
An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference - jaldoretta
http://www.jenniferaldoretta.com/2015/02/22/an-open-letter-to-jessica-livingston/
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xtrumanx
Not quite what I was expecting with a post that begins with "An Open Letter
to...". I've been trained to expect any such letters would be someone's way to
make their grievances about some entity public.

Now I need to go reflect on why I feel disappointed it was so positive. Haha,
only serious.

~~~
pconner
I like it. It's a nice change of pace. Not that there's anything wrong with
negative open letters, but as you said, that seems to make up a majority of
them.

~~~
saraid216
Only a majority of the ones that (1) make the news and (2) are explicitly
called "open letters". There are actually tons of public missives on the
internet full of positivity.

------
wallflower
I watched most of the FFC. Like Marc Andreesen has said, software is _eating_
the world. YC is getting such critical mass now that entrepreneurs and
idealists/pragmatists with world-affecting ideas are now applying for YC. Not
necessarily because they'd heard of YC - but because someone they know who
cares about them had heard about YC.

YC, in my opinion, is getting to a point where it can help incubate world-
changing ideas that don't necessarily sell technology to consumers directly
but use technology to enable more efficiency or connection or empathy (or all
of the above).

Of all the presentations, Grace's was the best. I loved Grace Garey of Watsi's
stories.

About how every Tuesday night, about eight or ten of the world-wide team of
Watsi, in every timezone (day, afternoon, morning) would always get together
for a Google Hangout to talk about Watsi.

About how she was at a busy bar in NYC with her friends and they were in the
waning hours of an online contest to win $10k for Watsi. They were falling
behind, and Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who
came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their
smartphone. They ended up winning by the scarcest of margins (1%) and the
bouncer gonged a bell and the entire bar celebrated. Like Brian and Joe of
Airbnb creating their own cereal, it was a gutsy move to make it to the next
critical step (raising enough funds for some of the Watsi team to go full-time
and all-in). And a little different.

Congratulations to the YC team on making a ripple in the pond!

~~~
jsprogrammer
YC is still stuck in a world of ideas based on controlling others through the
creation of debt and claiming lifetime ownership of others' work. That they
are stuck there is not entirely unsurprising, nor is it unsurprising that
there is a forming gender-class that is trying to emulate the functioning of
that world. To me, continuing to carry out these decade[century,
millennium?]-long ideas is not very world-changing. It may be progressive
enhancement, but that has slowly been happening for awhile.

The anecdote that you shared about the bar in NYC smacks of this old-world
thinking:

>the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have
to vote for

I'm still not quite sure if this is slavery or just tribal exculsivism. I
don't know, maybe it's both?

~~~
saturdayplace
> YC is still stuck in a world of ideas based on controlling others through
> the creation of debt and claiming lifetime ownership of others' work.

I don't understand this sentiment AT ALL. There is no debt involved, so I
don't see any control exerted through those means. And sure, they buy non-
controlling ownership of others' work, but that ownership is sold freely. Not
to mention the other consideration that lands on the selling side in these
transactions. I don't think the sellers are making out nearly as badly as you
seem to be implying.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>There is no debt involved

Can you provide an executed contract to confirm?

YC appears to have moved away from convertible notes (ie. debt) [1], but if
you read closely it appears that PG said the reason was to avoid debt term
limits and interest rate limits....so it's an even more extreme version of
debt, just not 'debt' according to CA regulations.

[1] [http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-
replacemen...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-replacement-
for-convertible-notes)

~~~
tim333
If you read that link you posted you'll see "what the investor buys is not
debt, but something more like a warrant. So there is no need to fix a term or
decide on an interest rate"

Warrants just give the investor the right to purchase equity at a given price
some time. They are not debt.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I did read the link, which is why I posted it. If you read it, you'll see that
PG is essentially just renaming debt to get around CA regulations.

No matter what it's called: loan, debt, warrant, convertible note, SAFE, it's
an instrument that attaches to future earnings.

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emcarey
The female founders conference is probably one of the best days of the year. I
saw so many friends, women I know on the Internet, and I cried tears of joy
three times during the speeches. It's hard to be what you can't see. Jessica
and Kat have done an AMAZING job of putting female founders in front of us so
we can look and say, hey you know, Kathryn Minshew did YC, I CAN DO IT TO.

Even though our startup didn't make it into the last YC batch, we're applying
again. We love the community, we love the yc philosophy and approach to
building products and we want to inspire other women just like us to apply.

Thank you for writing this letter and sharing what we all think, yesterday was
incredible.

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ed_blackburn
I nearly didn't read because so often Open Letters are public complaints,
usually passive aggressive in nature and almost always divisive.

So Jennifer. Thank you. Thank you for restoring my faith in open letters. Or
rather making me think hard before I pass judgement on something I've not even
read.

Saunters off, with tail firmly between legs.

------
tzs
She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low
percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site,
there is this interesting list:

    
    
       39% of chemists and material scientists are women;
       27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women;
       15.6% of chemical engineers are women;
       12.1% of civil engineers are women;
       8.3% of electrical and electronics engineers are women;
       17.2% of industrial engineers are women; and
       7.2% of mechanical engineers are women.
    

Does anyone have an explanation as to why chemists and material scientists
have such a relatively high percentage of women?

The two highest are science, as opposed to engineering, so it could be that
science in general is more women friendly than engineering, but even if we
just look at the engineering disciplines on that list, there still is a big
difference among them. Why would chemical engineering be much more women
friendly than mechanical engineering?

~~~
crazy1van
Maybe women on average just prefer some jobs more than others?

Really, I'm sure there are millions of factors that enter into to those stats
-- about one for every woman because everyone woman is unique with her own
goals and tastes -- but I think the occam's razor for this topic is that men
and women on average have different preferences. Would we be hunting for a
root cause in social pressure or discrimination if we found women were a much
higher chunk of the audience for Twilight and men were a higher percent of
Avengers viewers?

The bottom line, whatever the reason for discrepancies, is in your daily
professional life to treat both sexes the equally.

~~~
wpietri
There are few things in discourse I hate more than this sort of "just", the
kind of ignorance-encouraging, status-quo-supporting "just" that tells people
to stop thinking.

Given that we have a millennia-long history of gender discrimination and given
that women got the vote less than a century ago, this "just" is ridiculous.

Look at this graph:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
wom...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-
stopped-coding)

I guess in 1970 women "just" didn't like medicine or law. (That's certainly
what people said then.) And now, using your helpful explanatory framework,
they "just" do! It's unexplainable! Things just happen without relation to
other things. Who could possibly know anything?

~~~
b3tta
Hmm... Sometimes even I say "maybe women just prefer [...]", but actually mean
exactly that, what you said: There are social trends and in this case there is
a social trend specific to women wrongly being taught that they are not as
good as men in STEM fields. So much in fact (here in Germany) that it's kind
of unsettling, when they tell you "haha I'm just not good in math haha" and
you can't even, because it's so effing wrong.

I believe many (young) people will tell you that women are "just" like that,
but actually mean "they are just taught to think so", because in their male
position there is no need to choose are careful wording. I'm also pretty sure
that, while the society at large is fault for this herd thinking about this,
the parents play the biggest role in where the daughter places herself in the
world.

~~~
wpietri
Could be, but a lot of people take that "just" as meaning "there are essential
gender differences rooted in the very fabric of the universe, so there's no
point in talking about it". So if I were trying to point at the social factors
that shape general preferences, I'd look for a phrasing that can't be taken
for a call, as here, to ignore those factors.

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ninavizz
Could the guys on this thread please stop it with the "pipeline" discussion?!
Few women actually cite that to be an issue. It's distracting. Listen more,
talk less.

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jdhouse4
Perhaps next there will be a forum for older-than-30 founders?

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Animats
When computing went "social", I expected that women would play a much larger
role. That didn't happen. The "social" companies are dominated by men.

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rgarcia3
Sorry ladies. It sounds like whining to me. Try Hispanic female in engineering
during the 80s. I'm on my 2nd start-up in a competitive tech world. Each and
every women at the FFC have had their struggles to get where they are today.
So pull on your big girl pants and jump in - the water is fine - being a woman
hasn't kept Tracy or Grace or Adora or Ruchi from being successful at what
they do. That is the lesson that should be taken away from the day in San
Fran. I went, I listen, I am inspired. Now I'm off my soap box and off to
conquer my small part of the world. @vijilent

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chaostheory
"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical
engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any
other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated
university."

Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer
science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that
women are more attracted to high prestige areas like law, medicine, politics,
or finance. Engineering in general is low prestige. It's akin to being a
plumber or electrician plus extra educational requirements (high skill, high
pay, low social status). Despite the maker movement, our culture at large
still doesn't value science & engineering as much as other fields.

Popular mainstream shows like Big Bang Theory don't help. On a whole shows
like this just serve to further old stereotypes of everyone in our fields as
being socially inept, ugly, weirdos. Is it a surprise that most females don't
want to join our ranks after seeing that?

Are there any quantitative measures on social status by occupation to validate
(or invalidate) my guess?

~~~
RockyMcNuts
Yeah, top jobs where women dominate are all super high prestige, elementary
school teachers, nursing/health aides, secretarial, retail, food service... :)

~~~
chaostheory
You're missing the forest for the trees (assuming your assumptions are
correct).

Business (executives, secretaries) is more respectable than IT (programmers,
tech support).

I would argue that nurses and teachers have higher prestige than a programmer
or engineer in most parts of the country. (Let's not confuse salary with
prestige)

~~~
johngalt
Still comparing apples to oranges. The most common job for women is secretary
(which generated countless headlines). The most common job for men is truck
driver not programmer. People always focus on CEOs and company founders being
all men, but no one brings up all the people working construction, pest
control, mining etc...

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3pt14159
Before you write a comment about why women are or aren't enrolled in STEM
fields, please read the Wikipedia article on it. Every time someone says a
generalization like "they just choose safer employment" or "high status
something, something" without first reviewing a summary of the body of
research into the matter, it's kinda pointless. It's like someone saying
"here's why I think computers crash" but they've never read a book on HTML.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields)

~~~
nitrogen
You wouldn't read a book on HTML to know why computers crash. A book on
advanced C, maybe.

~~~
3pt14159
You kinda missed the point. Someone reading a book on html night stumble upon
a kinda sorta correct response.

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stefantalpalaru
What a sickening sycophantic declaration just to plug a very dangerous return
to calendar-based contraception methods: [http://www.readytogroove.com/the-
cycle/appendix-a-the-sympto...](http://www.readytogroove.com/the-
cycle/appendix-a-the-sympto-thermal-method-for-pregnancy-prevention/)

~~~
notsony
I'm going to upvote you.

It's a very good point you've made here.

This founder is giving bad advice to women who don't want to get pregnant
causing some women to ditch contraception like condoms... resulting in
unwanted pregancices.

~~~
rdl
I think the "cycle tracking" stuff is usually more about "really want to get
pregnant, having a hard time" vs "not willing to use one of the many other
forms of birth control". (EDIT: although, this site does appear to promote it
for preventing birth, too, wtf)

(It is always kind of jarring whenever I see that, because whenever I think of
reproductive health my first thought is "omg please please please no", but
there apparently are people who want to get pregnant/have kids.)

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garrisondmr
I watched the FFC live and what struck me was that it was the same as any
other founder conference except that it was a girl on stage instead of a dude.
If we want to stop making gender a big deal then we need to stop making gender
a big deal. There is no Male Founder Conference right?

~~~
impendia
> we need to stop making gender a big deal

By your own admission, FFC didn't make a big deal out of gender and is
therefore doing as you ask.

Events like these are appreciated and found helpful by the women who
participate in them. Isn't that sufficient grounds to be happy that they are
taking place?

~~~
jsprogrammer
If the first word of the title is a gender exclusive term, and that is not
making it a big deal, what would be considered making it a big deal?

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lucidrains
So much talk for so very little. Can we not just celebrate women in tech? We
all share this world for a limited time, so who gives a fuck who wears a
shinier hat. Its all a game, a game that moves our world towards a better
place, a world where we can put down our hats and spend time with each other
and allow our benevolent machines to take care of us.

------
stretchwithme
Carol Dweck has shown us that it is the belief that intelligence is fixed is a
major problem.

If children are told that failure is just part of learning and not indicative
of potential, they keep trying until they master the material.

Of course, if someone is uninterested in acquiring a particular skill, that's
irrelevant. They may have exactly the same potential for learning, but just
don't care.

We should not be trying to make people pursue careers because we don't like
the statistics. People should be free to follow their own desires. They know
better than "society", whatever that is.

