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I wasn't going to respond... But after reading the whole article, the author really comes across as self-entitled. I fear no one is willing to tell her the trut

I wasn't going to respond... But after reading the whole article, the author really comes across as self-entitled. I fear no one is willing to tell her the truth. So here are some thoughts: 1. Fundraising is hard no matter who you are. Stop reading TechCrunch and comparing yourself to others. You never know what someone's journey is. From the story the press tells it looks like I've had an easy path raising capital but that's not true. We've gone 12+ months on a single $50k investment after a year of no funding. Startups are hard and you need to be willing to deal with the fact that most companies struggle to fundraise. 2. I am glad you have conviction, you'll need it, but the dating space is not as guaranteed as you think. Up until recently, the entire dating market combined didn't top a billion dollars in the U.S. Companies like Tinder are probably overvalued and yet they have millions and millions of users with crazy metrics. Do you have ANY indication you've built the next Tinder? 3. Investors invest in opportunities they understand. I look at your product and I ask "what's novel, defensible, unique here?". The design doesn't blow me away and the model sounds just like Three Day Rule which now has support and backing by Match.com (note: all founders of TDR are female). What sets you apart? 4. Please please please don't think you're hot shit because the press covered you. YC says to focus on traction because that is all that matters, and they're right. 60% growth doesn't mean anything. What are the numbers? Do you have 100k users on track to pass 250k in half that time and 1MM in a year? Look at Slack or Snapchat or Instagram growth to compare what investors get excited about it. Be really honest with yourself about whether you DO have numbers or not. Look, I understand discrimination and believe you experience it far worse than a straight white guy, but it really doesn't come across as a compelling argument the way it's explained here. I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for calling you out here, but I feel it would be dishonest not to reply and tell you what it looks like from the outside. I wish you the best of luck and hope you build that billion dollar company, but please remember the dating space is hard, saturated, historically hard to monetize, and filled with tombs of companies that got millions only to go nowhere.

mangecoeur 11y ago
The market may be tough, but when the investors seem to be more interested in hooking up with you or your cofounders, or just outright groping, that points to something else than just "wrong market" being the issue. Maybe my different perspective, but "from the outside" to me it looks like a lot of macho older men who don't take someone seriously if they are female.
- mtrimpe 11y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Another thing to keep in mind is that it can be really hard to continue pulling off the confidence game you need when you're being groped and propositioned. What I'm wondering about most though is how YC is handling these issues. If I'm not correct they once issued a warning to investors that bad behavior like this would mean they're out. Did the groping during Demo Day get reported? And is that investor now indeed no longer welcome to YC? And what about YC-related investors proposing dates with founders... are they still in?
- wvh 11y ago
  May be so, but if someone shows more interest in you rather than in your product or idea, you've kind of gotten your answer. It might be hard for men to ignore any sexual aspect in interaction, which in many situations (like pitching at funding events) is definitely inappropriate and unpleasant; you are right to call that out. I'm not excusing bad behaviour. But for better or worse, no matter how unfair it might feel or how much insult it adds to injury, you've gotten an answer. I would find it hard to believe someone goes to a fundraiser to ignore a genuinely great idea/product just because they feel a bit horny. I doubt you'd want a person with such lack of focus involved with your company.
  - Hytosys 11y ago
    >I would find it hard to believe someone goes to a fundraiser to ignore a genuinely great idea/product just because they feel a bit horny. Why? Humans pass up great opportunities due to various predispositions, why not a sexual attraction bias? I fear that you're overlooking decades of documented sexual harassment in this field. It is clearly very hard for some people to take women seriously at all in a professional setting.
    - benihana 11y ago
      >decades of documented sexual harassment in this field In the past four or five years the bringing to light of discrimination, sexism and misogyny in this field has increased (and that's a good thing) and I don't doubt that women have faced discrimination in the past. But this is the first I've heard of decades of documented cases - anecdotal evidence maybe, but not concrete documented issues over the course of years. Can you share some of them?
NhanH 11y ago
The two comparisons with Zoosk and Tinder were a bit off the mark too. Zoosk was founded in 2007 and has been around since forever. And Tinder is not quite a ... dating app. Dating app to Tinder is Slack to Snapchat. They might look superficially similar with some overlapping use case, but by far and large, they're different things.
- woah 11y ago
  Using both tinder and okc, people use both apps in the same exact way. Tinder may have a reputation as a "hook up app", but most people are not using it that way.
andy_ppp 11y ago
Yeah, but I read her story and got the complete opposite view. Do you think it's acceptable the guys hitting on her and her colleagues? I think there is a boat load of evidence there that she's been treated really badly and I can see the dating space for this blurring lines more than other spaces. You can just jump in and shout sour grapes if you like but I think you would say the same thing if that shit was happening to you over a sustained period; there are lots of shit companies getting investment too, why not hers?
Fede_V 11y ago
Let's say for the sake of argument that you are completely, 100% right about the difficulty of fundraising and how 'banal' their product is. Even given that, the kind of shady behaviour that the investors tried to pull (groping, conversations with dates attached, etc) is absolutely intolerable and should be dealt with incredibly harshly.
- jeswin 11y ago
  I don't think parent was excusing that behavior. If the author had written the post focusing on those aspects, it would have been a compelling article on the discrimination they faced while fundraising. And like you said, it needs to be dealt with harshly and exposed. What has happened instead is that the tone seemed to suggest that it is easy for white men* to succeed. This is in a way dismissing the efforts of countless white nerds who have spent their entire youth fiddling with their computer projects. The internet is full of obscure projects that exist purely for the love of hacking. The author misses out the correlation between this and the relatively larger number of successful white men in the industry. Discrimination is real. But we shouldn't rush to attribute success to being white and male, unless there is a study which tells us: (no of hours white men have spent/successful white men) vs (no of hours X group has spent/successful X group people) To me, it seems that the way to fix it is to get kids to start programming early irrespective of gender and color. * I am male, but not white.
  - Fede_V 11y ago
    I am honestly completely unqualified to comment on how good their product is. I know very little about the 'dating application' space. I did find the comments about finding funding to be somewhat entitled, but I guess most people who go through YC compare themselves to their (very highly successful) peers.
  - gradstudent 11y ago
    > What has happened instead is that the tone seemed to suggest that it is easy for white men* to succeed. Having read the article I can say I did not get that impression at all. The article argues it's easier for men to be funded than women and that there are implicit biases at work in the VC-funding-system that unfairly disadvantage women. This sounds perfectly reasonable to me; it's a common and valid criticism made by feminists all the time.
codeulike 11y ago
Mansplained. edit: more info for the downvoters: The condescending tone of 'Look, ... fundraising is hard ok?' and lots of assumptions that OP doesn't know _anything_ despite obvious years of experience.
- ryanx435 11y ago
  his thoughts and opinions aren't valid simply because he is a man? who is sexist now?
icc97 11y ago
These kind of responses are exactly the reason behind her first paragraph. "I have struggled with writing this blog post for months. Unless I have an absolutely perfect, bulletproof business (which I do not), I'm easily written off as someone blaming my failures on my gender." It is a genuine problem that she is trying to raise awareness for. Why she struggles writing it is because she knows that she'll get your kind of response. She knows it will make her look weak, she knows it might label her a trouble maker not worth investing in. The really frustrating thing is that you're in a similar position, so you should know that women have a harder time than you. You're the first one that should be jumping up and down and jumping to her defense. You should be outraged at the things that happened. The point isn't even the lack of investment which is is what you're focussing on. The point is that to get that investment she has to accept: groping, comments on looks, date requests.
- benihana 11y ago
  >You're the first one that should be jumping up and down and jumping to her defense. You should be outraged at the things that happened. No. Telling someone how they should feel and act about a situation is complete and utter bullshit. Who do you think you are tell a stranger what their reaction to something should be?
- ryanx435 11y ago
  why should I jump up and down in her defense? I'm literally competing with her for the same vc dollars. I'm not going to help my competitors, that's insane.
cjoh 11y ago
Fundraising is hard, for sure. You know what's harder? Having investors want to meet with you, and taking your meeting, not because they see value in your business, but because they want to fuck you. Can you imagine how infuriating that must be as an entrepreneur? Imagine that there's a 50/50 shot that, every time you have a meeting with someone, they're just stringing you along so that they have the opportunity to fuck you and have zero interest in actually investing. You'd be outraged not only on the creep-factor, but also just the complete waste of time. Moreover, these same people trying to fuck you are also investing in actively shittier companies than you run. As people are trying to "focus on growth" every single one of these meeting invites for investors could be a huge waste of time, and that alone is cause for outrage. Take the sex out of it -- imagine that for every investor you pitched, 50% of the time the investor stood you up. That's the baseline of what's happening here: the investor isn't showing; in his place is also a dirtbag. That's a really hard fundraising environment. The only thing I can critique this woman on is why she's not more upset, and why she's not publishing a list of names.
- GordonS 11y ago
  I'm sorry, but to suggest that it's 50/50 whether potential investors are only meeting you to bone you is just ludicrous. I find that quite insulting. You come across as sexist, and with a chip on your shoulder that big (and an ego to match), I certainly wouldn't want to invest in you.
  - cjoh 11y ago
    You're right, it is just ludicrous.
  - woah 11y ago
    What do you base your assessment on?
    - GordonS 11y ago
      I base this 'assessment' on the fact that not all men are unprofessional, drooling apes.
jrs235 11y ago
"but the dating space is not as guaranteed as you think" Below is from http://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website http://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website "Let’s think about their model again: If someone joins the site and is unsuccessful, the site loses one customer. If someone joins the site and is successful, the site loses two customers. Wait, what? That’s right. Making you successful can be bad for them. Now obviously, they need success stories to promote and recruit new customers but too many success stories and.. they lose."
- sukilot 11y ago
  Note however the distiction between relationship websites like eharmony, and dating websites like tinder and TDR. And why you see different models. On relationship websites, you tend to pay cash money and exit either satisfied or unhappy. On dating websites, it is a subscription model that enjoy keep playing and meeting more people. Daters want to meet a lot of people over time. Relationshippers want to meet one quickly, and won't be patient paying a subscription fee for nothing.
deleted 11y ago
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malandrew 11y ago
Totally agree about #3. Furthermore, after reading the post, I checked out the website to understand how their business model and core value proposition is different from the other dating sites out there (tinder, okcupid, match, plenty of fish) and it's plainly obvious while it's not an investable idea in its current form. Their core value proposition is that they can provide better matches than automated systems by using skilled people to do the matching. If the skill required is a commodity (like driving or cleaning homes), then there is a potentially scaleable business model, but when it relies on specialized and uncommon skills, it's basically a consulting firm. The only examples of a successful "consulting firm" that I can think of off the top of my head that has seen any sizable investment is Palantir. Their market may be very small, but each contract is worth so much that there is a huge opportunity. How big is the addressable market of $800/month dating consulting and dating life management? Seems more like a solid lifestyle business than the unicorns that most SV investors are chasing. The mantra "do things that don't scale" really is about getting traction and growth to get the party started and multiply effectiveness. However, even those things that you initially do that don't scale should eventually be scaleable or else you have a permanent cost center that scales with the business. When your business model doesn't scale you need to rethink the business model. Are there highly profitable businesses that are consulting firms? Totally. McKinsey, Bain, Booz Allen, Accenture, etc. are all large companies that are profitable and provide consulting services. However, the people investing in those types of business models are not the investors in Silicon Valley. Investors in SV understand software/hardware and using them to increase productivity, providing more value at a lower cost. Unless there is an alternative narrative they are telling investors about how they plan to pivot to something else, I can't help but wonder how such a business model scales to a high valuation in the time scales most venture capital funds have until they need to divest. Lastly, who on the founding team has professional experience as an engineer? Only the CTO (who has a CompSci degree) has done any software engineering in a professional setting and that was as an intern for 3 months in 2007. Solid personal projects count too, but the CTO has only one repo on github that isn't a fork and it's a basic html/css/js github.io page. I'm not saying that you need to have a strong, experienced technical co-founder to found a successful company, but it's a huge strike against a startup for being investible if there isn't one. https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiebambino https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiebambino https://www.linkedin.com/pub/emma-tessler/66/b43/39a?trk=pub-pbmap https://www.linkedin.com/pub/emma-tessler/66/b43/39a?trk=pub... https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lauren-kay/13/777/392 https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lauren-kay/13/777/392 https://github.com/kbambz?tab=repositories https://github.com/kbambz?tab=repositories

mangecoeur 11y ago

The market may be tough, but when the investors seem to be more interested in hooking up with you or your cofounders, or just outright groping, that points to something else than just "wrong market" being the issue. Maybe my different perspective, but "from the outside" to me it looks like a lot of macho older men who don't take someone seriously if they are female.

mtrimpe 11y ago
I couldn't agree more. Another thing to keep in mind is that it can be really hard to continue pulling off the confidence game you need when you're being groped and propositioned. What I'm wondering about most though is how YC is handling these issues. If I'm not correct they once issued a warning to investors that bad behavior like this would mean they're out. Did the groping during Demo Day get reported? And is that investor now indeed no longer welcome to YC? And what about YC-related investors proposing dates with founders... are they still in?
wvh 11y ago
May be so, but if someone shows more interest in you rather than in your product or idea, you've kind of gotten your answer. It might be hard for men to ignore any sexual aspect in interaction, which in many situations (like pitching at funding events) is definitely inappropriate and unpleasant; you are right to call that out. I'm not excusing bad behaviour. But for better or worse, no matter how unfair it might feel or how much insult it adds to injury, you've gotten an answer. I would find it hard to believe someone goes to a fundraiser to ignore a genuinely great idea/product just because they feel a bit horny. I doubt you'd want a person with such lack of focus involved with your company.
- Hytosys 11y ago
  >I would find it hard to believe someone goes to a fundraiser to ignore a genuinely great idea/product just because they feel a bit horny. Why? Humans pass up great opportunities due to various predispositions, why not a sexual attraction bias? I fear that you're overlooking decades of documented sexual harassment in this field. It is clearly very hard for some people to take women seriously at all in a professional setting.
  - benihana 11y ago
    >decades of documented sexual harassment in this field In the past four or five years the bringing to light of discrimination, sexism and misogyny in this field has increased (and that's a good thing) and I don't doubt that women have faced discrimination in the past. But this is the first I've heard of decades of documented cases - anecdotal evidence maybe, but not concrete documented issues over the course of years. Can you share some of them?

NhanH 11y ago

The two comparisons with Zoosk and Tinder were a bit off the mark too. Zoosk was founded in 2007 and has been around since forever. And Tinder is not quite a ... dating app. Dating app to Tinder is Slack to Snapchat. They might look superficially similar with some overlapping use case, but by far and large, they're different things.

woah 11y ago
Using both tinder and okc, people use both apps in the same exact way. Tinder may have a reputation as a "hook up app", but most people are not using it that way.

andy_ppp 11y ago

Yeah, but I read her story and got the complete opposite view. Do you think it's acceptable the guys hitting on her and her colleagues? I think there is a boat load of evidence there that she's been treated really badly and I can see the dating space for this blurring lines more than other spaces. You can just jump in and shout sour grapes if you like but I think you would say the same thing if that shit was happening to you over a sustained period; there are lots of shit companies getting investment too, why not hers?

Fede_V 11y ago

Let's say for the sake of argument that you are completely, 100% right about the difficulty of fundraising and how 'banal' their product is. Even given that, the kind of shady behaviour that the investors tried to pull (groping, conversations with dates attached, etc) is absolutely intolerable and should be dealt with incredibly harshly.

jeswin 11y ago
I don't think parent was excusing that behavior. If the author had written the post focusing on those aspects, it would have been a compelling article on the discrimination they faced while fundraising. And like you said, it needs to be dealt with harshly and exposed. What has happened instead is that the tone seemed to suggest that it is easy for white men* to succeed. This is in a way dismissing the efforts of countless white nerds who have spent their entire youth fiddling with their computer projects. The internet is full of obscure projects that exist purely for the love of hacking. The author misses out the correlation between this and the relatively larger number of successful white men in the industry. Discrimination is real. But we shouldn't rush to attribute success to being white and male, unless there is a study which tells us: (no of hours white men have spent/successful white men) vs (no of hours X group has spent/successful X group people) To me, it seems that the way to fix it is to get kids to start programming early irrespective of gender and color. * I am male, but not white.
- Fede_V 11y ago
  I am honestly completely unqualified to comment on how good their product is. I know very little about the 'dating application' space. I did find the comments about finding funding to be somewhat entitled, but I guess most people who go through YC compare themselves to their (very highly successful) peers.
- gradstudent 11y ago
  > What has happened instead is that the tone seemed to suggest that it is easy for white men* to succeed. Having read the article I can say I did not get that impression at all. The article argues it's easier for men to be funded than women and that there are implicit biases at work in the VC-funding-system that unfairly disadvantage women. This sounds perfectly reasonable to me; it's a common and valid criticism made by feminists all the time.

codeulike 11y ago

Mansplained. edit: more info for the downvoters: The condescending tone of 'Look, ... fundraising is hard ok?' and lots of assumptions that OP doesn't know _anything_ despite obvious years of experience.

ryanx435 11y ago
his thoughts and opinions aren't valid simply because he is a man? who is sexist now?

icc97 11y ago

These kind of responses are exactly the reason behind her first paragraph. "I have struggled with writing this blog post for months. Unless I have an absolutely perfect, bulletproof business (which I do not), I'm easily written off as someone blaming my failures on my gender." It is a genuine problem that she is trying to raise awareness for. Why she struggles writing it is because she knows that she'll get your kind of response. She knows it will make her look weak, she knows it might label her a trouble maker not worth investing in. The really frustrating thing is that you're in a similar position, so you should know that women have a harder time than you. You're the first one that should be jumping up and down and jumping to her defense. You should be outraged at the things that happened. The point isn't even the lack of investment which is is what you're focussing on. The point is that to get that investment she has to accept: groping, comments on looks, date requests.

benihana 11y ago
>You're the first one that should be jumping up and down and jumping to her defense. You should be outraged at the things that happened. No. Telling someone how they should feel and act about a situation is complete and utter bullshit. Who do you think you are tell a stranger what their reaction to something should be?
ryanx435 11y ago
why should I jump up and down in her defense? I'm literally competing with her for the same vc dollars. I'm not going to help my competitors, that's insane.

cjoh 11y ago

Fundraising is hard, for sure. You know what's harder? Having investors want to meet with you, and taking your meeting, not because they see value in your business, but because they want to fuck you. Can you imagine how infuriating that must be as an entrepreneur? Imagine that there's a 50/50 shot that, every time you have a meeting with someone, they're just stringing you along so that they have the opportunity to fuck you and have zero interest in actually investing. You'd be outraged not only on the creep-factor, but also just the complete waste of time. Moreover, these same people trying to fuck you are also investing in actively shittier companies than you run. As people are trying to "focus on growth" every single one of these meeting invites for investors could be a huge waste of time, and that alone is cause for outrage. Take the sex out of it -- imagine that for every investor you pitched, 50% of the time the investor stood you up. That's the baseline of what's happening here: the investor isn't showing; in his place is also a dirtbag. That's a really hard fundraising environment. The only thing I can critique this woman on is why she's not more upset, and why she's not publishing a list of names.

GordonS 11y ago
I'm sorry, but to suggest that it's 50/50 whether potential investors are only meeting you to bone you is just ludicrous. I find that quite insulting. You come across as sexist, and with a chip on your shoulder that big (and an ego to match), I certainly wouldn't want to invest in you.
- cjoh 11y ago
  You're right, it is just ludicrous.
- woah 11y ago
  What do you base your assessment on?
  - GordonS 11y ago
    I base this 'assessment' on the fact that not all men are unprofessional, drooling apes.

jrs235 11y ago

"but the dating space is not as guaranteed as you think" Below is from http://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website http://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website "Let’s think about their model again: If someone joins the site and is unsuccessful, the site loses one customer. If someone joins the site and is successful, the site loses two customers. Wait, what? That’s right. Making you successful can be bad for them. Now obviously, they need success stories to promote and recruit new customers but too many success stories and.. they lose."

sukilot 11y ago
Note however the distiction between relationship websites like eharmony, and dating websites like tinder and TDR. And why you see different models. On relationship websites, you tend to pay cash money and exit either satisfied or unhappy. On dating websites, it is a subscription model that enjoy keep playing and meeting more people. Daters want to meet a lot of people over time. Relationshippers want to meet one quickly, and won't be patient paying a subscription fee for nothing.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

malandrew 11y ago

Totally agree about #3. Furthermore, after reading the post, I checked out the website to understand how their business model and core value proposition is different from the other dating sites out there (tinder, okcupid, match, plenty of fish) and it's plainly obvious while it's not an investable idea in its current form. Their core value proposition is that they can provide better matches than automated systems by using skilled people to do the matching. If the skill required is a commodity (like driving or cleaning homes), then there is a potentially scaleable business model, but when it relies on specialized and uncommon skills, it's basically a consulting firm. The only examples of a successful "consulting firm" that I can think of off the top of my head that has seen any sizable investment is Palantir. Their market may be very small, but each contract is worth so much that there is a huge opportunity. How big is the addressable market of $800/month dating consulting and dating life management? Seems more like a solid lifestyle business than the unicorns that most SV investors are chasing. The mantra "do things that don't scale" really is about getting traction and growth to get the party started and multiply effectiveness. However, even those things that you initially do that don't scale should eventually be scaleable or else you have a permanent cost center that scales with the business. When your business model doesn't scale you need to rethink the business model. Are there highly profitable businesses that are consulting firms? Totally. McKinsey, Bain, Booz Allen, Accenture, etc. are all large companies that are profitable and provide consulting services. However, the people investing in those types of business models are not the investors in Silicon Valley. Investors in SV understand software/hardware and using them to increase productivity, providing more value at a lower cost. Unless there is an alternative narrative they are telling investors about how they plan to pivot to something else, I can't help but wonder how such a business model scales to a high valuation in the time scales most venture capital funds have until they need to divest. Lastly, who on the founding team has professional experience as an engineer? Only the CTO (who has a CompSci degree) has done any software engineering in a professional setting and that was as an intern for 3 months in 2007. Solid personal projects count too, but the CTO has only one repo on github that isn't a fork and it's a basic html/css/js github.io page. I'm not saying that you need to have a strong, experienced technical co-founder to found a successful company, but it's a huge strike against a startup for being investible if there isn't one. https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiebambino https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiebambino https://www.linkedin.com/pub/emma-tessler/66/b43/39a?trk=pub-pbmap https://www.linkedin.com/pub/emma-tessler/66/b43/39a?trk=pub... https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lauren-kay/13/777/392 https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lauren-kay/13/777/392 https://github.com/kbambz?tab=repositories https://github.com/kbambz?tab=repositories