

30 Female Internet Entrepreneurs - Ennis
http://www.incomediary.com/top-30-female-internet-entrepreneurs/

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mattmaroon
Pretty sad that only half of those are even entrepreneurs. Having a lot of
followers on Twitter is not the same as starting a business.

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brandnewlow
How is Miss O and Friends worth $15 million? Alexa says it only gets a few
thousand visitors a day.

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jdfreefly
It would seem to me this would be more accurately titled: "20 female Bloggers
I think our cool, and 10 female entrepreneurs who are actually impressive."

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jimboyoungblood
Or even more accurately "Link bait sure to generate controversy and drive
traffic to my obscure blog"

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lucumo
Great :-/ Let's not go there, okay?

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axod
Agreed. Sexism is bad. Posting "female only lists" probably doesn't help.

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jlees
Well, to some extent visible role models and tangibly successful women (look
how much she earns!) can be inspirational. It's just a matter of how you
present it. (Hint: not like this.)

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johnnybgoode
I hope no one takes offense, but I never really liked the idea of attempting
to inspire a member of human subgroup X only with examples of successful
fellow X-ers, or even just focusing on those examples. I prefer to emphasize
that an individual X-er may be capable of accomplishing just as much as any
human has.

If a member of subgroup Y is the first human on Mars, why should we have to
wait for an X-er to step on Mars before we can tell X-ers they can do it, too?
Can't an X-er be equally inspired by a Y-er, or indeed any human?

(Substitute in any racial or gender groups of your choice for X and Y.)

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neilk
I don't think your comment is offensive, and I get what you're saying -- you
would prefer that all of humanity be inspired by what one of us does.
Regrettably this is not the case.

People identify more with people that look like themselves. This is a bug in
the human OS and we can't ever totally fix it. Even if we could somehow fix
that, there are good reasons why someone will gauge their own chances based on
the success of others who are similar to them, especially in a society that's
still working on eliminating racial and gender disparities.

Let me take an example closer to home. Paul Graham's theory about Y Combinator
was, among other things, that people were ready to found successful companies
at a much earlier age than was previously suspected. He has pretty much proven
this by now, and I know lots of bright kids who are ready to take the startup
plunge.

But think of how people felt before -- "I can't start a company, I'm just a
college kid" or "What do I know about business, I've just worked in a coffee
shop" or "The people who start computer businesses have to be really smart, I
don't even have a degree yet." or even if they do think they have the skills,
that "nobody is going to trust a kid like me, the game is stacked against me.
Forget it." And there is even the worry that one might succeed, but then be
totally alone and alienated from all your friends.

If the barrier is that high just for ageism, consider how much higher it is
for sexism and racism. And people grow up and leave their youthful
inexperience behind; you can't do the same with gender or ethnic background.
Think how much more mental fortitude it would take to try to succeed in a
profession where you'll always be the odd person out due to your gender or
color. Knowing that someone's blazed the trail for you becomes very important.

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johnnybgoode
I see what you mean, and I get the motivation for this kind of thing. I'd
quibble with your choice of example, though - Paul backtracked on that,
unfortunately. But leaving that aside, I liked the way you described the
reason for all this: as a bug. As intelligent beings (ha ha), I think humans
should try to be aware of the bug and work around it, instead of _reinforcing_
it, which is what this does. (In this case, sexism is reinforced.)

Consider the implications of your last sentence: The trail has only been
blazed for you if someone else in your subgroup has done something already. It
hasn't been blazed if some other human did it. Again, this just reinforces the
separation of humans into subgroups, instead of rejecting the importance of
subgroups entirely.

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pg
_Paul backtracked on that, unfortunately._

I did?

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johnnybgoode
IIRC, about four years ago you made the point that if grad students can start
companies, undergrads can too. Some time later, I believe you implied that
you'd gone too far, and undergrads generally weren't as ready as you'd
thought. I think one of the reasons you once mentioned was that people who'd
worked for a while had experienced how much it sucked, and this made them more
determined or desperate when they ran their startups.

That first point was in an essay or talk, but the second might have been
somewhere else. Maybe "backtracked" wasn't the best word (backpedaled,
maybe?), because I'm not saying you completely reversed your position and
started rejecting all young people, but I hope it's clear what I'm getting at.

Here is the talk: <http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html>

And this _might_ be the other thing I'm thinking of:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html>

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pg
Current undergrads do turn out to be at a disadvantage as startup founders.
But because of the gravitational attraction of college, not because of their
age.

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johnnybgoode
Sure, but doesn't this increase the average age of YC founders, especially
since you still advise young people to go to college?

Put another way, rather than telling 18-year-olds to start companies, you now
tell them to go to college for the experience - where, as you say, they're at
a disadvantage as startup founders. I assume you wouldn't tell them to do both
at the same time.

