
What I've Learned From Female Founders So Far - dmnd
http://blog.samaltman.com/what-ive-learned-from-female-founders-so-far
======
jmduke
_We want to fund more women because it 's the right thing to do, but we're not
doing this for diversity's sake alone. We want to fund more women because we
are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and
many of those are going to be founded by women._

This is a huge thing that people seem to ignore when arguing "against
diversity" (I put that in quotes because I don't think anyone actually argues
against diversity -- they couch it in terms of meritocracy and egalitarianism,
saying that the best people should succeed regardless of race and gender, it
just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.) I
think Sam does a great job of presenting this as a thing of 'greed' \-- or,
more charitably, economic rationality.

In my mind, there are only two real possibilities (or, perhaps more
realistically, two ends of a spectrum):

1\. The VC ecosystem, as it stands, is almost completely unbiased and fair-
minded with regards to gender and race. The massive disparities in terms of
funding and founder backgrounds reflect that.

2\. The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is
not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil;
in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a
result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of
founders, startups, and opportunities.

~~~
colmvp
"...it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and
male."

So then why not also include some initiatives to encourage more Asian,
Hispanic, and Black men?

~~~
malanj
Perhaps because woman are the fastest "big" gain they can do? There are lots
of woman in the world (far more than any minority group), yet very few doing
startups.

It's the biggest market inefficiency.

edit: You could also argue that the diversity in thinking and approach you'll
get from woman could be very high. So perhaps they'll be more likely to start
new kinds of companies in untapped markets.

~~~
sliverstorm
There are more women in the world than pacific islanders, but if we only
address the women aspect, are we not going to end up recruiting primarily
white women? If the field is currently friendly to white men, and we make it
more friendly to women, we wind up with white men & white women, not white men
& all races of women. Right?

~~~
vacri
Do something about it then. The author of this article is seeing a way to help
change the status for women. You could do something to help change the status
for pacific islanders.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm not Sam. I haven't _anywhere near_ his clout, nor am I even in that field.
Nor are there more than even a tiny, tiny handful of pacific islanders in my
town. I may have met two?

~~~
tesseractive
Sam didn't start this in a vacuum. He started it after women in the tech
community laid a lot of groundwork educating the community about gender
diversity problems.

Are there specific things the technology community could do to open the doors
to the Pacific Islanders community? I'm sorry to say, I don't actually know
the answer to that. If you do, write blog posts and meet with people and try
to organize other people like yourself online and work to educate the rest of
us on what we can do. I absolutely think there would be plenty of people who
would be more than happy to help tackle these problems if someone led the way.

But if there's no one out there already leading the way on a cause that's
important to you, the absolute best thing you could do is to try to do it
yourself. There's an old slogan, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
It makes a pretty good point.

------
mcphilip
This topic is a landmine but I applaud YC for being willing to tackle it
anyway. There's almost nothing that can be said on the topic without upsetting
a large number of people.

Before switching to CS, I spent a couple years in nursing school. Upon
switching to CS, my dad told me "good, I didn't want a son that wiped asses
for a living". I don't claim my experience had any equivalency to what females
in tech go through, but I can attest firsthand that gender biases in choice of
profession can be really hard to overcome even in the minds of the people you
love.

~~~
001sky
This seems to confuse social stigma and gender bias. Garbage (Bin) men are
overwhelmingly male, so too are plumbers, and pest control, sewer-workers and
the like. A comment like "good, I didn't want a son that wiped [shit] for a
living" would apply to any of these fields, it seems without reference to
gender. Quite the opposite, as dealing with such filth actually is something
women quite avoid.

~~~
mcphilip
Fair enough, that specific statement could indicate a social stigma unrelated
to gender. It was, however, common to encounter plenty of skepticism that
nursing was a proper profession for a male.

------
Mz
_Another message was that we should do more to make women feel welcome.

As we do more events, we'll continue to reach out to women._

This sort of thing really, seriously annoys me. HN is a funnel for applying to
YC. You do not need to "reach out to women." You need to _stop shutting out
the ones who are ALREADY here_ and trying like hell to participate in spite of
frequently being stonewalled, being unable to get anyone to hold a private
conversation with them, etc ad nauseum.

In some sense, I will probably rant a bit more about this on my personal blog
today because I was already steaming mad about this _before_ I logged in to HN
to read this article showing how badly the people at the top are simply blind.

~~~
johnbm
> being unable to get anyone to hold a private conversation with them

Are you really surprised, right after that "Glass wall" story was posted here
about one woman's terrible tragedy of having to deal with a male executive who
briefly talked to her in an office stairwell? Convincing herself the entire
office was about to think they were having an affair?

And you're surprised men are less eager to approach women than men in tech?

~~~
Mz
Are you merely being funny/sarcastic/something else I can't quite parse? Or is
it lost on you that I wrote that piece?

FYI: I wrote some follow-up yesterday explaining more of the context:
[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-
personal-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-personal-
gray-zone.html)

I had my reasons for my conclusion. I do not believe they were an overreaction
at all.

~~~
jeremyt
I also think you're overreacting, honestly.

I don't think I've ever in my professional career observed someone being
feverish and flushed and assume that it had something to do with sexual
tension. Men just aren't that observant.

More likely, I would assume you were either sick or anxious because of some
work-related conversation. Neither of which is a reason to be concerned vis-à-
vis office politics.

Also, can I offer a suggestion to your problem? Couldn't you make up a little
white lie and tell your coworkers that you had a very minor medical condition
that resulted in being feverish and flushed often but that there were no other
serious effects? No need to name anything, but that should take care of your
worry about getting an email every time you sneeze and also deal with your
concern about constantly having your obvious symptoms be misunderstood.

~~~
mtrimpe
I rewrote this from a rather snide to a bit more neutral comment; but are you
aware that just because you don't that doesn't mean that others don't?

Or that even if _all_ men really aren't observant enough, which is also a
rather daring statement if I may say so, that still leaves room for women
noticing it and communicating this more explicitly.

~~~
jeremyt
Of course I'm aware of that.

It's exactly the point I'm trying to make. I've never heard of anything like
this happening, anywhere, ever. Even in casual settings. Nor have I observed
that a normal response to sexual arousal is to be feverish and flushed.

To draw the type of conclusions that she is claiming, her coworkers would have
to (1) be incredibly observant (2) reject all of the most plausible
explanations for a very unlikely explanation and (3) care.

This is Ockham's razor.

I have a friend that is abnormally paranoid. He thinks everybody is out to get
him and sees devious plotting from the most innocuous of situations. "those
two guys at the water cooler are plotting to make me look bad at the meeting
today" \- type stuff.

Chances are they are not.

All I'm saying is that it sounds like fear of taking a wrong social step at
work seems to be affecting her performance, not to mention increasing her
anxiety.

It could perhaps be healthy to reconsider whether her assumptions are
reasonable or not.

~~~
mtrimpe
The thing is that she never said the thoughts were reasonable; it's perfectly
possible that she acknowledges she's a bit over-sensitive about it just like
you might do something out of fear that you'll be thought of as incompetent or
unsuccessful.

On the other hand; thinking that this kind of thing is never discussed is
rather naive. There's plenty of people who _are_ very observant about these
kinds of things and will happily discuss them when the opportunity arises. We
even invented a word for it: gossiping.

------
cykho
One big learning from my time @msft was that the gender gap in STEM really
starts in middle school. Everything else (YC included) is largely downstream.
If you want to help get involved at the grade school level. For those who are
interested here's one of the better resources they produced:
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/collaboration/focus/wome...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/collaboration/focus/womenincomputing/womenintechbrochure.pdf)

~~~
boyaka
Sounds like puberty. Maybe it STEMs all the way down to genetics. Evolution.
Can't we just accept that females and males have evolved differently?

~~~
MartinCron
The problem with the evolution/genetics argument is that people can use it as
an excuse for deplorable behavior.

Genetics isn't destiny. We're more sophisticated than that.

~~~
boyaka
Yes. Both Men and Women. And I think one gender is having a harder time
understanding our differences and how we can suppress our natural urges and
grow away from them.

------
tod222
> _And we 're working on something to improve the quality of Hacker News
> comments._

Excellent. Can't wait to see what it is.

~~~
crystaln
Maybe replacing the moderator hell/slowban system with a feedback system to
improve commenter behavior instead of infuriating commenters and scaring away
controversial people.

I've been banned a few times simply for strongly expressing an opinion
contrary to HN ideology. I probably will be again for even bringing it up.

~~~
MartinCron
_strongly expressing an opinion contrary to HN ideology_

Is it merely contrary to HN ideology or something that's considered outside
the realm of legitimate controversy in this community?

Some positions aren't going to be well-received no matter how well they are
phrased, which is generally considered a good thing. We shouldn't have to
continuously debate the idea that the universe is more than 10,000 years old,
or that women should be first-class citizens in our society, for example.

------
matryoshka
As a female founder I hope these types of thoughts are promoted but the
resulting actions are not obvious. I wouldn't want to be a female founder
accepted into ycombinator and then have myself or others wonder if I am part
of some kind of quota. I really want my acceptance to be based on my merits.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>I wouldn't want to be a female founder accepted into ycombinator and then
have myself or others wonder if I am part of some kind of quota

I'm far removed from YC and the startup scene, but as an exceptionally
intelligent black man I do have experience with scenarios that might lead one
to feel that way. My advice is simply: don't feel that way. Be completely
confident in yourself and abilities and ignore what others _might_ be
thinking. YC should not be seen as validation in any way, but as a stepping
stone for your personal goals. In that light, the exact reasons you were
funded are of no concern to your future success. Besides, I'm sure many a
founder has been accepted for superficial reasons (being from the right
school, having the right look, etc). If certain of your traits happen to match
the current funding trends then so be it; consider it a stroke of luck and
nothing else. I guarantee you the next white kid from Stanford that gets
funded will not be sitting around wondering if he really belongs there.

------
intortus
It's telling of the environment we're in that the author has to make such a
heavy disclaimer about not doing things for diversity's sake. What would be so
bad about admitting one cares about diversity? I think there's room in
business to pursue one's values.

~~~
sama
I said "we're not doing this for diversity's sake alone." It'd be terribly
unfair to the super qualified people we work with to imply that we were
working with them just because we wanted diversity.

~~~
intortus
That's a good point, that it _is_ about diversity but that it's only part of
the entire picture.

I think people will complain about fairness even when they're not affected,
because the tech community tends to have a strong knee-jerk reaction to this
sort of thing. But it would be foolish to not consider diversity as one of
many metrics to gauge how effectively one is avoiding costly biases.

------
paulbaumgart
Thanks for bringing reason and sanity to such a politically-charged issue. The
insults on Twitter when you asked for advice were pretty depressing even to a
bystander, but it looks like you found the signal in the noise :)

------
squigs25
"because it's the right thing to do"

The right thing to do is fund the best concepts that exist. I don't care if
they're all women founded or all men founded.

The reason there aren't more women founders is the real problem at hand. It
might be that women are more risk averse. It might be that there's a stigma
against girls who program. It might be that there's a large enough population
of women who are more focused on finding Mr. Right than founding the right
company.

I'm making up some numbers here, but if 1 in 5 companies are founded by women,
then it wouldn't make sense to seek a 50/50 founding member gender breakdown
in a YC class. That said, my guess is that more than 20% of companies you
choose would be founded by women, because the women that did make it to the
company founding stage are that much more likely to have the skill sets and
the drive to be successful.

------
minimaxir
For reference, here's a chart I made a few months ago of female and male YC
founders accepted into Y Combinator by year:
[http://i.imgur.com/MCLqUm3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/MCLqUm3.jpg) (from
[https://medium.com/p/2613f58e5082](https://medium.com/p/2613f58e5082) )

EDIT: The percentages in chart are # female founders accepted into YC / #
founders accepted into YC. The 24% statistic in the article is number of
startups with at least 1 female founder, so the chart may be biased lower than
that statistic.

~~~
pg
It's not 24% female founders btw. 24% of the companies have one or more female
founders.

~~~
minimaxir
Ah, stupid mistake on my part. Clarified.

------
larrys
"We funded a guy once who looked like Mark but ended up doing badly, and when
PG was asked by a reporter how to fool him, he said that apparently this was
one way. His real point was that looking like Zuckerberg means nothing--that
you can look remarkably like him and still fail miserably. "

To me the entire "look like Zuck" is more than the physical look. It's the
harvard attendance, of a certain age, and having certain interests and
mannerisms as well as background.

Truth is if you go to an Ivy or top school and view the student body you will
see a certain look and feel. Doesn't mean that people with the same look don't
attend a state school or community college, doesn't mean there aren't
exceptions at the Ivy, but the look and feel is definitely there. Perhaps they
end up looking that way after the first week as they get assimilated.

There is no doubt that people respond to visual cues and assign halo to them
rightly or wrongly. Or stereotypes whatever you want to call it.

Go ahead in and try to pitch YC looking like a guy who runs a wholesale
company and is 58 from the lower east side in NYC and doesn't look the part.
It would almost certainly be, for lack of a super clear winning idea, an
uphill battle.

------
rdl
It would be great for YC's outreach efforts to make a difference in getting
more great female founders to apply. There are other groups where outreach
could help get some quality underrepresented founders too, which might help
with the big ambitious science RFS: going after mid-career people in the
sciences and engineering a few years in advance of founding a startup and
seeding them with the idea of doing so. I know NSF has some outreach efforts
like that, but it would be great for YC if YC's name were known by PIs
thinking of going commercial.

~~~
square1
Shouldn't a desirable attribute from a founder be that they seek out whatever
is necessary for survival?

To me, regardless of gender, YC would only want those that were proactive and
dedicated to join a YC batch. It seems pointless to encourage specific
demographics that would not apply, to do so.

~~~
rdl
YC is clearly not necessary for survival, especially for someone who has
already had an exit (and thus has some capital and contacts), or someone who
is 50 and has run a 30 person lab, with some savings and other personal
contacts. YC can probably help in both of those cases, but the company is
capable of being successful without it.

I'd sure rather have an Elon Musk or a Mara Aspinall in YC than a randomly-
selected person who already believes YC is the best (or only) way to do a
startup.

There are two parts to this -- making YC as useful as possible to the best
founders, and making sure the best founders know that and apply.

------
sayemm
Good reads on Rose Blumkin, one of the most hardcore founders Warren Buffet
has ever bet on:

\- [http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin-nebraska-
furnitur...](http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin-nebraska-furniture-
mart.htm)

\- [http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-
reta...](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-retail-queen-
dies-at-104.html)

------
Consultant32452
Did I miss something? The only thing he states he's actually learned from
female founders so far is that women and men express confidence differently. I
was hoping for more substance.

~~~
RyanZAG
He literately can't say anything of substance on a topic like this or else his
words will show up all over the news as an attack by YC on some party or
other.

~~~
Consultant32452
He didn't even talk about _how_ men and women express confidence differently.
IMO the article was a waste.

~~~
atom-morgan
Men tend to exaggerate their skills. Women understate theirs.

See: [http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/19/women-hiring-
ma...](http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/19/women-hiring-math-jobs/)

~~~
loladesoto
my observation is that we also apologize more, speak up less, and negotiate
less effectively (if at all).

i teach 8 year-old girls how to code in my free time and one of the biggest
challenges to their success is re-wiring them to believe in themselves, in
their critical-thinking skills, in their ability to solve problems. it seems
they don't need a few mentor-role models: they need a _chorus_ of people
encouraging them and reminding them of their innate abilities. which leads me
to believe—i can only extrapolate—that this must be what many boys (and men)
experience on a quotidien basis.

i will never know, but i can help create that for myself and other women,
particularly the wee ones. :>

------
wyager
Why not just fund the best startups regardless of whom their founder is?

~~~
pg
You can't fund people who don't apply, and people can't apply if they don't
decide to start startups. The goal of the Female Founders Conference was to
encourage more women to do both, and as Sam points out, there is more YC can
do in that department.

~~~
logicalmind
I think I have a different perspective on this topic than most here. My wife
has founded multiple companies. I also have two daughters (and a son). One of
which is very interested in programming. I'm older, but back in college and
early professional life I worked with a number of women. Myself and my
colleagues treat them the same as the rest of the team. There certainly
weren't a lot of women, but we didn't treat them any different.

But the current generation of young techies seem to be outright hostile
towards women. All you have to do is read some of the comments on HN whenever
a topic in this area arises. From some of the things I read in comments I
seriously give pause on whether I should push my daughter in programming/tech.
Some women can tolerate this hostility better than others, but I don't see it
going away anytime soon. I really think the problem is with the attitude of
the modern young techy towards females. I don't know where it comes from or
how to fix it. But it worries me.

~~~
learc83
>But the current generation of young techies seem to be outright hostile
towards women.

To the extent that this is true, I think it could be backlash in response to
pushing for more women in tech.

My youngest brother's high school has a girls only programming club, and a
girls only robotics team (with no male equivalents). There was also a program
where kids from his engineering class got selected for a summer electrical
engineering program, with preferential selection for girls. He really wanted
to do it and he definitely had the grades and ability, but all 3 kids who were
selected were girls (who had lower GPAs and lower scores in the engineering
class.)

He lives in a pretty rural area, so there aren't really a lot of options for
him to get involved in something like a robotics team outside of school. I
would have probably been upset if something I was really interested in was off
limits because of my gender, and I can't really say how something like this
would have affected me when when I was 14.

------
siphor
I was kind of disappointed by this article, I was expecting some information
about things that women stereotypically do better than men in regards to
starting a company. (If you've found something like this I'd be really
interested to hear it!) Some traits that men, stereotypically, can learn from
(or even vice versa). Instead it's just outreach drivel, (which is not what
the title implies)

------
JTon
Unrelated to article: I'm not sure how this post made it to the front page so
fast. It's been up for ~ 5 mins and it's already #7 on my list with 7 pts. Did
you people who upvoted even read the article? Doesn't look like it.

~~~
minimaxir
The domain where the article was posted is very important. It's a good
indicator of article quality.

~~~
Crito
After doing some experimentation with Bayesian classification of HN articles
(for selecting articles that interest me) I've actually found that titles,
rather than URLs, domains, or even article text, is one of the best
indications of how good an article (and the accompanying discussion) will be.

 _(This is one of the reasons that I hate the moderators reverting article
titles to less descriptive ones.)_

~~~
saraid216
Share that somewhere?

~~~
Crito
I haven't, but I can if you're interested. "Best results" in this case is
pretty subjective so I didn't perform any rigorous experiments about the
relative quality of each method, that was just a general observation that I
had.

The program itself is just a quick HN scrapper combined with a naive bayes
classifier which periodically runs and sends selected article titles to an IRC
channel.

------
melindajb
Gotta say, Sam, I'm finding hope in my cynical old heart.

What I liked:

Listening, and acknowledging there is a problem, is an excellent first start.
That's progress for YC, which up until now seemed to have its head in the
sand.

The quick roll up of what you've heard most recently, also good, shows it's
more than lip service.

*Acknowledging publicly that confidence shows differently for women than for men is enormous. I've had people try to claim I'm not confident in my product. Outrageous!

Some other thoughts:

Female founder events are nice, but let's see PG and the Old VC boys show up
there too, so it isn't a pink ghetto.

Earmark your startup founders conference to be 50/50 male/female. Or some such
realistic but achievable number.

Understand that women need special help fundraising. The signals, games, and
rules are male created, and male oriented. Women are at a distinct
disadvantage in the fundraising process as a result. I have found most women
cannot give good fundraising advice, because they have not raised money, or
have they invested money. Would love to see YC write about this, specifically
for women. A rule book, if you will.

There's probably more, but as you keep engaging us, I'll keep thinking.

To those who might still be angry/cynical: This is a start. I believe we have
to allow room for organizations and people to evolve and change their minds,
lest we all freeze into pre-arranged points of view. I hope that doesn't
happen, because the world needs all of us right now to tackle the challenges
we face. Let's see what happens. This is more than we've seen out of the
valley in quite some time.

~~~
melindajb
downvoted? awesome. care to share why?

------
deanpeterson
I like to look at it this way. Y-Combinator is only getting bigger because
startups are the future. Accepting more women does not mean accepting less
men. Wealth and opportunity are not finite. The faster Y-Combinator can grow
the more likely it is I might get in (I am also greedy in a good way).
Bringing in more talented women can make Y-Combinator a more dominant force; I
say great.

------
drakaal
Female founders can be great with out coding. There seems to be this belief
that founders need to write code. If you are doing a "hack" maybe, but a good
startup is often as much about the business model and the User Experience as
it is about the code.

Sarah Austin, is a co-founder at my company, Plexi, and she is invaluable to
us from the standpoint of knowing what features are important and how to
extract money from those features. Sarah doesn't write code. She looks at it
from time to time, and she provides large data sets in spreadsheets that get
codified later, but she doesn't speak Python which is what we run.

Sarah has one dozens of hackathons, and was SAP's Hacker of the Year last
year. Again with out writing a single line of code.

To be honest the Author comments show how much more he has to learn about
female founders, because I disagree with almost every assertion he makes.

And yes, I think PlexiNLP is a multi-billion dollar potential company.

-Brandon Wirtz CTO PlexiNLP [http://plexinlp.com/](http://plexinlp.com/)

------
chacham15
While I believe in all of YC's efforts to integrate women, I feel like one of
the hurdles that they are ignoring is convincing the men. What do I mean by
this? I mean that statements like "We want to fund more women because we are
greedy in the good way," I believe in 100%, but not because I have some facts
to back it up. YC, on the other hand, should have numbers and facts to back
this up and I think it would make their statements that much stronger. Now,
you might ask, why is this important if the goal is to attract more women to
startups? The answer is that you want the women who do come to be playing on
an even playing field: the VC's in the industry are still largely dominated by
men. If you can convince them with numbers that they are doing the right thing
by not having a bias against women, the women who try to raise money will do
it more successfully and then encourage more women to try.

~~~
rdl
The best way to convince people is through examples (the total number of
companies YC has funded is small enough that a few females who are highly
successful would be statistically significant).

None are at the AirBnB/Dropbox/Stripe/Heroku/Reddit/Parse/Polvi stage yet, but
everyone in YC knows of a few female YC participants who seem to be on the
same trajectory.

------
vezzy-fnord
_And we 're working on something to improve the quality of Hacker News
comments._

Wait, is this implying that we're actually getting an upstream change in the
HN codebase for the first time in $amount_of_time_I_am_not_aware_of_exactly?

Or perhaps some sort of cultural shift, like increased moderation and less
tolerance for certain views? I can't see the latter going very well, but it's
too early to tell anything.

Otherwise this is good news. However, when I read this...

 _Many emails pointed out that our website shows nearly all men; we 'll fix
that._

I was reminded of the following:
[http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/uwmadison.asp](http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/uwmadison.asp).
Hopefully this won't just be a clumsy doctoring for PR purposes.

~~~
sama
software!

------
onmydesk
"we don't do this for the sake of diversity. We do it because we want to get
the best people, whatever they're like."

But we would prefer women?

What the hell is up with YC and positive discrimination?

~~~
intortus
Correcting biases is actually the opposite of discrimination.

~~~
onmydesk
How very 1984!

------
hyp0
I was hoping this would be something like "lessons learned" on how to build a
better startup, perhaps some that just happened to be from female founders,
and perhaps others that come from the different perspective/approaches. It
hints at this, with the example of women expressing confidence differently
from men. It also mentions diversity - but as something to not prevent finding
the best founders, rather than as a resource of new perspectives/approaches.

------
mintykeen
Thanks for the nudge to get my application submitted already! ;-)

------
notoriousjpg
I've never quite understood this messaging. Popular opinion regarding startups
is that a founder needs to be persevering through countless rejections and
believe in themselves through it all. And yet now we're saying people may be
put off by insufficient pictures of women on a homepage. Wat?

Why would you want someone so easily broken? You know how many Asian founders
I've seen marketed in aus startups? Very few. Doesn't bother me.

------
dalek2point3
a propos: [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/study-says-attractive-
men...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/study-says-attractive-men-fare-
best-in-gaining-venture-capital.html)

, in a controlled experiment the researchers conducted, identical business-
plan videos were narrated by either male or female voices; respondents chose
the plans presented by males 68 percent of the time.

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jasimq
Same problems: 1) Some men already starting startups aren't interested in
doing Y Combinator.

2) Some men who could be great founders don't start startups.

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loladesoto
1\. the best argument for funding talented women, is its inevitability. the
smartest men understand this.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnDDKDiSy8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnDDKDiSy8)

2\. part of being a good entrepreneur is managing your own psychology.
women—and i anticipate raising ire when i say this—have much to learn in this
regard. not simply because we are relatively new to worlds men have long-
accessed and enjoyed (with the corresponding body of wisdom and experience
that accompanies such things, including the management of one's own
psychology, which is nothing more than self-mastery), but also because we
sometimes lose focus along the way. we stop building and start arguing. this
is a natural process and i believe an important one for us to collectively go
through: the debating, the feeling-out of collective boundaries and external
asks. but we are not organized, we sometimes get emotional to the point where
we become unintelligible, uncommunicative or irrational, and lose credibility
along the way. if you are to wage a war then you must find a way to unite
around a common purpose, set your sights on victory and then take intelligent
action, individual or otherwise. (coincidentally, we also need role models who
are both vocal AND able to organize women.) alas, in our early stages we seem
to spend a lot of time arguing. so: less bicker, more build. whether your own
projects or community, every hour matters.

3\. on YC-ness: how many female founders have worked very closely alongside a
VC-funded YC-alum (who happens to be a white male)? i am a minority female
founder who has experienced this, and was astounded. _temporarily laying aside
the argument of how to actually get in if you do fit that stereotype_ : the
intrinsically, deeply supportive nature of this network is such that many of
you, if exposed to it, would be tempted to apply. many of you _would_ apply.
it wasn't the contacts, or the advice, or the credibility it conferred (those
things helped with everything from recruiting to raising $, of course—not to
mention the comparative ease of getting meetings): what impressed me was this
battle-hardened community offering the gift of time and emotional support to
one another...generosity on a scale one rarely sees in any business context
(qualities which i believe will only improve in the years to come,
particularly as YC evolves to include more women). my conclusion? apply to YC.
and i would suggest, if a group of mostly-white male geeks does not interest
you, and i understand if that is the case, then apply to a female-oriented
accelerator or better yet: assemble a group of kickass female founders,
mentors and investors and start your own. (remember, the genesis of a good
product is building something you need.)

4\. food for thought: if there were a female version of YC, would you apply?
would i? i am not sure i would. i do not live in a vacuum; the world i seek to
conquer is a male-dominated world (at present); and part of self-mastery
includes mastering one's environment, not creating a bubble within it. but it
is an interesting thought-experiment and useful to ponder.

*btw, not making this about white vs non-white. that alone would be the subject of a 1k post thread.

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hydralist
is sam altman over rated?

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johnpt
I think it's great for YC to improve and help women but I hope YC doesn't
start accepting female funded companies just for the sake of having more
female founders instead on looking at the quality of the startups.

~~~
sama
Read the article carefully; we won't. We'll accept female-founded companies
because some of them will be extremely successful. Everyone is subject to the
same bar (this is addressed in the middle of the post).

~~~
johnpt
I've read it and I believe a lot in you but I'm afraid external pressures
might make you do it

~~~
rdl
How can YC be pressured? They sure don't have an LP problem. In terms of
hiring for YC itself, it's already quite diverse.

The only thing YC really needs to care about is 1) getting the best possible
startups to apply and then 2) for those companies to be successful.

#2 is pretty much immune to pressure-on-YC; YC has no control of YC startups,
with only 2-10% common equity. #1 is explicitly the thing they are working on,
so it seems unlikely "we will pressure you to accept more female founders if
you don't accept more female founders by convincing female founders not to
apply" would be a realistic threat.

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graycat
Be very careful what you wish for; you might get it.

I've seen far too many women working very hard, initially quite successfully,
to be "more like men" but too soon encounter agonies of the damned, failure,
and even death. Be careful. Be very careful.

Suspect: Mother Nature long ago filtered out from the tree any women so easily
distracted from being strong limbs on the tree. Motherhood is not inferior;
the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world; good parenting is the crucial,
most rewarding, and most important job in the world; what men do at work is
not superior to what women, and essentially only women, can do with
motherhood; everyone on HN had a mother who did a lot of important, hard work
quite different from success in the world of work; what men do at work is to
bring home money for what is really important, motherhood, family, home, etc.
For a woman to concentrate on a startup is to neglect motherhood and, thus, to
confuse means and ends.

Darwin will have the last word here: Currently in Western Civilization, the
average number of children born to one women is less than 2.1 which means
Western Civilization is voluntarily going extinct. In Finland the average is
1.5 which means that in 10 generations about 30 Finns will become 1\. Finland
did well fighting off the Swedes, Russians, and Germans but now is losing out
to 'new' ideas on what women should do.

Some science is quite clear: Starting in the crib, the girls pay attention to
people and the boys, to things. That difference continues. Girls pay attention
to people because that is crucial for motherhood. Boys pay attention to things
because that is crucial to the world of work. Don't confuse the two.

~~~
graycat
Gee, some people don't like the advice to be careful.

When it's your sister, wife, or daughter who gets seriously injured for life
or gets killed, say, from suicide from clinical depression from stress from
being pushed away from motherhood and into the world of startups, then you
will understand why it is crucial to be careful.

Sure, at one time she told me "Women don't have to just be cared for. Women
can do things, too. I want a career.". I believed her. I was naive.

Her mother was pushing her hard away from motherhood and into something
challenging.

Although I didn't yet see the role of her mother, I had good reasons to
believe in her: So, she was Valedictorian, PBK, Woodrow Wilson, 'Summa Cum
Laude', Ph.D. And in many ways, in academics and also daily life, she was just
hands down, flatly brilliant. She had the endurance of an ultra athlete and
could go with so little sleep that so little for me would have me asleep
standing up, literally.

Still, by the time she finished her Ph.D., she was in a clinical depression
from the stress, never recovered, and died. Her sisters had similar struggles.
It's tough to separate nature and nurture here: She got the nurture from her
mother who had the nature but also got the nature from her mother. She likely
got another dose of the nature from her father, a guy who for some years
worked 20 hours a day except cut back to 10 on Sundays.

Solid evidence is that such vulnerability to stress is four times more likely
for women than men.

There is a good reason for the expression "Nervous Nellie" because, from an
expert, "women are much more emotional than men" and one way they are more
emotional is that they are more nervous, more easily made afraid. Such
nervousness and fear leads to stress leads to depression, clinical depression,
serious problems, and sometimes death.

For a women in a challenging situation, have to exercise special care watching
for signs of low self-esteem, stress, 'burn out', and depression. Some women
can meet such challenges; too many can't; even some that very much look like
they can, can't; these problems are much more likely for women; it's a very
challenging situation.

My advice I repeat: Be careful. Be very careful.

Some people just flatly want to believe that "Women don't have to just be
cared for. Women can do things, too." and want to and, then, do hate any
suggestion of anything else and pass off any suggestion as some sexism. No,
the caution I urge is based on hard experience. Be careful. I didn't say stop;
I just said be careful.

"Careful"? Yes, for a women, have to watch for symptoms and problems that
mostly would not have to watch for for men.

Be careful.

Sorry about your dream, largely unfounded, that women are just the same in
startups as men and have just been held down and now need to be 'unleashed'.
It's not just a dream, too easily it's a nightmare. Sorry about your dream.
But if the woman is your sister, wife, or daughter, your dream can become a
nightmare for you. You've been warned. Let the pop media have their fun
pushing 'lean in', etc., but for your sister, wife, and daughter, be careful,
be very careful.

If you want an explanation, then notice that Darwin's forces were there and
having their effects for many tens of thousands of years before startups. and
we don't know just what those forces were or just how they worked. Since we
can't understand what those forces were, for making big changes now we are
walking out on thin ice. Be careful.

Or, the world of work, and startups were created by men in ways convenient for
men. And we should just assume that women will be comfortable in that world?
Why assume? Or how many men would be comfortable in and fit in at a baby
shower? How many men can do well at gossip? For 'social connections', men
don't gossip; instead they communicate information (D. Tannen,'You Just Don't
Understand: Men and Women in Conversation'), and women communicate feelings
and the rest of gossip. Men are from Mars, women from Venus, that is, they are
so different they seem to be from different planets. They deserve equal
respect as persons but are not the same (E. Fromm, 'The Art of Loving').

Did I mention, be careful?

