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Did she have a hard time finding investors because it was a hardware business, or because she was a woman? Did she ultimately get investment because she was a
by doctorpangloss 13y ago
Did she have a hard time finding investors because it was a hardware business, or because she was a woman?
Did she ultimately get investment because she was a woman, in spite of the hardware business?
According to a friend's college thesis, there are lots of concrete reasons VCs don't invest in women.[0] In summary, VCs don't take a girl very seriously. The thesis makes the case though that there's real opportunity for women founders, not the least because they're so undervalued for reasons under than business fundamentals.
So maybe Meredith got investment precisely because she was a woman. The collection of investors is curious. According to CrunchBase, Marissa Mayer invested in 8 companies over the last 2 years (+Square in 2009), 7 of which have women founders or co-founders. Lady Gaga's manager, who I thought was not a professional investor, in fact makes a lot of investments. According to CrunchBase, 4 of 16 of his investments have women founders or co-founders. By comparison, VentureSource shows about 1 in 14 startups with funding have women founders or co-founders in 2010—more details in Alisha's paper.
Still, it would be wrong to accuse of sexism the "hundreds" of the investors who declined her project. She's an astrobiologist who wants to run a mass-manufacturing business. I'm not a venture capitalist, but I can see aversion to hardware manufacturing risk generally being the biggest factor here.
[0] http://alisharamos.com/women-vc-funding/AlishaRamos_Thesis.pdf http://alisharamos.com/women-vc-funding/AlishaRamos_Thesis.p...
- zacharycohn 13y agoLady Gaga's manager is very active in the startup/tech community and is a known angel investor.
- doctorpangloss 13y agoCorrected, I didn't notice his name in the article. Still, he invests in a disproportionately high number of women-founded/co-founded companies, 4/16 as opposed to an average of 1/14 (by 2010 figures). See edits.
- foobarqux 13y agoAny hits?
- jfb 13y ago"Still, it would be wrong to accuse of sexism the "hundreds" of the investors who declined her project. She's an astrobiologist who wants to run a mass-manufacturing business. I'm not a venture capitalist, but I can see aversion to hardware manufacturing risk generally being the biggest factor here." As physics as generally understood means this is 99% likely to be nonsense, another reasonable application of Ockham's Razor would be that the VCs passed because it's snake-oil.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vacri 13y agoI've always found it odd that people talking about sexism use 'woman' like it's an adjective. Common use has made it one, but it used to be just a noun. Anyway, my point is that we don't say "man founders" or "man drivers" or "men professionals".
- ihavedna 13y agoIt is because woman are considered to be the adjunct, not the norm, not the average, not the expected or assumed. Its even obvious in the word itself - a prefix on the word "man", which can and is often used in place of "person" or "human", and will describe a person who is more than likely assumed to be of the masculine persuasion. A+ on not putting "Woman" in the headline for the article, though!
- Filligree 13y agoAppearances to the contrary, the word "woman" is not actually based off "man", or indeed very related.
- phaemon 13y agoOf course it is. wifman = female human werman = male human man = human "wifman" became "woman" but the "man" is literally from "man" (meaning human). I'm not sure how much more related you can get.
- iopq 13y agoYes, it is. It's wif-man, so a "person who is a wife" as opposed to an unmarried girl. That's why women is pronounced [wimen], because that's the original etymology.
- eCa 13y agoMe too. I've always thought male/female is a better fit (English not being my first language).
- 13y ago