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YC Demographics
- minimaxir 12y agoHow large is the random sample? Since that you're asserting that YC does not discriminate because the actual proportion of female entrepreneurs funded is more than the number that applied, the conclusion is open to variance. EDIT: Originally incorrectly said "sampling bias."
- sama 12y agofor gender, it's the entire applicant pool (we ask for gender so that's easy to compute.) for race, it's a bit harder. we don't ask for it, but we looked through hundreds of videos and made our best guess (it's also why we left the number as approximate, as of course there are cases where we got it wrong.)
- minimaxir 12y agoAh, that clears up the sampling bias. I might have asked the wrong question. What I meant was "how many people are 5% of YC applicants" that were used to calculate a representative proportion? Let's say 2000 companies apply each with 2-3 founders, so 4000-6000 founders total. 5% of that is 200-300, which can result in a reasonable margin of error for the conclusion proportion but may not be perfect.
- sama 12y agomore than 10,000. still, definitely small enough for random variance.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- api 12y agoAny sample size this small is open to sampling bias.
- cronin101 12y agoSmall nitpick: What you are talking about is not sampling bias, it is something else. You are alluding to how confidence in the presented results may be significantly lowered due to a high variance - associated with small sample sizes (it is a statistically significant possibility that you obtained the outcome through chance and not because it is representative) Sampling bias is another thing altogether, when the method of taking measurements will exclude some of the population. For example, estimating ratio by taking note of the presumed gender of people leaving a particular room - not realising that it is in fact the female toilet. Nonetheless, it is always a good idea to query the sample size when results are presented in such a manner :-)
- minimaxir 12y agoYou're correct. I double-checked my terminology now. :)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- _pius 12y agoGreat to see this data, thanks for releasing it.
- williamstein 12y agoI wonder what the age distribution is? (Not just gender and race...)
- DodgyEggplant 12y agoYes. Age is a fundamental figure for any demographics. Gender, ethnic group, and age. The fact that age is totally ignored is a huge blind spot.
- bkessler100 12y agoExactly. They ask for age in their application and not gender or race.
- swampthing 12y agoNot a YC partner, but I help review apps... when I look at age, it's not so that I can discriminate based on it, it's so that I can see how impressive a person's accomplishments are in light of how much time they've had to achieve them.
- jiggy2011 12y agoThe problem is that this can be very skewed, especially for younger people by their economic background.
- swampthing 12y agoWhat do you recommend?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hammerdr 12y agoFor example, I know of someone that changed careers into the tech industry in his mid-30s. He should not be disadvantaged because he entered into the industry later than peers. Additionally, I can think of countless examples of "slow starters" that didn't really get good at something until there was something that caught that person's interest. At best, this is a flawed metric with many nuances to consider. So many that you could probably make the same determination by removing age from the application.* * If you want to collect demographic data, you can just ask for it in the submission form but not show it in reviews.
- adamzerner 12y agoWhy sample as opposed to looking at the whole population? The typical reason is, "because it's difficult to survey the entire population". But in this case I'd think that it'd be easy because I assume you have all the data.
- klochner 12y agoThey likely don't record the team composition, so this would require hand-labeling of any data points. Do we know total applicants? I'd like to know what n produced a 5% sample.
- komrade 12y agoIt would be interesting to see the proportion of foreign entrepreneurs (applied from abroad).
- yurisagalov 12y agoSam answers this in a different point in this thread -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889333 (40% are born abroad)
- staunch 12y agoSocioeconomic diversity is the elephant in the room.
- jiggy2011 12y agoHow could YC even be able to calculate that?
- staunch 12y agoIt's pretty easy to figure out what class people are in if you actually care to know. > Competition is extremely high to enter Stanford, with an admit rate of 7.2 percent. And those who make it in are, as a group, financially better off than the rest of the American population. According to Director of Financial Aid Karen Cooper, the median family income at Stanford is approximately $125,000; by contrast, the median family income in the United States in 2008, the last year for which data are available, is $61,521. http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/diversity-remains-ongoing-struggle/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/diversity-remains-on... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Social_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... Now try to guess what class these people were born into: http://www.ycombinator.com/people/ http://www.ycombinator.com/people/ I'm still a huge fan of YC (very much not a hater) but on this rather large issue I think they're on the wrong side of history. A truly good actor compared to most, but far short being egalitarian.
- aaronz8 12y agoHow about the non-hispanic, non-black minorities? Or even more interesting to me, how about the distribution of education level and background?
- blazespin 12y agoYeah, I find a lot of software organizations it's becoming more and more a disadvantage of being white. Not sure I can complain, it's worked out for me, but I worry about my kids.
- jmcohen 12y agoAll evidence points to the contrary. 34% of Facebook's employees are Asian, but only 19% of managers are. NYT article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/facebook-mirrors-tech-industrys-lack-of-diversity/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/facebook-mirrors-te... Facebook's "Equal Employment Opportunity" report: https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/facebook-eeo-1-report-2013.pdf https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/facebook-ee...
- proveanegative 12y agoData on citizenship would also be interesting. How many founders are foreigners and how many are US citizens?
- sama 12y agofor last batch, more than 40% of the founders were born outside the US.
- sama 12y agowe didn't look at this here because we fund a lot of asian and indian founders, and we just don't have enough of a sample to look at e.g. native american founders. on things like education level, country of birth, age, etc we've previously looked at and discussed the data and it seems very diverse.
- atom-morgan 12y ago
- kolbe 12y agoMichael, I think you should really ask yourself: what good can come of this? It doesn't really demonstrate anything about YC's fair-opportunity goals, and it opens the topic up for significant scrutiny--both by rights activists, and now (even worse?) by stats majors who are always looking for an opportunity to tear apart someone's oversimplified models.
- logicallee 12y ago>Michael, I think you should really ask yourself: what good can come of this? I got this one! The good that comes is you solve the current status quo, where on a thread like "Why silicon valley works" people make comments and genuinely feel like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552487 >If you are a white male, in your early 20's and went to Stanford, go for it. If you're not, don't even try to play the game; it's rigged to use you, not help you. or up-thread someone else > Complete and utter bull. Maybe in [YC's] world, sure! White? 20-something? No-kids? Harvard/Stanford? B2C? Let’s chat! > Early-40's/Late-30's? Not-white? Married w/ kids? Not-Harvard/Stanford? B2B? Nope. (Don't bother to apply to YC either). Theirs is a strong argument when 0.0% of founders are black. When it's 4%, man, 1 in 25 is better odds than 80% of the things you're doing to build a $100M exit anyway. You'll go for it and apply. I gave up as I'm in a hurry, but search 'Hackernews search' (hn.algolia.com) for white/asian, "bother to apply" and similar words - there are a ton of comments by people who think they shouldn't because it's 0%. They should!!! This blog post is totally great, and a bit surprising. Kudos.
- unlaut 12y agoThe question is, would this post still be made publicly, in the same manner, if the data actually found serious discrimination happening? Who knows, maybe YC is actually divinely meritocratic and there are no biases. Maybe they are transparent enough to make their biases public if they were discovered, and I absolutely admire that YC takes the initiative to check. But if we were to be scientific about it, having YC take a look at discrimination within YC wouldn't be considered a reliable experiment that you could draw any conclusions from.
- maceo 12y ago"The good news is that there is no disadvantage to applying to YC as a female or minority founder." I don't understand why that's good news. It'd be good news if YC were actively preferring female and minority founders. Everyone acknowledges the glaring diversity problem in tech, but apparently YC is happy standing on the sidelines.
- john_b 12y agoFrom the OP: > "We want to be sure we’re not discriminating against founders in our funding decisions at YC" This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity. It primarily seeks long term positive returns, and to do that you have to evaluate people and their ideas based on merit, not their gender. Having more female founders would probably be better for the startup ecosystem as a whole, but "actively preferring" a class of candidates based on attributes poorly correlated with their probability of success would be bad for YC.
- _pius 12y agoThis is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity. Let's not inject FUD about affirmative action into this conversation. MIT, for instance, has a robust affirmative action program and I can assure you the Institute isn't in the business of picking unqualified applicants. One of the most famous (and successful) affirmative action programs in the world is implemented by the NFL — hardly a charity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule Institutions that implement affirmative action do so selfishly to ensure that they're fielding the best proverbial team possible.
- maceo 12y agoLook, whether we like it or not, VCs prefer white or asian founders over black or hispanic founders. That's fact, not conjecture [1]. I understand that YC is an accelerator. It's also a cultural institution. Blacks and hispanics are at a disadvantage when raising because VCs DON'T evaluate strictly on merit; they evaluate on a whole host of characteristics, many of which are subject to bias. The YC stamp of approval is a valuable badge when fundraising. I'd like to see them find a way to use this to combat the inherent bias that women, blacks, and hispanics face when fundraising. [1] https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-demographics-87-percent-vc-backed-founders-white-asian-teams-raise-largest-funding/ https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-demographics...
- evanwarfel 12y agoGood to know that YC doesn't seem to be affected by biased selection process. The low overall percentage of minority or female founders is a reflection of the current state of society, which, alas, isn't where it could be.
- dimdimdim 12y agoThe post does not add any value -- "you are not at a disadvantage" means we are evaluating everyone with the same scale. Why should this be a surprise? this is the least we would expect anyway.
- moisesvega 12y agoIt would be interesting to have some more insights, like how many of rhw minority groups ( black or hispanic as the article says ) were funded, also more meaningful like: Race/Sector of interest Age/Sector of interest Gender/Sector of interest People with Higher Scholar degree/ Sector of interest Startups funded by sector
- j_baker 12y ago> this will not be a zero-sum game Is there some kind of rule at YC that mandates that blog posts must insist that nothing is a zero-sum game?
- byEngineer 12y agoyes! It is the same rule that says that we must be sad that 50% of all applicants aren't women.
- auggierose 12y agoIt's not like the number of entire YC 2015 winter applications is super large. Why take a sample?
- billconan 12y agoI really want to see what percent introvert founders take. I have been reading articles saying introversion is not good for entrepreneurship. I wonder if this is true. if it is true, will VCs treat introvert founders like they do to minorities?
- CmonDev 12y agoSome types of discrimination are not "fashionable" enough. If you are not of right color/gender you are out of luck as a minority.
- dirkdk 12y agothe big question is of course about self selection: how many nonwhite, female and non-Stanford entrepreneurs would like to apply for YC but don't because they think their chances are basically zero?