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I don't doubt Jessica is good at reading people, but I found out during hiring people is that it is the easiest/cheapest skill to hire. I am honestly curious ab

I don't doubt Jessica is good at reading people, but I found out during hiring people is that it is the easiest/cheapest skill to hire. I am honestly curious about why pg skipped the most frequently asked question: Would Jessica be close to this level of successful if she was not his wife? Also I would be very curious to know about female founders that Jessica selected. According to [1], companies with at least 1 female founder has <10% of valuation compared to YC companies with all male founders[2]. Just on casual looking all female founder companies is <2% compared to all male founder companies, which is below average for VCs. [1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/women-founders https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/women-founders [2]: https://www.ycombinator.com/ https://www.ycombinator.com/

InitialLastName 3y ago
I see: Combined Valuation (all companies): $600B Combined Valuation (Companies with women founders): $45B Still unbalanced, but closer to 15:1 as opposed to 49:1. That's also a comparisons that is totally useless without the base rate. If half the companies had female founders, it might be valid to say "why are the companies with women raising at a lower rate" but I'd be willing to bet that the application pool is heavily skewed male, and thus that the accepted pools are also heavily skewed male. It wouldn't shock me if that skew were on the order of 50:1. It also wouldn't shock me if it were trending in a more balanced direction; that would lead to a fundraising bias towards older companies that have raised more money over time and are more likely to have only men as founders.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  I said 10% valuation for companies with at least 1 female founder compared to no female founder. And in that list, I could see something like 5:1 for company with at least female founder to company with all female founder. That is how I arrived with all female:all male ratio of 2% if we ignore mixed gender founder companies. Also I am not arguing whether female founders experience discrimination or not, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is not significantly higher than other VC's which pg hints at due to Jessica.
saeranv 3y ago
Careful, this seems to be falling for the prosecutor's fallacy where the probabilities aren't normalized to account for base rates of the hypothesis occuring. So in this case, the percent of successful valuations that have a female founders will likely be extremely low simply because the gender ratio is disproportionaly male, and being successful is extremely rare. For example, let's say probability of being successful is due to random chance, and effects both genders equally. Then ratio of successful women to successful men would just reflect the ratio of women to men. Now imagine if the actual valuation of successful companies is exponentially weighted, so that the top 1 or 2 companies make up the bulk of the total valuation. Again, these two companies are more likely to be founded by men given the base gender rate, and now the percent of valuation attributed to men would completely dominate the valuation percent. To get the real effectiveness of female founders, we need to account for the low probability of success and low probability of being female. I think both can be achieved with Bayes theorem: p($_high|f) = p($_high) p(f|$_high) / Sum_i[p($_i) p(f|$_i)] p($_high|m) = p($_high) p(m|$_high) / Sum_i[p($_i) p(m|$_i)] The first equation gets the number of founders who are female and successful, and then divide that by the number of female founders in total, and the second one does the same for males. That should give you a apples to apples comparison. Note: p($_i) represents a sequence of valuation probabilities subdivided to reflect low valuation, moderate valuation etc. I think this should account for the exponential distribution of valuation, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  I commented the same thing in another thread. I am not arguing the base rate or whether female founders experience discrimination, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is definitely not higher than other VC's which pg hints at due to Jessica. In fact I think other VCs have something in the range of 20% IIRC(would not mind to be corrected though).
  - saeranv 3y ago
    Okay fair enough, but why look at female founders in terms total valuation percent, then? I think my point about the distortion from the (likely) exponential distribution of total valuation still stands, although in this case with regards to comparison between VCs. Isn't it straightforward to just look at percent of female founders?
seizethecheese 3y ago
without citing the difference in number of female founded companies, how is the <10% number relevant?

InitialLastName 3y ago

I see: Combined Valuation (all companies): $600B Combined Valuation (Companies with women founders): $45B Still unbalanced, but closer to 15:1 as opposed to 49:1. That's also a comparisons that is totally useless without the base rate. If half the companies had female founders, it might be valid to say "why are the companies with women raising at a lower rate" but I'd be willing to bet that the application pool is heavily skewed male, and thus that the accepted pools are also heavily skewed male. It wouldn't shock me if that skew were on the order of 50:1. It also wouldn't shock me if it were trending in a more balanced direction; that would lead to a fundraising bias towards older companies that have raised more money over time and are more likely to have only men as founders.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago
I said 10% valuation for companies with at least 1 female founder compared to no female founder. And in that list, I could see something like 5:1 for company with at least female founder to company with all female founder. That is how I arrived with all female:all male ratio of 2% if we ignore mixed gender founder companies. Also I am not arguing whether female founders experience discrimination or not, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is not significantly higher than other VC's which pg hints at due to Jessica.

saeranv 3y ago

Careful, this seems to be falling for the prosecutor's fallacy where the probabilities aren't normalized to account for base rates of the hypothesis occuring. So in this case, the percent of successful valuations that have a female founders will likely be extremely low simply because the gender ratio is disproportionaly male, and being successful is extremely rare. For example, let's say probability of being successful is due to random chance, and effects both genders equally. Then ratio of successful women to successful men would just reflect the ratio of women to men. Now imagine if the actual valuation of successful companies is exponentially weighted, so that the top 1 or 2 companies make up the bulk of the total valuation. Again, these two companies are more likely to be founded by men given the base gender rate, and now the percent of valuation attributed to men would completely dominate the valuation percent. To get the real effectiveness of female founders, we need to account for the low probability of success and low probability of being female. I think both can be achieved with Bayes theorem: p($_high|f) = p($_high) p(f|$_high) / Sum_i[p($_i) p(f|$_i)] p($_high|m) = p($_high) p(m|$_high) / Sum_i[p($_i) p(m|$_i)] The first equation gets the number of founders who are female and successful, and then divide that by the number of female founders in total, and the second one does the same for males. That should give you a apples to apples comparison. Note: p($_i) represents a sequence of valuation probabilities subdivided to reflect low valuation, moderate valuation etc. I think this should account for the exponential distribution of valuation, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago
I commented the same thing in another thread. I am not arguing the base rate or whether female founders experience discrimination, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is definitely not higher than other VC's which pg hints at due to Jessica. In fact I think other VCs have something in the range of 20% IIRC(would not mind to be corrected though).
- saeranv 3y ago
  Okay fair enough, but why look at female founders in terms total valuation percent, then? I think my point about the distortion from the (likely) exponential distribution of total valuation still stands, although in this case with regards to comparison between VCs. Isn't it straightforward to just look at percent of female founders?

seizethecheese 3y ago

without citing the difference in number of female founded companies, how is the <10% number relevant?