

YC Demographics - austenallred
http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-demographics

======
williamstein
I wonder what the _age_ distribution is? (Not just gender and race...)

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bkessler100
Exactly. They ask for age in their application and not gender or race.

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swampthing
Not a YC partner, but I help review apps... when I look at age, it's not so
that I can discriminate based on it, it's so that I can see how impressive a
person's accomplishments are in light of how much time they've had to achieve
them.

~~~
jiggy2011
The problem is that this can be very skewed, especially for younger people by
their economic background.

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hammerdr
For example, I know of someone that changed careers into the tech industry in
his mid-30s. He should not be disadvantaged because he entered into the
industry later than peers.

Additionally, I can think of countless examples of "slow starters" that didn't
really get good at something until there was something that caught that
person's interest.

At best, this is a flawed metric with many nuances to consider. So many that
you could probably make the same determination by removing age from the
application.*

* If you want to collect demographic data, you can just ask for it in the submission form but not show it in reviews.

~~~
swampthing
Interesting... I'd be curious to hear which successful startup founders fit
this pattern?

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frostmatthew
I'm not a founder [but that doesn't mean I wouldn't potentially found a
company someday] - I worked in hospitality management until my early 30s. If I
were to apply to YC I wouldn't expect you to be interested in my previous
career so I wouldn't include that. If I understand you right you're saying
you'd look at what you see I've done [in the ~3 years I've been a developer]
and be less impressed because it's coming from someone in their mid-30s
instead of their early 20s.

Sorry to break it to you, but factoring that into your decision is the very
definition of [age] discrimination.

~~~
swampthing
Sorry, I didn't mean to give the impression that I only look at technical
accomplishments. I like to look at whatever accomplishments that person has,
regardless of what field they're in. So if you've worked a lot in hospitality
management, then great, let's hear about your accomplishments there.

~~~
DodgyEggplant
>> I only look at technical accomplishments

Without age discrimination

>>accomplishments are in light of how much time they've had to achieve them

Age discrimination by definition

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minimaxir
How large is the random sample? Since that you're asserting that YC does not
discriminate because the actual proportion of female entrepreneurs funded is
more than the number that applied, the conclusion is open to variance.

EDIT: Originally incorrectly said "sampling bias."

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sama
for gender, it's the entire applicant pool (we ask for gender so that's easy
to compute.)

for race, it's a bit harder. we don't ask for it, but we looked through
hundreds of videos and made our best guess (it's also why we left the number
as approximate, as of course there are cases where we got it wrong.)

~~~
minimaxir
Ah, that clears up the sampling bias.

I might have asked the wrong question. What I meant was "how many people are
5% of YC applicants" that were used to calculate a representative proportion?
Let's say 2000 companies apply each with 2-3 founders, so 4000-6000 founders
total. 5% of that is 200-300, which can result in a reasonable margin of error
for the conclusion proportion but may not be perfect.

~~~
sama
more than 10,000. still, definitely small enough for random variance.

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_pius
Great to see this data, thanks for releasing it.

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aaronz8
How about the non-hispanic, non-black minorities?

Or even more interesting to me, how about the distribution of education level
and background?

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proveanegative
Data on citizenship would also be interesting. How many founders are
foreigners and how many are US citizens?

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sama
for last batch, more than 40% of the founders were born outside the US.

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adamzerner
Why sample as opposed to looking at the whole population? The typical reason
is, "because it's difficult to survey the entire population". But in this case
I'd think that it'd be easy because I assume you have all the data.

~~~
klochner
They likely don't record the team composition, so this would require hand-
labeling of any data points.

Do we know total applicants? I'd like to know what n produced a 5% sample.

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moisesvega
It would be interesting to have some more insights, like how many of rhw
minority groups ( black or hispanic as the article says ) were funded, also
more meaningful like:

Race/Sector of interest Age/Sector of interest Gender/Sector of interest
People with Higher Scholar degree/ Sector of interest Startups funded by
sector

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evanwarfel
Good to know that YC doesn't seem to be affected by biased selection process.
The low overall percentage of minority or female founders is a reflection of
the current state of society, which, alas, isn't where it could be.

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komrade
It would be interesting to see the proportion of foreign entrepreneurs
(applied from abroad).

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yurisagalov
Sam answers this in a different point in this thread --
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889333)
(40% are born abroad)

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dirkdk
the big question is of course about self selection: how many nonwhite, female
and non-Stanford entrepreneurs would like to apply for YC but don't because
they think their chances are basically zero?

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billconan
I really want to see what percent introvert founders take.

I have been reading articles saying introversion is not good for
entrepreneurship. I wonder if this is true.

if it is true, will VCs treat introvert founders like they do to minorities?

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CmonDev
Some types of discrimination are not "fashionable" enough. If you are not of
right color/gender you are out of luck as a minority.

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staunch
Socioeconomic diversity is the elephant in the room.

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jiggy2011
How could YC even be able to calculate that?

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staunch
It's pretty easy to figure out what class people are in if you actually care
to know.

> _Competition is extremely high to enter Stanford, with an admit rate of 7.2
> percent. And those who make it in are, as a group, financially better off
> than the rest of the American population. According to Director of Financial
> Aid Karen Cooper, the median family income at Stanford is approximately
> $125,000; by contrast, the median family income in the United States in
> 2008, the last year for which data are available, is $61,521._

[http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/diversity-remains-
on...](http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/diversity-remains-ongoing-
struggle/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Social_class)

Now try to guess what class these people were born into:
[http://www.ycombinator.com/people/](http://www.ycombinator.com/people/)

I'm still a huge fan of YC (very much not a hater) but on this rather large
issue I think they're on the wrong side of history. A truly good actor
compared to most, but far short being egalitarian.

~~~
jiggy2011
I very much doubt that YC is in a position to ask every applicant for proof of
their family's income and assets , another factor to note is that many
applicants are from overseas.

~~~
staunch
I guess you're right, it's simply not possible and they should just not worry
about it.

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auggierose
It's not like the number of entire YC 2015 winter applications is super large.
Why take a sample?

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j_baker
> this will not be a zero-sum game

Is there some kind of rule at YC that mandates that blog posts must insist
that nothing is a zero-sum game?

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byEngineer
yes! It is the same rule that says that we must be sad that 50% of all
applicants aren't women.

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dimdimdim
The post does not add any value -- "you are not at a disadvantage" means we
are evaluating everyone with the same scale. Why should this be a surprise?
this is the least we would expect anyway.

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maceo
"The good news is that there is no disadvantage to applying to YC as a female
or minority founder."

I don't understand why that's good news.

It'd be good news if YC were actively preferring female and minority founders.
Everyone acknowledges the glaring diversity problem in tech, but apparently YC
is happy standing on the sidelines.

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john_b
From the OP:

> _" We want to be sure we’re not discriminating against founders in our
> funding decisions at YC"_

This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a
charity. It primarily seeks long term positive returns, and to do that you
have to evaluate people and their ideas based on merit, not their gender.
Having more female founders would probably be better for the startup ecosystem
as a whole, but "actively preferring" a class of candidates based on
attributes poorly correlated with their probability of success would be bad
for YC.

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maceo
Look, whether we like it or not, VCs prefer white or asian founders over black
or hispanic founders. That's fact, not conjecture [1]. I understand that YC is
an accelerator. It's also a cultural institution. Blacks and hispanics are at
a disadvantage when raising because VCs DON'T evaluate strictly on merit; they
evaluate on a whole host of characteristics, many of which are subject to
bias.

The YC stamp of approval is a valuable badge when fundraising. I'd like to see
them find a way to use this to combat the inherent bias that women, blacks,
and hispanics face when fundraising.

[1] [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-
demographics...](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-
demographics-87-percent-vc-backed-founders-white-asian-teams-raise-largest-
funding/)

~~~
jiggy2011
The YC article suggests that black and hispanic founders are slightly more
likely to be funded by YC than other ethnicities. 3% of applicants to the
batch were black or hispanic but 7.7% of funded founders in the batch were
black or hispanic.

The article you linked does not seem to adjust for demographics of the
applicants, it only discusses those who were funded.

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unlaut
The question is, would this post still be made publicly, in the same manner,
if the data actually found serious discrimination happening?

Who knows, maybe YC is actually divinely meritocratic and there are no biases.
Maybe they are transparent enough to make their biases public if they were
discovered, and I absolutely admire that YC takes the initiative to check.

But if we were to be scientific about it, having YC take a look at
discrimination within YC wouldn't be considered a reliable experiment that you
could draw any conclusions from.

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kolbe
Michael, I think you should really ask yourself: what good can come of this?
It doesn't really demonstrate anything about YC's fair-opportunity goals, and
it opens the topic up for significant scrutiny--both by rights activists, and
now (even worse?) by stats majors who are always looking for an opportunity to
tear apart someone's oversimplified models.

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logicallee
>Michael, I think you should really ask yourself: what good can come of this?

I got this one!

The good that comes is you solve the current status quo, where on a thread
like "Why silicon valley works" people make comments and genuinely feel like
this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552487)

>If you are a white male, in your early 20's and went to Stanford, go for it.
If you're not, don't even try to play the game; it's rigged to use you, not
help you.

or up-thread someone else

> Complete and utter bull. Maybe in [YC's] world, sure! White? 20-something?
> No-kids? Harvard/Stanford? B2C? Let’s chat! > Early-40's/Late-30's? Not-
> white? Married w/ kids? Not-Harvard/Stanford? B2B? Nope. (Don't bother to
> apply to YC either).

Theirs is a strong argument when 0.0% of founders are black. When it's 4%,
man, 1 in 25 is better odds than 80% of the things you're doing to build a
$100M exit anyway. You'll go for it and apply.

I gave up as I'm in a hurry, but search 'Hackernews search' (hn.algolia.com)
for white/asian, "bother to apply" and similar words - there are a _ton_ of
comments by people who think they shouldn't because it's 0%. They should!!!

This blog post is totally great, and a bit surprising. Kudos.

