

Ask YC: Have any girls applied to YC?  Any get in? - shadowplay

There must be some Caterina Fakes and Sandy Lerners in there, right?

======
jl
There have been 5 female cofounders. Marie from Heysan, Divya from Jamglue,
and Michelle (with a company from last summer that hasn't launched yet) are
the women still involved with their startups.

I hope more women will apply for funding this fall!

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plusbryan
We had a female hacker employee over the summer that came to a couple of the
YC dinners. First thing out of every guy hacker's mouth - so, are you
likebetter's graphic designer?

I'm sure we all have the best intentions, but face it, we're a bunch of
chauvinistic bastards. I hope more women apply and serve as counter examples
to an outdated stereotype.

~~~
imsteve
Ok, so what have the girls done? Certainly women have different tendencies
than guys.

Help us correct our stereotypes.

~~~
imsteve
ok that's what I thought then.

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SwellJoe
I've encouraged my girlfriend to apply (she's smart, has a couple of good
business ideas, has done a lot of design work and has a college degree in art,
and has great work experience at Google among other places...she has the
skills she needs to be valuable to a startup), but startups are just not her
thing. I don't know if it's endemic to being a woman...risk aversion is
definitely more important to her than me, but that may just be different
personalities, not related to sex.

It would almost certainly be a positive thing to have a well-qualified woman
involved early in a startups life, as there are definitely some differences in
the sexes, and some balance would probably be valuable. But, as someone else
pointed out, the number of women in the hard sciences is very low, and
probably lowest in computer science. Design is better represented, but even in
that, there is a much lower number of women involved than men.

I suspect the goal should be (if there is a goal to be found in all of this)
to get more girls interested in the hard sciences early. Being equipped to
build a technology business is something that starts young.

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jdavid
I hate to say it because i only wish that it was not true, but women seem to
question authority a lot less.

Maybe a YC for women would work better to attract female founders.

Another difference I find is that women tend to gather more information before
making a decision on something, maybe a YC that was better focused on this
would help women cross the gap?

~~~
sjf
Close, but no cigar.

Women take less risks than men, and are less motivated by money and status.

~~~
mariorz
"are less motivated by money and status."

you need to go out and meet some women

~~~
sjf
I am a woman

~~~
mariorz
you must be kidding then, women aren't less motivated by these things at all,
women don't care about status?? cmon!, it's only the "common" or expected ways
to achieve these things that differ between the sexes.. a lot of women acquire
status trough their marriage, it is not as common the other way around.

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divya
I wrote a blog post about this awhile back:
<http://divyab.livejournal.com/5855.html>

the post is somewhat rough, preachy, and jumps around a little bit. I would
probably write it differently now after a year of start-up-ing. Also, feel
free to make fun of me for using LiveJournal.

------
jsjenkins168
We have a female co-founder, but she's not really a hacker. Where she lacks in
programming skill she more than makes up for it in other areas though, which
is why she's on the team. Don't be fooled, she runs much of the show..

~~~
mynameishere
_she more than makes up for it in other areas though_

Hey, I just resisted the urge to say something crude.

~~~
jsjenkins168
Yeah... I probably could have worded that better. My intent was obviously to
emphasize her product design, marketing, and business relations skills. She
reads this forum btw.

------
jamiequint
"never attribute to malice what can be explained by math" -pg

people usually found companies with their friends peoples friends are usually
of the same sex less women in technology thus the number of founders will be
around that small percentage squared

I forget what PG essay this is from, anyone?

~~~
juanpablo
"Ideas for Startups" (<http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html>)

------
gustaf
Good question! This is a pretty bad problem.

Marie from heysan! was the only girl in the winter program 2007

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davidw
Have any boys? Generally, I thought that applicants were done with college.

~~~
shadowplay
"Girl" isn't a pejorative unless you're determined to take it that way. It has
nothing to do with age; it's part of an informal nomenclature, as in "girls
and guys". I know many women who refer to themselves as "girls" -- including
those in their fifties and sixties -- and/or use "grrl" in their online names,
and there are even groups like LinuxChix which use "chicks" in a hip sense
rather than a belittling one. "Girls' night out" is another example. I would
even observe there's an inflection point where women above a certain age
prefer the term and consider it a compliment to be referred to as such, as
youth and vitality are desirable connotations.

And groups of women _do_ refer to wanting to find more "boys" -- the terms
"men" and "women" both seem to connote some kind of stodginess, probably
because most people's models for what men and women are, growing up, is
parents, teachers, and other authority figures, all of whom are tragically
unhip.

~~~
bls
Have you ever had a serious job with female coworkers? I'm going to guess
"no," since your entire post is nonsense.

First, you are referring to informal situations. But, this is (supposed to be)
a professional setting, and the rules are much different in a professional
setting. Generally, you want to refer to the femininity of women as little as
possible in a professional setting, and when you do have to refer to their
femininity, you must be extra formal.

Here is the rule I go by: never call a woman a girl in a situation where it
would be inappropriate to call her a bitch (she better be a good friend). And,
never call a black man a boy because it is almost as bad as "nigger."

If you don't understand the reasoning behind these rules then you should find
a good friend to explain them to you very carefully.

~~~
shadowplay
Sounds like you worked with some pretty uptight people! I would suggest buying
them copies of Spice World. And no, "Hacker News" is not a professional
setting, it's certainly informal. "Women" is itself a loaded term to many
feminists, who may prefer "womyn", "womun", or some other spelling.

In order for "girl" to be insulting, you must subscribe to the notion that
there is something wrong with being young and female. Accepting that premise
is to unwittingly agree with perpetuating a worldview in which the very notion
of female-ness is disempowering. "Girl Power" actually challenges the
establishment; suppression of any reference to femininity reinforces the older
male status quo.

That so many people are programmed to think "girl" is insulting just shows how
far society still needs to go to free itself from counterproductive paradigms.

> _never call a woman a girl in a situation where it would be inappropriate to
> call her a bitch_

Your implication of equivalence is loony, and of course more evidence for the
informality of Hacker News. Your post also suggests to me a useful reason to
use the terms "girls" and "boys" -- to smoke out people who get offended so
easily or are stuck with such old paradigms that they clearly lack the
flexibility needed to work in a start-up. Valuable co-founders aren't stuck
with old thinking, are _hard_ to offend and _easy_ to joke around with.

------
alaskamiller
jamglue.com has a girl founder: <http://www.jamglue.com/people/divya>

don't remember anyone else though. maybe shoutfit had a girl founder too.

~~~
jkush
I know it's off topic but I feel like an idiot now. I posted a link to this a
while back: <http://micropledge.com/projects/music-mash> without knowing that
this had already been done by a YC startup. On one hand, I'm really glad to
see that someone has done this idea. On the other, I'm upset that it wasn't
me.

At the risk of sounding desperate, I often wonder if I will ever get it right!

~~~
jkush
I don't care about karma, but to the person who downvoted my comment above,
seriously?

