4 ms·

Why female entrepreneurs should apply to YC

16 points by jlees 15y ago

jfb 15y ago
I think this is an excellent essay. I would add: different people have different problems; the best ideas for companies come from people fed up with working around their problems; so the world needs a wide variety of entrepreneurs to move the ball forward. I enjoyed my YC experience, but it was 100% male, IIRC. YC was for me a social exercise, and as in most social exercises, the more perspectives you can canvas the better; and YC participants started by women would bring new perspectives. I would also encourage older people to give it a shot, too, but that's a topic for a different post.
Hitchhiker 15y ago
This low rate may also have to do with biases extant in engineering / sciences etc. Couple that with YC's preference for hard-core tech founders ( a perfectly reasonable delimiter ), these results are not surprising. You can see similar composition in YC leadership where Jessica is the only female partner ( http://ycombinator.com/people.html http://ycombinator.com/people.html ) and from my limited understanding, she brings in a much needed balance to their approach. A system that produces great results should perhaps focus on ".. but by the content of their character " - Martin Luther King, Jr. This I think, pg emphasizes via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU
- jlees 15y ago
  I agree that the smaller proportion of women in science means that there are naturally fewer women hacker founders, but 4% is lower than the percentages of women in science commonly quoted (anywhere from 10 to 38%). My feeling is that this is the subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive -- not all male CS students become entrepreneurs -- but it's pretty low, and some of the other barriers mentioned in the article may be keeping it down.
  - Hitchhiker 15y ago
    Agreed. A few years ago, when I first asked around regarding my plans for branching out on my own.. the first line I got was " you must be a sucker for pain ". As it turns out , the line has been proven on the dot. So a better refinement of the question would be , why aren't there more female founders ? I look at all the blockbuster companies, can't think of one woman who's gone for the scale of a Gates , Jobs etc. The few female execs that have come to the arena at that scale were non-founders. Furthermore, the women in my life are having far more empathy, compassion and care. If there is some way to have more of that without losing track of overall merit, get it done is all I can say. Here's a really interesting project with a female founder from my line of work : http://qubes-os.org http://qubes-os.org
kellco 15y ago
I'm a female founder and I applied to YC, not technical though. I did find a tech cofounder, and if need be, I can add another third tech cofounder as well. One of my strengths is keeping the programmers motivated and focused. Wish me luck. :-)
- Hitchhiker 15y ago
  All the best :-) " rain and hot chocolate " == excellent
suivix 15y ago
Not the same thing, but reminds me of this video presentation: http://igniteshow.com/videos/im-barbie-girl-cs-world http://igniteshow.com/videos/im-barbie-girl-cs-world
anthropeeps 15y ago
Like Kellco I'm a female co-founder with no tech experience. Growing up I was encouraged to be creative and expressive. It wasn't until college that I was drawn in to the sciences and ultimately entered a male dominated field (as an adjunct professor in a lab oriented discipline). It works for me because I'm a people person but I love the creative impact of the scientific method, its structure, and how it opens the mind. When I began teaching myself to code and program for our company, I realized it isn't much different and I'm quickly growing to love the process. It's still a science after all. I think the hacker stereotype of the nerdy guy with no social skills needs to go the way of the dodo. :)
- Hitchhiker 15y ago
  " as an adjunct professor in a lab oriented discipline " == much respect " It works for me because I'm a people person " == that is around 99% of the start-up game. 1% is randomness or grace depending one one's perspective. And most nerds who scaled up companies and became public faces as founders acquired serious social skills.. so nod again. All the best ! p.s. I really hope that both Kellco and you get in. That would be awesome.
  - anthropeeps 15y ago
    Thanks, Hitchhiker!
rottendoubt 15y ago
My thoughts: 1) As jlees mentioned below, you need to look at the "subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive" when looking at something like YC. The 4% doesn't really surprise me at all. 2) My observation is that women tend to be on a timeline about 5 years "faster" than men because of their biological clock. As in, they'll start thinking seriously of marriage and kids late 20's, early 30's whereas men will deal with this issue more like early to mid 30's. So their window for doing a startup is smaller. 3) This is a bit of a generalization, but the dynamics are really different when you have all-guy co-founders versus mixed versus all-female co-founders. With mixed sometimes personal relationships develop which can make things messy. And when you have a couple of alpha-females together, sometimes that can also lead to problems (for example, see the all-female startup in the TechStars Reality show). [These are just my own observations. Please don't flame me for this!]
- anthropeeps 15y ago
  1)I'm not necessarily negating you, rottendoubt, but I'd be curious to know what the women who have applied to YC and those who have been accepted think of marriage and kids. There may be no correlation at all. I personally think a large part of the discrepancy is our culture and can easily be changed, especially in the minds of the kids who are currently growing up. 2) As for dynamics...yeah, I'll agree with you on that. Women can be catty. That doesn't mean we are catty, but we can be. Where does that leave us though? It actually appears that we have to prove ourselves above and beyond. "I won't be catty, I won't go after my co-founder and hopefully he won't come after me, and I'm sorry I'm not a dude so I can't create an all male cohort." Doesn't mean it will stop me but it does make it more difficult. 3) Call me biased because I'm an educator, but I think a big obstacle is our science education in this country. Or lack thereof. Tech information is geared towards males, not females and it is a poor show at that. If more females became involved at a younger age, I think YC would have a hard time keeping the women out. :)
  - rottendoubt 15y ago
    I was just having dinner with a female friend that was an EECS major (electrical engineering computer science) from UC Berkeley and she brought up another point. She said whenever she took classes and needed a partner, she'd always have guys come up to try to help her and that usually they were among the smartest guys in the class. As far as the marriage/kids issue goes ... I think I read that the average age of the people at YCombinator is 26; and as far as my own observation goes, that's right around the time that my female friends started seriously thinking about the marriage/kids issue. I think the discrepancy is really driven by the biological clock. Men can have kids well into their 50's, but it's pretty dangerous for women to have kids past 40.
rottendoubt 15y ago
Not sure if you all have seen this. One of the co-founders of YC, Jessica Livingston, wrote a great blog post on this exact subject: www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2011/01/what-stops-female-founders.html
- anthropeeps 15y ago
  Thanks for posting this. I hadn't seen it, some interesting points!

16 points by jlees 15y ago

jfb 15y ago

I think this is an excellent essay. I would add: different people have different problems; the best ideas for companies come from people fed up with working around their problems; so the world needs a wide variety of entrepreneurs to move the ball forward. I enjoyed my YC experience, but it was 100% male, IIRC. YC was for me a social exercise, and as in most social exercises, the more perspectives you can canvas the better; and YC participants started by women would bring new perspectives. I would also encourage older people to give it a shot, too, but that's a topic for a different post.

Hitchhiker 15y ago

This low rate may also have to do with biases extant in engineering / sciences etc. Couple that with YC's preference for hard-core tech founders ( a perfectly reasonable delimiter ), these results are not surprising. You can see similar composition in YC leadership where Jessica is the only female partner ( http://ycombinator.com/people.html http://ycombinator.com/people.html ) and from my limited understanding, she brings in a much needed balance to their approach. A system that produces great results should perhaps focus on ".. but by the content of their character " - Martin Luther King, Jr. This I think, pg emphasizes via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU

jlees 15y ago
I agree that the smaller proportion of women in science means that there are naturally fewer women hacker founders, but 4% is lower than the percentages of women in science commonly quoted (anywhere from 10 to 38%). My feeling is that this is the subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive -- not all male CS students become entrepreneurs -- but it's pretty low, and some of the other barriers mentioned in the article may be keeping it down.
- Hitchhiker 15y ago
  Agreed. A few years ago, when I first asked around regarding my plans for branching out on my own.. the first line I got was " you must be a sucker for pain ". As it turns out , the line has been proven on the dot. So a better refinement of the question would be , why aren't there more female founders ? I look at all the blockbuster companies, can't think of one woman who's gone for the scale of a Gates , Jobs etc. The few female execs that have come to the arena at that scale were non-founders. Furthermore, the women in my life are having far more empathy, compassion and care. If there is some way to have more of that without losing track of overall merit, get it done is all I can say. Here's a really interesting project with a female founder from my line of work : http://qubes-os.org http://qubes-os.org

kellco 15y ago

I'm a female founder and I applied to YC, not technical though. I did find a tech cofounder, and if need be, I can add another third tech cofounder as well. One of my strengths is keeping the programmers motivated and focused. Wish me luck. :-)

Hitchhiker 15y ago
All the best :-) " rain and hot chocolate " == excellent

suivix 15y ago

Not the same thing, but reminds me of this video presentation: http://igniteshow.com/videos/im-barbie-girl-cs-world http://igniteshow.com/videos/im-barbie-girl-cs-world

anthropeeps 15y ago

Like Kellco I'm a female co-founder with no tech experience. Growing up I was encouraged to be creative and expressive. It wasn't until college that I was drawn in to the sciences and ultimately entered a male dominated field (as an adjunct professor in a lab oriented discipline). It works for me because I'm a people person but I love the creative impact of the scientific method, its structure, and how it opens the mind. When I began teaching myself to code and program for our company, I realized it isn't much different and I'm quickly growing to love the process. It's still a science after all. I think the hacker stereotype of the nerdy guy with no social skills needs to go the way of the dodo. :)

Hitchhiker 15y ago
" as an adjunct professor in a lab oriented discipline " == much respect " It works for me because I'm a people person " == that is around 99% of the start-up game. 1% is randomness or grace depending one one's perspective. And most nerds who scaled up companies and became public faces as founders acquired serious social skills.. so nod again. All the best ! p.s. I really hope that both Kellco and you get in. That would be awesome.
- anthropeeps 15y ago
  Thanks, Hitchhiker!

rottendoubt 15y ago

My thoughts: 1) As jlees mentioned below, you need to look at the "subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive" when looking at something like YC. The 4% doesn't really surprise me at all. 2) My observation is that women tend to be on a timeline about 5 years "faster" than men because of their biological clock. As in, they'll start thinking seriously of marriage and kids late 20's, early 30's whereas men will deal with this issue more like early to mid 30's. So their window for doing a startup is smaller. 3) This is a bit of a generalization, but the dynamics are really different when you have all-guy co-founders versus mixed versus all-female co-founders. With mixed sometimes personal relationships develop which can make things messy. And when you have a couple of alpha-females together, sometimes that can also lead to problems (for example, see the all-female startup in the TechStars Reality show). [These are just my own observations. Please don't flame me for this!]

anthropeeps 15y ago
1)I'm not necessarily negating you, rottendoubt, but I'd be curious to know what the women who have applied to YC and those who have been accepted think of marriage and kids. There may be no correlation at all. I personally think a large part of the discrepancy is our culture and can easily be changed, especially in the minds of the kids who are currently growing up. 2) As for dynamics...yeah, I'll agree with you on that. Women can be catty. That doesn't mean we are catty, but we can be. Where does that leave us though? It actually appears that we have to prove ourselves above and beyond. "I won't be catty, I won't go after my co-founder and hopefully he won't come after me, and I'm sorry I'm not a dude so I can't create an all male cohort." Doesn't mean it will stop me but it does make it more difficult. 3) Call me biased because I'm an educator, but I think a big obstacle is our science education in this country. Or lack thereof. Tech information is geared towards males, not females and it is a poor show at that. If more females became involved at a younger age, I think YC would have a hard time keeping the women out. :)
- rottendoubt 15y ago
  I was just having dinner with a female friend that was an EECS major (electrical engineering computer science) from UC Berkeley and she brought up another point. She said whenever she took classes and needed a partner, she'd always have guys come up to try to help her and that usually they were among the smartest guys in the class. As far as the marriage/kids issue goes ... I think I read that the average age of the people at YCombinator is 26; and as far as my own observation goes, that's right around the time that my female friends started seriously thinking about the marriage/kids issue. I think the discrepancy is really driven by the biological clock. Men can have kids well into their 50's, but it's pretty dangerous for women to have kids past 40.

rottendoubt 15y ago

Not sure if you all have seen this. One of the co-founders of YC, Jessica Livingston, wrote a great blog post on this exact subject: www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2011/01/what-stops-female-founders.html

anthropeeps 15y ago
Thanks for posting this. I hadn't seen it, some interesting points!