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What I've Learned From Female Founders So Far
- JTon 13y agoUnrelated to article: I'm not sure how this post made it to the front page so fast. It's been up for ~ 5 mins and it's already #7 on my list with 7 pts. Did you people who upvoted even read the article? Doesn't look like it.
- minimaxir 13y agoThe domain where the article was posted is very important. It's a good indicator of article quality.
- jarek 13y agoRephrased: people upvote because of who said it, not what was said
- Crito 13y agoAfter doing some experimentation with Bayesian classification of HN articles (for selecting articles that interest me) I've actually found that titles, rather than URLs, domains, or even article text, is one of the best indications of how good an article (and the accompanying discussion) will be. (This is one of the reasons that I hate the moderators reverting article titles to less descriptive ones.)
- saraid216 13y agoShare that somewhere?
- Crito 13y agoI haven't, but I can if you're interested. "Best results" in this case is pretty subjective so I didn't perform any rigorous experiments about the relative quality of each method, that was just a general observation that I had. The program itself is just a quick HN scrapper combined with a naive bayes classifier which periodically runs and sends selected article titles to an IRC channel.
- minimaxir 13y agoIt's a little bit of both submission title and domain. In this particular case, the title contained an "I": when people looked who the "I" was, they immediately upvoted.
- peterjmag 13y agoGuilty as charged. I sometimes use upvoting as a means of simply marking a story for later, based on an interesting title or a familiar author. Unlike Reddit, HN doesn't distinguish between a vote for quality and a "save" action (as evidenced by the "saved stories" link in your profile).
- intortus 13y agoIt's telling of the environment we're in that the author has to make such a heavy disclaimer about not doing things for diversity's sake. What would be so bad about admitting one cares about diversity? I think there's room in business to pursue one's values.
- sama 13y agoI said "we're not doing this for diversity's sake alone." It'd be terribly unfair to the super qualified people we work with to imply that we were working with them just because we wanted diversity.
- intortus 13y agoThat's a good point, that it is about diversity but that it's only part of the entire picture. I think people will complain about fairness even when they're not affected, because the tech community tends to have a strong knee-jerk reaction to this sort of thing. But it would be foolish to not consider diversity as one of many metrics to gauge how effectively one is avoiding costly biases.
- insuffi 13y agoI'd wager he said that because diversity for the sake of diversity would probably damage the micro climate and would be quite difficult to deal with politically(among participants and employees). The entire campaign is centered around encouraging women to apply more BECAUSE they can be good founders, not because they are women, and men feel bad for not including them. EDIT: ahh sama beat me to it.
- paulbaumgart 13y agoBecause that would be damaging to female-founded startups on demo day, and probably unfairly so.
- tod222 13y agoBecause it's a canard that diversity can only be achieved by compromising on the quality of applicants accepted. Competence knows no race, color, creed, gender, or nationality. It may be found in anyone. I'm greedy too, and want to receive the benefit of competent people of all kinds who are allowed to flourish and succeed. Here's Sam: > We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women. and > Again, we don't do this for the sake of diversity. We do it because we want to get the best people, whatever they're like.
- johnpt 13y agoI think it's great for YC to improve and help women but I hope YC doesn't start accepting female funded companies just for the sake of having more female founders instead on looking at the quality of the startups.
- sama 13y agoRead the article carefully; we won't. We'll accept female-founded companies because some of them will be extremely successful. Everyone is subject to the same bar (this is addressed in the middle of the post).
- johnpt 13y agoI've read it and I believe a lot in you but I'm afraid external pressures might make you do it
- rdl 13y agoHow can YC be pressured? They sure don't have an LP problem. In terms of hiring for YC itself, it's already quite diverse. The only thing YC really needs to care about is 1) getting the best possible startups to apply and then 2) for those companies to be successful. #2 is pretty much immune to pressure-on-YC; YC has no control of YC startups, with only 2-10% common equity. #1 is explicitly the thing they are working on, so it seems unlikely "we will pressure you to accept more female founders if you don't accept more female founders by convincing female founders not to apply" would be a realistic threat.
- intortus 13y agoWhat makes you think that's going to happen? Why aren't you just as concerned about the opposite bias? I think time will tell.
- srpablo 13y agoHe mentions -multiple times- in the article that they wish to avoid this. I don't know what could have prompted you to write this comment if you read it, he says it more than once...
- sayemm 13y agoGood reads on Rose Blumkin, one of the most hardcore founders Warren Buffet has ever bet on: - http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin-nebraska-furniture-mart.htm http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin-nebraska-furnitur... - http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-retail-queen-dies-at-104.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-reta...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoAnd we're working on something to improve the quality of Hacker News comments. Wait, is this implying that we're actually getting an upstream change in the HN codebase for the first time in $amount_of_time_I_am_not_aware_of_exactly? Or perhaps some sort of cultural shift, like increased moderation and less tolerance for certain views? I can't see the latter going very well, but it's too early to tell anything. Otherwise this is good news. However, when I read this... Many emails pointed out that our website shows nearly all men; we'll fix that. I was reminded of the following: http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/uwmadison.asp http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/uwmadison.asp. Hopefully this won't just be a clumsy doctoring for PR purposes.
- sama 13y agosoftware!
- wyager 13y agoWhy not just fund the best startups regardless of whom their founder is?
- srpablo 13y agoThey are committed to this, he says so multiple times. Much of the piece is him acknowledging that there are systematic barriers in place that are discouraging many of the pool of "potentially best founders" from applying, and they'd like to lower them so more people, from many different backgrounds, apply. Re-read the bit on "greedy in the good kind of way."
- wyager 13y ago>Re-read the bit on "greedy in the good kind of way." Yeah, that bit was clearly bullshit. The assertion is "Some percent of good startups are run by women" => "we want more startups run by women [to increase the number of good startups, because we will earn more]" This line of reasoning is clearly ridiculous. Only if A) startups run by women had a higher chance of success and B) the VCs had no better way of judging startup merit than looking at probabilities tied to the gender of the founder would it make sense to explicitly recruit more women for the sake of increasing profits. It is immediately clear that the only way to get more good startups is to A) recruit more people in general (not just people of some biological characteristic) and/or B) have better selection metrics.
- jbooth 13y agoIt's not bullshit, you just misunderstood the line of reasoning. It goes like: Assumption: There is a population of women out there who would be really capable of running a successful technology startup Fact: Not many women do, whether this is because of VC bias, or women's own biases from social conditioning or whatever Opportunity: encourage more women to start companies that we fund, we will have a competitive advantage by being among the first to mine this under-utilized resource while other VCs compete for the best male-run startups
- 13y ago
- tod222 13y ago> And we're working on something to improve the quality of Hacker News comments. Excellent. Can't wait to see what it is.
- coderdude 13y agoSeems like a sentence that has nothing to do with the paragraph it appears in.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dampflames 13y agoI think it wasn't referring to comments in general, but rather to the ones on articles about women in tech/startups that are negative in intent.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoWhat do you mean by "negative in intent"? Can you provide examples of comments of that nature?
- coderdude 13y agoDon't the downvotes already handle that? I wouldn't touch that topic with a 10-foot pole at this point.
- waterlesscloud 13y agoI'm curious about that one. There's a very tricky balance to work there, with the risk being that any change along these lines could exacerbate an already strong tendency towards groupthink in the comments.
- minimaxir 13y agoFor reference, here's a chart I made a few months ago of female and male YC founders accepted into Y Combinator by year: http://i.imgur.com/MCLqUm3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/MCLqUm3.jpg (from https://medium.com/p/2613f58e5082 https://medium.com/p/2613f58e5082 ) EDIT: The percentages in chart are # female founders accepted into YC / # founders accepted into YC. The 24% statistic in the article is number of startups with at least 1 female founder, so the chart may be biased lower than that statistic.
- hydralist 13y agois sam altman over rated?
- af3 13y agorequired female post.
- cykho 13y agoOne big learning from my time @msft was that the gender gap in STEM really starts in middle school. Everything else (YC included) is largely downstream. If you want to help get involved at the grade school level. For those who are interested here's one of the better resources they produced: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/focus/womenincomputing/womenintechbrochure.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/focus/wome...
- boyaka 13y agoSounds like puberty. Maybe it STEMs all the way down to genetics. Evolution. Can't we just accept that females and males have evolved differently?
- MartinCron 13y agoThe problem with the evolution/genetics argument is that people can use it as an excuse for deplorable behavior. Genetics isn't destiny. We're more sophisticated than that.
- boyaka 13y agoYes. Both Men and Women. And I think one gender is having a harder time understanding our differences and how we can suppress our natural urges and grow away from them.
- jmduke 13y agoWe want to fund more women because it's the right thing to do, but we're not doing this for diversity's sake alone. We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women. This is a huge thing that people seem to ignore when arguing "against diversity" (I put that in quotes because I don't think anyone actually argues against diversity -- they couch it in terms of meritocracy and egalitarianism, saying that the best people should succeed regardless of race and gender, it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.) I think Sam does a great job of presenting this as a thing of 'greed' -- or, more charitably, economic rationality. In my mind, there are only two real possibilities (or, perhaps more realistically, two ends of a spectrum): 1. The VC ecosystem, as it stands, is almost completely unbiased and fair-minded with regards to gender and race. The massive disparities in terms of funding and founder backgrounds reflect that. 2. The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil; in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of founders, startups, and opportunities.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- colmvp 13y ago"...it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male." So then why not also include some initiatives to encourage more Asian, Hispanic, and Black men?
- malanj 13y agoPerhaps because woman are the fastest "big" gain they can do? There are lots of woman in the world (far more than any minority group), yet very few doing startups. It's the biggest market inefficiency. edit: You could also argue that the diversity in thinking and approach you'll get from woman could be very high. So perhaps they'll be more likely to start new kinds of companies in untapped markets.
- paulbaumgart 13y agoThanks for bringing reason and sanity to such a politically-charged issue. The insults on Twitter when you asked for advice were pretty depressing even to a bystander, but it looks like you found the signal in the noise :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rdl 13y agoIt would be great for YC's outreach efforts to make a difference in getting more great female founders to apply. There are other groups where outreach could help get some quality underrepresented founders too, which might help with the big ambitious science RFS: going after mid-career people in the sciences and engineering a few years in advance of founding a startup and seeding them with the idea of doing so. I know NSF has some outreach efforts like that, but it would be great for YC if YC's name were known by PIs thinking of going commercial.
- frankdenbow 13y agoAgreed. There are many other underrepresented groups that can add much needed perspective on new startups that should also be part of the conversation.
- square1 13y agoShouldn't a desirable attribute from a founder be that they seek out whatever is necessary for survival? To me, regardless of gender, YC would only want those that were proactive and dedicated to join a YC batch. It seems pointless to encourage specific demographics that would not apply, to do so.
- malanj 13y agoIt seems pointless to encourage specific demographics that would not apply, to do so. I think you're missing the point that there could be reasons that females (or any demographic other than white American males) do not apply to YC that are not correlated with building great companies. For example it is plausible that woman feel alienated by the tech startup scene and avoid applying to accelerators. White males born might not have that feeling. So effectively their "bar" is lower. If YC is trying to address that it seems like a smart business move on their part. They are reducing irrationality in the system.
- amputect 13y ago"whatever is necessary for survival" might include not wasting a ton of time applying to a startup incubator with a demonstrated track-record of not funding women or minorities or southpaws or whatever. Doing -anything- to change that perception could tip the effort/reward analysis in favor of more of $MINORITY applying.
- onmydesk 13y ago"we don't do this for the sake of diversity. We do it because we want to get the best people, whatever they're like." But we would prefer women? What the hell is up with YC and positive discrimination?
- siphor 13y agoI was kind of disappointed by this article, I was expecting some information about things that women stereotypically do better than men in regards to starting a company. (If you've found something like this I'd be really interested to hear it!) Some traits that men, stereotypically, can learn from (or even vice versa). Instead it's just outreach drivel, (which is not what the title implies)
- Mz 13y agoAnother message was that we should do more to make women feel welcome. As we do more events, we'll continue to reach out to women. This sort of thing really, seriously annoys me. HN is a funnel for applying to YC. You do not need to "reach out to women." You need to stop shutting out the ones who are ALREADY here and trying like hell to participate in spite of frequently being stonewalled, being unable to get anyone to hold a private conversation with them, etc ad nauseum. In some sense, I will probably rant a bit more about this on my personal blog today because I was already steaming mad about this before I logged in to HN to read this article showing how badly the people at the top are simply blind.
- johnbm 13y ago> being unable to get anyone to hold a private conversation with them Are you really surprised, right after that "Glass wall" story was posted here about one woman's terrible tragedy of having to deal with a male executive who briefly talked to her in an office stairwell? Convincing herself the entire office was about to think they were having an affair? And you're surprised men are less eager to approach women than men in tech?
- Mz 13y agoAre you merely being funny/sarcastic/something else I can't quite parse? Or is it lost on you that I wrote that piece? FYI: I wrote some follow-up yesterday explaining more of the context: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-personal-gray-zone.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-personal-... I had my reasons for my conclusion. I do not believe they were an overreaction at all.
- jeremyt 13y agoI also think you're overreacting, honestly. I don't think I've ever in my professional career observed someone being feverish and flushed and assume that it had something to do with sexual tension. Men just aren't that observant. More likely, I would assume you were either sick or anxious because of some work-related conversation. Neither of which is a reason to be concerned vis-à-vis office politics. Also, can I offer a suggestion to your problem? Couldn't you make up a little white lie and tell your coworkers that you had a very minor medical condition that resulted in being feverish and flushed often but that there were no other serious effects? No need to name anything, but that should take care of your worry about getting an email every time you sneeze and also deal with your concern about constantly having your obvious symptoms be misunderstood.
- dalek2point3 13y agoa propos: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/study-says-attractive-men-fare-best-in-gaining-venture-capital.html http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/study-says-attractive-men... , in a controlled experiment the researchers conducted, identical business-plan videos were narrated by either male or female voices; respondents chose the plans presented by males 68 percent of the time.
- Consultant32452 13y agoDid I miss something? The only thing he states he's actually learned from female founders so far is that women and men express confidence differently. I was hoping for more substance.
- RyanZAG 13y agoHe literately can't say anything of substance on a topic like this or else his words will show up all over the news as an attack by YC on some party or other.
- Consultant32452 13y agoHe didn't even talk about how men and women express confidence differently. IMO the article was a waste.
- atom-morgan 13y agoMen tend to exaggerate their skills. Women understate theirs. See: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/19/women-hiring-math-jobs/ http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/19/women-hiring-ma...
- loladesoto 13y agomy observation is that we also apologize more, speak up less, and negotiate less effectively (if at all). i teach 8 year-old girls how to code in my free time and one of the biggest challenges to their success is re-wiring them to believe in themselves, in their critical-thinking skills, in their ability to solve problems. it seems they don't need a few mentor-role models: they need a chorus of people encouraging them and reminding them of their innate abilities. which leads me to believe—i can only extrapolate—that this must be what many boys (and men) experience on a quotidien basis. i will never know, but i can help create that for myself and other women, particularly the wee ones. :>
- 001sky 13y agoYour comment implies this is a PR piece?
- blahbl4hblahtoo 13y agoI Must be invisible...no one ever responds to my posts any more...I'm typing with my hands...HHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNNDDDDDDSSSSSSSS...CAN YOU SEE ME? HELLO?
- blahbl4hblahtoo 13y agoAm I visible to other users?
- larrys 13y ago"We funded a guy once who looked like Mark but ended up doing badly, and when PG was asked by a reporter how to fool him, he said that apparently this was one way. His real point was that looking like Zuckerberg means nothing--that you can look remarkably like him and still fail miserably. " To me the entire "look like Zuck" is more than the physical look. It's the harvard attendance, of a certain age, and having certain interests and mannerisms as well as background. Truth is if you go to an Ivy or top school and view the student body you will see a certain look and feel. Doesn't mean that people with the same look don't attend a state school or community college, doesn't mean there aren't exceptions at the Ivy, but the look and feel is definitely there. Perhaps they end up looking that way after the first week as they get assimilated. There is no doubt that people respond to visual cues and assign halo to them rightly or wrongly. Or stereotypes whatever you want to call it. Go ahead in and try to pitch YC looking like a guy who runs a wholesale company and is 58 from the lower east side in NYC and doesn't look the part. It would almost certainly be, for lack of a super clear winning idea, an uphill battle.
- matryoshka 13y agoAs a female founder I hope these types of thoughts are promoted but the resulting actions are not obvious. I wouldn't want to be a female founder accepted into ycombinator and then have myself or others wonder if I am part of some kind of quota. I really want my acceptance to be based on my merits.
- bobzimuta 13y agoYou can bet money that if I want into YC my next startup will have a female founder. I'd be stupid not to.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago>I wouldn't want to be a female founder accepted into ycombinator and then have myself or others wonder if I am part of some kind of quota I'm far removed from YC and the startup scene, but as an exceptionally intelligent black man I do have experience with scenarios that might lead one to feel that way. My advice is simply: don't feel that way. Be completely confident in yourself and abilities and ignore what others might be thinking. YC should not be seen as validation in any way, but as a stepping stone for your personal goals. In that light, the exact reasons you were funded are of no concern to your future success. Besides, I'm sure many a founder has been accepted for superficial reasons (being from the right school, having the right look, etc). If certain of your traits happen to match the current funding trends then so be it; consider it a stroke of luck and nothing else. I guarantee you the next white kid from Stanford that gets funded will not be sitting around wondering if he really belongs there.
- deanpeterson 13y agoI like to look at it this way. Y-Combinator is only getting bigger because startups are the future. Accepting more women does not mean accepting less men. Wealth and opportunity are not finite. The faster Y-Combinator can grow the more likely it is I might get in (I am also greedy in a good way). Bringing in more talented women can make Y-Combinator a more dominant force; I say great.
- mcphilip 13y agoThis topic is a landmine but I applaud YC for being willing to tackle it anyway. There's almost nothing that can be said on the topic without upsetting a large number of people. Before switching to CS, I spent a couple years in nursing school. Upon switching to CS, my dad told me "good, I didn't want a son that wiped asses for a living". I don't claim my experience had any equivalency to what females in tech go through, but I can attest firsthand that gender biases in choice of profession can be really hard to overcome even in the minds of the people you love.
- 001sky 13y agoThis seems to confuse social stigma and gender bias. Garbage (Bin) men are overwhelmingly male, so too are plumbers, and pest control, sewer-workers and the like. A comment like "good, I didn't want a son that wiped [shit] for a living" would apply to any of these fields, it seems without reference to gender. Quite the opposite, as dealing with such filth actually is something women quite avoid.
- mcphilip 13y agoFair enough, that specific statement could indicate a social stigma unrelated to gender. It was, however, common to encounter plenty of skepticism that nursing was a proper profession for a male.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- camelite 13y agoA closer "male" analog to nurses is cops.
- MartinCron 13y agoThere is at least some biological reasoning behind why sanitation workers are overwhelmingly male, it's a field where physical upper-body strength actually matters.
- 13y ago
- chacham15 13y agoWhile I believe in all of YC's efforts to integrate women, I feel like one of the hurdles that they are ignoring is convincing the men. What do I mean by this? I mean that statements like "We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way," I believe in 100%, but not because I have some facts to back it up. YC, on the other hand, should have numbers and facts to back this up and I think it would make their statements that much stronger. Now, you might ask, why is this important if the goal is to attract more women to startups? The answer is that you want the women who do come to be playing on an even playing field: the VC's in the industry are still largely dominated by men. If you can convince them with numbers that they are doing the right thing by not having a bias against women, the women who try to raise money will do it more successfully and then encourage more women to try.
- rdl 13y agoThe best way to convince people is through examples (the total number of companies YC has funded is small enough that a few females who are highly successful would be statistically significant). None are at the AirBnB/Dropbox/Stripe/Heroku/Reddit/Parse/Polvi stage yet, but everyone in YC knows of a few female YC participants who seem to be on the same trajectory.
- graycat 13y agoBe very careful what you wish for; you might get it. I've seen far too many women working very hard, initially quite successfully, to be "more like men" but too soon encounter agonies of the damned, failure, and even death. Be careful. Be very careful. Suspect: Mother Nature long ago filtered out from the tree any women so easily distracted from being strong limbs on the tree. Motherhood is not inferior; the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world; good parenting is the crucial, most rewarding, and most important job in the world; what men do at work is not superior to what women, and essentially only women, can do with motherhood; everyone on HN had a mother who did a lot of important, hard work quite different from success in the world of work; what men do at work is to bring home money for what is really important, motherhood, family, home, etc. For a woman to concentrate on a startup is to neglect motherhood and, thus, to confuse means and ends. Darwin will have the last word here: Currently in Western Civilization, the average number of children born to one women is less than 2.1 which means Western Civilization is voluntarily going extinct. In Finland the average is 1.5 which means that in 10 generations about 30 Finns will become 1. Finland did well fighting off the Swedes, Russians, and Germans but now is losing out to 'new' ideas on what women should do. Some science is quite clear: Starting in the crib, the girls pay attention to people and the boys, to things. That difference continues. Girls pay attention to people because that is crucial for motherhood. Boys pay attention to things because that is crucial to the world of work. Don't confuse the two.
- graycat 13y agoGee, some people don't like the advice to be careful. When it's your sister, wife, or daughter who gets seriously injured for life or gets killed, say, from suicide from clinical depression from stress from being pushed away from motherhood and into the world of startups, then you will understand why it is crucial to be careful. Sure, at one time she told me "Women don't have to just be cared for. Women can do things, too. I want a career.". I believed her. I was naive. Her mother was pushing her hard away from motherhood and into something challenging. Although I didn't yet see the role of her mother, I had good reasons to believe in her: So, she was Valedictorian, PBK, Woodrow Wilson, 'Summa Cum Laude', Ph.D. And in many ways, in academics and also daily life, she was just hands down, flatly brilliant. She had the endurance of an ultra athlete and could go with so little sleep that so little for me would have me asleep standing up, literally. Still, by the time she finished her Ph.D., she was in a clinical depression from the stress, never recovered, and died. Her sisters had similar struggles. It's tough to separate nature and nurture here: She got the nurture from her mother who had the nature but also got the nature from her mother. She likely got another dose of the nature from her father, a guy who for some years worked 20 hours a day except cut back to 10 on Sundays. Solid evidence is that such vulnerability to stress is four times more likely for women than men. There is a good reason for the expression "Nervous Nellie" because, from an expert, "women are much more emotional than men" and one way they are more emotional is that they are more nervous, more easily made afraid. Such nervousness and fear leads to stress leads to depression, clinical depression, serious problems, and sometimes death. For a women in a challenging situation, have to exercise special care watching for signs of low self-esteem, stress, 'burn out', and depression. Some women can meet such challenges; too many can't; even some that very much look like they can, can't; these problems are much more likely for women; it's a very challenging situation. My advice I repeat: Be careful. Be very careful. Some people just flatly want to believe that "Women don't have to just be cared for. Women can do things, too." and want to and, then, do hate any suggestion of anything else and pass off any suggestion as some sexism. No, the caution I urge is based on hard experience. Be careful. I didn't say stop; I just said be careful. "Careful"? Yes, for a women, have to watch for symptoms and problems that mostly would not have to watch for for men. Be careful. Sorry about your dream, largely unfounded, that women are just the same in startups as men and have just been held down and now need to be 'unleashed'. It's not just a dream, too easily it's a nightmare. Sorry about your dream. But if the woman is your sister, wife, or daughter, your dream can become a nightmare for you. You've been warned. Let the pop media have their fun pushing 'lean in', etc., but for your sister, wife, and daughter, be careful, be very careful. If you want an explanation, then notice that Darwin's forces were there and having their effects for many tens of thousands of years before startups. and we don't know just what those forces were or just how they worked. Since we can't understand what those forces were, for making big changes now we are walking out on thin ice. Be careful. Or, the world of work, and startups were created by men in ways convenient for men. And we should just assume that women will be comfortable in that world? Why assume? Or how many men would be comfortable in and fit in at a baby shower? How many men can do well at gossip? For 'social connections', men don't gossip; instead they communicate information (D. Tannen,'You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation'), and women communicate feelings and the rest of gossip. Men are from Mars, women from Venus, that is, they are so different they seem to be from different planets. They deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same (E. Fromm, 'The Art of Loving'). Did I mention, be careful?
- squigs25 13y ago"because it's the right thing to do" The right thing to do is fund the best concepts that exist. I don't care if they're all women founded or all men founded. The reason there aren't more women founders is the real problem at hand. It might be that women are more risk averse. It might be that there's a stigma against girls who program. It might be that there's a large enough population of women who are more focused on finding Mr. Right than founding the right company. I'm making up some numbers here, but if 1 in 5 companies are founded by women, then it wouldn't make sense to seek a 50/50 founding member gender breakdown in a YC class. That said, my guess is that more than 20% of companies you choose would be founded by women, because the women that did make it to the company founding stage are that much more likely to have the skill sets and the drive to be successful.
- mintykeen 13y agoThanks for the nudge to get my application submitted already! ;-)
- drakaal 13y agoFemale founders can be great with out coding. There seems to be this belief that founders need to write code. If you are doing a "hack" maybe, but a good startup is often as much about the business model and the User Experience as it is about the code. Sarah Austin, is a co-founder at my company, Plexi, and she is invaluable to us from the standpoint of knowing what features are important and how to extract money from those features. Sarah doesn't write code. She looks at it from time to time, and she provides large data sets in spreadsheets that get codified later, but she doesn't speak Python which is what we run. Sarah has one dozens of hackathons, and was SAP's Hacker of the Year last year. Again with out writing a single line of code. To be honest the Author comments show how much more he has to learn about female founders, because I disagree with almost every assertion he makes. And yes, I think PlexiNLP is a multi-billion dollar potential company. -Brandon Wirtz CTO PlexiNLP http://plexinlp.com/ http://plexinlp.com/
- hyp0 13y agoI was hoping this would be something like "lessons learned" on how to build a better startup, perhaps some that just happened to be from female founders, and perhaps others that come from the different perspective/approaches. It hints at this, with the example of women expressing confidence differently from men. It also mentions diversity - but as something to not prevent finding the best founders, rather than as a resource of new perspectives/approaches.
- jasimq 13y agoSame problems: 1) Some men already starting startups aren't interested in doing Y Combinator. 2) Some men who could be great founders don't start startups.
- notoriousjpg 13y agoI've never quite understood this messaging. Popular opinion regarding startups is that a founder needs to be persevering through countless rejections and believe in themselves through it all. And yet now we're saying people may be put off by insufficient pictures of women on a homepage. Wat? Why would you want someone so easily broken? You know how many Asian founders I've seen marketed in aus startups? Very few. Doesn't bother me.
- melindajb 13y agoGotta say, Sam, I'm finding hope in my cynical old heart. What I liked: Listening, and acknowledging there is a problem, is an excellent first start. That's progress for YC, which up until now seemed to have its head in the sand. The quick roll up of what you've heard most recently, also good, shows it's more than lip service. *Acknowledging publicly that confidence shows differently for women than for men is enormous. I've had people try to claim I'm not confident in my product. Outrageous! Some other thoughts: Female founder events are nice, but let's see PG and the Old VC boys show up there too, so it isn't a pink ghetto. Earmark your startup founders conference to be 50/50 male/female. Or some such realistic but achievable number. Understand that women need special help fundraising. The signals, games, and rules are male created, and male oriented. Women are at a distinct disadvantage in the fundraising process as a result. I have found most women cannot give good fundraising advice, because they have not raised money, or have they invested money. Would love to see YC write about this, specifically for women. A rule book, if you will. There's probably more, but as you keep engaging us, I'll keep thinking. To those who might still be angry/cynical: This is a start. I believe we have to allow room for organizations and people to evolve and change their minds, lest we all freeze into pre-arranged points of view. I hope that doesn't happen, because the world needs all of us right now to tackle the challenges we face. Let's see what happens. This is more than we've seen out of the valley in quite some time.
- melindajb 13y agodownvoted? awesome. care to share why?
- loladesoto 13y ago1. the best argument for funding talented women, is its inevitability. the smartest men understand this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnDDKDiSy8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnDDKDiSy8 2. part of being a good entrepreneur is managing your own psychology. women—and i anticipate raising ire when i say this—have much to learn in this regard. not simply because we are relatively new to worlds men have long-accessed and enjoyed (with the corresponding body of wisdom and experience that accompanies such things, including the management of one's own psychology, which is nothing more than self-mastery), but also because we sometimes lose focus along the way. we stop building and start arguing. this is a natural process and i believe an important one for us to collectively go through: the debating, the feeling-out of collective boundaries and external asks. but we are not organized, we sometimes get emotional to the point where we become unintelligible, uncommunicative or irrational, and lose credibility along the way. if you are to wage a war then you must find a way to unite around a common purpose, set your sights on victory and then take intelligent action, individual or otherwise. (coincidentally, we also need role models who are both vocal AND able to organize women.) alas, in our early stages we seem to spend a lot of time arguing. so: less bicker, more build. whether your own projects or community, every hour matters. 3. on YC-ness: how many female founders have worked very closely alongside a VC-funded YC-alum (who happens to be a white male)? i am a minority female founder who has experienced this, and was astounded. temporarily laying aside the argument of how to actually get in if you do fit that stereotype: the intrinsically, deeply supportive nature of this network is such that many of you, if exposed to it, would be tempted to apply. many of you would apply. it wasn't the contacts, or the advice, or the credibility it conferred (those things helped with everything from recruiting to raising $, of course—not to mention the comparative ease of getting meetings): what impressed me was this battle-hardened community offering the gift of time and emotional support to one another...generosity on a scale one rarely sees in any business context (qualities which i believe will only improve in the years to come, particularly as YC evolves to include more women). my conclusion? apply to YC. and i would suggest, if a group of mostly-white male geeks does not interest you, and i understand if that is the case, then apply to a female-oriented accelerator or better yet: assemble a group of kickass female founders, mentors and investors and start your own. (remember, the genesis of a good product is building something you need.) 4. food for thought: if there were a female version of YC, would you apply? would i? i am not sure i would. i do not live in a vacuum; the world i seek to conquer is a male-dominated world (at present); and part of self-mastery includes mastering one's environment, not creating a bubble within it. but it is an interesting thought-experiment and useful to ponder. *btw, not making this about white vs non-white. that alone would be the subject of a 1k post thread.