
Betting My Life On Transgender Hackers - alliem
http://www.tcombinator.blogspot.com/2012/04/betting-my-life-on-transgender-hackers.html?m=1
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delinka
Where's the substance? "I'm gonna do something" with little explanation of
"something" or the motivation behind doing it. I can support living your
passion, but I'm not motivated to provide much of any other kind of support
without more background information.

~~~
alliem
I am moving to Mountain View to run TCombinator out if the HackerDojo.com. My
apologies for not being clear.

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chris_wot
This is great! I read some of your blog, and your story sounds like a tough
one... I can only assume that it s like that for a lot of other transgender
folks.

What is your general plan?

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alliem
I'll be in MV at the hackerdojo in 1-2 weeks. Once I am there, the first thing
I will be building will be a front end to crowdfunding platforms like
kickstarter featuring free/libre projects as the alpha for the Copyleft Media
Foundation, with Richard Stallman and the FSF interested in my idea. Since my
first incubee is an artist, a startup to sell her paintings is next.
CubicleCurator is me asking offices to hang up her art, and hoping they buy
some when I threaten to take it back and put it back in rotation. Third will
be the TCombinator web site. I can't say for sure what will be next after
that. At some point I will walk into YC and lay out my hand. For food, I'll
try to always have a date lined up for lunch/dinner. For places to stay, I'm
just winging it hoping somebody comes through for me. That's the part I am
trusting my charm, enthusiasm, and unbelievable luck.

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kevingadd
Do you believe transgender hackers are specifically discriminated against or
disadvantaged in the startup community? Do you think that a startup incubator
built around the all the participants being transgendered and drawing
attention to their gender identity will help address this?

Or is the idea just to give something back, in general? It's not clear what
your purpose is, or why you decided to go about it without any resources.

~~~
alliem
I'm looking at the data. 1 in 500 people are trans. 0 in 10000 venture funded
startup founders are trans. Why is there such a disparity between their
proportion of the population, and their representation in the startup world? I
am not going to speculate as to why that is, I am just going to hack it. I
don't intend for all incubated startup to have all transgender founders. My
only condition is that they have at least one. It might seem like I am doing
this with no resources, but my gut tells me that I am building wealth by doing
it this way, that the story it creates will catalyze events that make those
resources available. All I need to do is get picked up by YC.

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dguaraglia
While I admire your intentions, I think you should first look at the actual
number of transgender people starting companies before drawing a conclusion
that they "don't get funded". For all I know (and I don't know the numbers,
I'm speculating here) we could use the same argument about Latinos and African
Americans (jeez, do I hate those stupid terms).

It'd be interesting if you could backup your intentions with some numbers. I
think you'll find the startup community, specially in San Francisco and the
Bay Area, is specially open to all cultures and sexual orientations.

In any case, the best of lucks! :)

~~~
alliem
Just because you could make the same argument for any group, does not
invalidate the argument. It speaks to it's universality. If getting them
funding were the problem, it would call for a different fix. The problem is
getting them to apply, to make them aware the option even exists, and to get
them to think like entrepreneurs to prepare them for the rest of a YC like
process. We just come in earlier in the life cycle and are using a succesful
business practice as a tool for social good. We got 5 new incubees over night,
so they do exist, and we are rolling.

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vertis
It looks like an interesting concept, but I feel like you're jumping the gun a
little. I would expect, though I don't pretend to know, that starting an
incubator would require a lot of contacts/money/etc.

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alliem
Moving to where the contacts are, so I can make them, and leading a life such
that my story gathers attention, in hopes of attracting funding; seems like
the way to go. I want to inspire future transpeople with my story. If I can
make this work, starting from nothing, then there is no excuse for a
transperson that has nothing not to apply to TC

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nl
The name is a little derivative...

~~~
alliem
I thought I'd make the idea easy to convey. My first name for it was
TIntegrator but the word tint throws one off.

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mquander
TIncubator? I can't tell if that's better or worse.

~~~
alliem
So we either apply tint to windows or keep tin warm? Thanks for the thought
though!

