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The Power of Attraction: How Beauty Influences Startup Investments
- pajeets 2y agoRace is a big factor whether folks on HN/YC wants to admit it or not.
- bofadeez 2y agoYou mean affirmative action and DEI based discrimination?
- outlore 2y agoi think they mean elizabeth holmes and adam neumann more seriously, is it even possible to have discussions on race without devolving into talking points?
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoWhats sad us we instantly devolve to "talking points" that we didn't even think of ourselves. Zero original thought just repeating what some pundit said your opinion should be on the matter.
- hector71 2y ago[dead]
- bofadeez 2y agoWhich pundits are you talking about? Whether that's true or false has no bearing on the truth value of the discussion. You're not adding anything except emotional expressions about how you personally feel. That's not relevant to whether DEI fundamentally discriminates on the basis of race or not.
- bofadeez 2y agoThere's no information or content in your reply.
- neilv 2y ago> "It is now up to the venture capital scene to become aware of this challenge and take appropriate measures to create a fairer and more balanced investment environment." Won't the VCs' thinking be that the same cortisol-boosting effects on them will also apply to other people with whom the founders interact, increasing likelihood of startup success?
- mgaunard 2y agoDepends on the target market. If they need to sell to other men, that's fine, but if they need to sell to other women (which is actually quite likely), then not so much.
- throwaway22032 2y agoHeterosexual women definitely respond to the physical attractiveness of other women. So do men on men. All else being equal I'd definitely prefer to work with a more attractive coworker regardless of sex.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoHeterosexual women tend to be jealous of other attractive women, and view them negatively as a result. The culture of competition between women is fierce in a way that men typically don't get.
- throwaway22032 2y agoAgree with this; I forgot to include in my post that the directionality isn't necessarily guaranteed!
- broken-kebab 2y agoAny sources on this? Personally as a man I don't have a definition of male attractiveness. And it seems even many women don't have it being more attracted by behavior. And women's reaction to women coworkers' beauty is let's say very much non-linear if to judge by my experience
- amluto 2y agoThat link has 100% broken scrolling on my device. The actual journal link works better: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063241249699 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063241249699
- mertbio 2y agoTry disabling the content blockers.
- mgaunard 2y agoIt's already well-known that attractive women also do well at sales. This is the same thing.
- carabiner 2y agoAnd recruiting.
- tetrisgm 2y agoI mean it's human nature. Much like how most CEOs of Fortune 500s are over 6ft tall (https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2d8jwd/til_that_58_of_ceos_of_fortune_500_companies_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2d8jwd/til_t...), youre not going to correct for this. If the decider doesnt have many data points, they're going to find points to support their hunch. This person works out super hard, the did a marathon, super good at chess, being hot will open some doors, anything goes. The reality is most of the deals are made through friendly intros, and vet you for a certain lingo and overall fitness to be fundable. Good luck correcting this culture. Are you going to evaluate the deals you missed, and go "eh to be fair the guy was a slob and came from a no name school, and we under estimated grit / timing"?. It's not like the data that shows youre bad at data driven evaluation is going to sway someone who isn't data minded.
- pajeets 2y agoand white mostly and almost never East Asian
- tetrisgm 2y agoThere is a long list of biases at play for sure. But I think beyond ideas like structural racism and such, we can look at just how decision making is done and see this isnt solvable
- pajeets 2y agoso why do they demand loyalty from East-Asian Americans? you discriminate against them and expect them to die for your country how can any individual remain loyal to a country that hates them and constantly sabotages and oppresses them using other groups?
- g8oz 2y agoThis is quite a MRAZN take.
- 2y ago
- trhway 2y agoIf you know that attractive founders will do better down the road at other rounds/sales/etc, then it is logical to give preference to and invest earlier in such founders. Blame the game, at least in the large part.
- bofadeez 2y agoWhy do we need a study to explain common sense to adults?
- llamaimperative 2y agoBecause common sense is so often wrong, duh. Disproving people's intuitions is literally 100% of the value prop of science as a whole. Once we stop being surprised by results, we can stop doing science.
- bofadeez 2y agoIn this case, common sense is only verified. Whose intuition has been disproved? A monkey could literally confirm this idea. So it fails at the very value proposition you're offering. It's at very least an unremarkable study, right?
- llamaimperative 2y agoThat’s a good point, I suppose the other way we could do science is by looking into the time machine at the future where the experiments have already been done and we just read the results from the future and use that to decide which experiments to actually conduct based on the results they’ll eventually produce.
- bofadeez 2y agoI guess this is useful for individuals who suffer from extreme autism and have trouble understanding social interactions. Which to be fair is a huge percentage of HN user base.
- llamaimperative 2y agoNobody is saying the results are shocking. They’re saying that it’s still worth doing experiments to check things that “seem obvious” because we have been incredibly, dangerously wrong about things that “seem obvious” millions of times before. Perhaps you could help everyone out by writing down what’s obvious to you so we know not to try to verify them by, you know, actual truth discovery. Bofadeez’ intuitive vibes are totally sufficient henceforth.
- zh3 2y agoWhat's actually needed by investors is knowing whether this is correct in economic terms, i.e. whether it predicts who will ultimately be IPO'd successfully (make money for VC's and friends then bombs) or whether the company ultimately goes on to be be a win for pension funds and (pushing it to the next level) is ultimately better for the planet and those who live on it.
- ibash 2y agoIt’s more nuanced than that. A lot of VCs aren’t incentivized to see their portfolio company ipo. They are incentivized to see their portfolio company get a higher valuation and raise more. So it would seem that attractiveness leading to a higher chance of fundraising is aligned with their interest.
- Jun8 2y ago“The participants were randomly shown a video pitch of the same startup idea, but with some presented by a more attractive actress and others by a less attractive one.” What objective measure of female beauty have they used? I thought it was a basic axiom of progressive thought that no such thing exists.
- bofadeez 2y agoFacial symmetry and body proportions that would indicate health and suitability for reproduction.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThey chose actresses based on the researchers perception of their relative attractiveness but also had the men who participated rate the attractiveness of the person in the pitch as the final question, so there’s a measure of the responder’s perception of attractiveness.
- layer8 2y agoYou don’t need objective measures if you also ask the participants to rate the presenter’s attractiveness. However, Hollywood wouldn’t be what it is if subjective measures of beauty were completely random.
- throwaway22032 2y agoIt feels like this sort of thing is heavily ideological. A classic "nerd world vs. jock world" thing. But the reality is somewhere in the middle. Basically, if you take the axiom that physical appearance and genetic qualities should not matter at all, then we need to minimise its' influence. But you could also easily make the argument that beauty is a proxy for a lot of things that we _do_ want to maximise. It makes sense to reward those that are beautiful, fertile, strong, etc. Just not above all else. You wouldn't pick a romantic partner, or a friend, or a colleague _solely_ on those qualities, but to not incorporate them at all seems odd. I mean, on a basic level, you have to be able to get on with your colleagues. A lot of people would find it difficult to get on with someone who's ugly, doesn't shower, has no social skills, etc, even if their code is great and their stock picks too. It's not arbitrary.
- 3np 2y ago> It makes sense to reward those that are beautiful, fertile, strong, etc. In a business context: Why?
- throwaway22032 2y agoBecause a business context is not seperate from the personal context. If it were, then sales wouldn't exist.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cbanek 2y agoSame is true for interviews. As a woman who isn't super attractive, nor do I really try to be, some interviewers just have a weird expression when they meet me, and I know it's over from there. Just had this happen last week interviewing for a job where I've done PRs on the tools they were using and have been using the tools they were using for years. By the end of the interview he said he enjoyed talking with me but they won't be moving forward. He said I would struggle in the job due to technology but did not ask any technical questions. It is what it is I guess. But I also wouldn't want to work for such shallow people either. Note, the person was found on the HN who's hiring, so it's not just random people but also what I'd consider more thoughtful people who should know better as well.
- neilv 2y agoFWIW, it's not just you; that doesn't make it OK, but at least you're not alone. The tech industry has a lot of unaccountable poor behavior, in interviews, and in general. I don't know how we can solve it. For one reason, the bread&butter of some of our most desirable employers is underhanded exploitation, so we can't expect the environment to be a paragon of decency. For another reason, a lot of the other employers are money-losing investment scams, and a lot of what they do, at various levels, is theatre, not having to optimize collaboration towards successful business. To the extent that companies care about poor behavior, AFAICT, at established companies, it's usually about "compliance" appearances, suppressing legal liabiltiies, and sometimes about morale. That a person can walk into an interview and sense insta-disapproval from the interviewer, before it's even started (or poor behavior during) usually isn't a high priority, since there will be more candidates. It's not even a morale problem, since the person isn't hired. (For example, to hear one former Google hiring expert's talk, that company even knows they have problems like this. Yet the snooty frat rituals, with pretense of relevance and objectivity, and unchecked poor individual behavior and biases you'd expect to accompany that, remain. And that's a relatively nice company.) Thankfully, there's a lot of people who recognize the BS. But even they have constant learning and improvement to do. And it's harder when there's so much bad examples around and thriving. And there's constant new graduates, who are still assuming they're supposed to aspire to and emulate the hotbeds of bad behavior. All I can think of here is "act locally", try to avoid the jerks, and try to do better in our small circles of influence. Other ideas, other than fleeing whatever field is attracting the big money weasels that decade?
- clbrmbr 2y agoDefinitely something investors should be aware of so that they can further optimize their decision making. However, scores of physical attractiveness are going to be strongly influenced by the character & charisma of the speaker. And I think it’s undeniable that a highly charismatic and compelling speaker should have a better chance of success in leadership, public relations, and sales. I would prefer to see independent readings of attractiveness based on photographs alone, so that the attractiveness score is purely visual. Still visual attractiveness may count for something in later success but I would agree with the authors that in an ideal world, we’d be blind to someone’s physical characteristics because that is something you’re born with.
- atleastoptimal 2y agoAlso true for male founders. Perusing many of the companies in any YC batch, the founders, especially the nontechnical ones, appear to be far more attractive than average. It's a mixture of beauty bias (even the smart YC evaluators are not immune), the fact that more attractive people are more willing to take risks because they have a higher chance of ending up on their feet in the event of failure, and the eugenic "smart thus rich/high status dad/mom can marry hotter spouse" effect compounding over generations. Often YC founders come from privilege and physical appearance is certainly a correlate.
- tennisflyi 2y agoCursory glance at any MAANG recruiters on LinkedIn will tell you that
- sandworm101 2y agoSo... hire the most attractive pitch people possible? The goal of any startup is to survive. It's get the investment dollars or close up shop. The practical outcome of this article is for startups to recognize the effect and maximize it to their benefit. Onus is on the investors to stop acting like pigs. They should recognize when they are being played. Just look at those who backed Holmes/Theranos, largely older men like Murdoch, Ellison, and Kissinger. They should have spent more time reading and less time listening to pitch people.
- olalonde 2y agoIsn't that an advantage rather than a disadvantage for female startup entrepreneurs?