosterone is vital because it gives drive and competition. But has the downside of cruelty and bullying. Technology circles also tend to attract a certain cloistered male culture (online or in meat-space). Hostile to difference and eager to argue. The nastiness occurs in arguments over technology is in part due to the makeup of Startup founders, Homo logicus. There is a Coding Horror article discussing Coopers observations if you are interested ~ http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000091.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000091.html The last of the Startup ingredients is "immaturity". There's a reason the term "grown-up" is bandied jokingly around Startup-up culture. It has less to do with "Age" and more to do with understanding how the "real world" works and how to deal with it. Put the founder team under enough stresses, let them get tired (because they are working hard) and put before them a decision that has to be made, now! Now place any male founder in this environment and tell me if "discrimination" of some sort will not happen. Let alone a female. It's no co-incidence that a question in the application asks how long the founders have know and presumably worked together. Because this is a sort of heuristic of future success. It's interesting that Mitch Kapor discussed the issue of poor behaviour in Startups (but not specifically with founders). Behaviour that would never be tolerated in big business at StartupSchool '07 ~ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/106570486/Startup_School_2007-Mitch_Kapor.mp3 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/... [ approx 20Mb] Kapor was most proud of the culture created where good behaviour resulted in a non-discriminatory workplace. It must be easier to do this when you build a 1000 employee company and have a Business background and wide experience.

axod 18y ago

If you want to make a startup, you do it. If you want to raise money, then sure, you do run the risk of not being able to. I think that could be for many reasons. These days though bootstrapping is well within most peoples reach, male or female. There are no excuses.

jdavid 18y ago

So I wanted to make sure no-one posted this view point before. 1stly in a modern 1st world country like the US or Japan birth-rates have been falling for along time. I think this a strong indication that gender roles are becoming less important in culture. Additionally you can see this in the current political strife on similar topics. So to put all of those things aside, lets just look at the numbers. Marquette the school I went to had an engineering degree program with 40-60% female. It was the highest in the country while I was attending, and the topic of choice ..... Biology. So, I had the chance to ask many of them why they chose that field and the response was ALWAYS, that they wanted to help people. I think ability is not the root here, but it is the drive, and I think the women out there that have the personality and the drive to be entrepreneurs do not have an economic model that matches their interests. I am willing to bet that as greentech becomes a viable industry to start a company you will see more women entering the entrepreneurship game. So, if it is still some sort of preference to help people and the world, why is that so? I don't know but thank God someone wants to do something more. I think that if you are going to support a climate for female entrepreneur's you are going to have to find a way to create a community (YC seems to be a good start) and a way for the process to feel personable rather than abstract. Jessica, maybe you can organize a few geek dinners to get female entrepreneurs together talking about what they would of like to have had when they were starting a company? I am sure you will find it much different than what the guys needed.