

Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VCs have a Gender Problem - cwan
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/07/silicon-valley-you%E2%80%99ve-got-a-gender-problem-and-some-of-your-vc%E2%80%99s-still-live-in-the-past/

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grellas
I'm always perplexed when people try to generalize about gender issues.

Obviously, VCs haven't fundamentally changed during the past couple of years,
as the decline set in. If they failed to recognize the value of funding female
entrepreneurs in the past, and still fail to do this today, then this factor
is basically irrelevant to what _caused_ the recent decline.

If, instead, the issue is that VCs, now that they are down, should be alert to
broadening the range of investments to others that are clearly good, but that
their myopia has prevented them in the past from recognizing, then this factor
is not a cause of any decline but really represents a potential missed
opportunity for them looking forward.

This, then, is a call for VCs to broaden their outlook as a way of speeding
their recovery. That is a valid point as far as it goes. The person harmed by
prejudice is not just the direct victim but also the perpetrator, who lives in
a shrunken and less vibrant environment and suffers accordingly.

What VCs do in this area, though, will have little or no impact on the number
of female entrepreneurs who are drawn to startups. The cause of the dearth of
women in this area lies much farther up the chain, having to do with why women
might be less drawn to get the particular technical training needed to become
a founder and the like. Until that changes, whatever the VCs do will, in my
view, have little or no material impact on this issue.

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mattm
I've written this before on this board but if you want to understand these
gender differences, read accounts of women who have undergone sex changes to
become men.

When undergoing testosterone treatment, many of these women say things like "I
became more interested in making money and more career-driven" and "I
understood math and science better."

Testosterone gives animals drive and aggression.

There are more entrepreneurs and inventors who are men because men have more
testosterone. In fact, with hyenas where the females have more testosterone,
the females are the more aggressive sex of the group and dominate the males.
Women have some testosterone which is why there are still some women
entrepreneurs and inventors but much less than men which is also why there are
much less of them than men.

~~~
tptacek
I see. Anecdotes about how female-to-male trangender people _felt_ , plus a
wild generalization about the role of a single hormone across _almost all
social situations_. I'm sold.

~~~
araneae
It's more believable that a hormone would work across all social situations
than a few specific ones. It's easier for a hormone to have a broad effect
than a narrow one. A narrow effect requires a much finer tuning of the neural
circuits' reaction to the presence of the hormone.

But there's a massive scientific literature on the effect that testosterone
has on both human and animal behavior, so you don't need an anecdote from
people who take testosterone to come to a similar conclusion.

------
pg
"This dearth may be one of the reasons for which the Venture Capital community
is in such sharp decline"

Even assuming that we're currently seeing a "decline" of VC, there were even
fewer female VCs during VC's rise.

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xiaoma
_"So, it is clear we have a problem here: we’re holding back the most
productive half of our population."_

and then a bit further down:

 _"I’ve heard from the angry men, now I’d like to hear from the women."_

Maybe he got angry replies from men because men always come out on the short
end of his generalizations.

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yummyfajitas
_When are you planning to have kids? ... What if [your husband] has to move
for work one day? Will you go with him?_

So basically, VCs are doing their job and asking legitimate questions about
the commitment of their prospective CEO. Isn't this exactly what they should
be doing?

What should they do, throw a couple of mil at a venture only to discover the
CEO vanished into new mommy-land? Or worse, didn't vanish but stayed on at
half productivity? I'm sure the people who's money they are managing would
love that.

~~~
tptacek
Those aren't legitimate questions. I understand that a VC interview is
different from a job interview, but in the context of a job interview, those
questions are unlawful.

To see why this is a problem, think about the questions in the equally-valid
context of a man. Are you planning to have kids? What if your wife has to move
for work one day? Will go you with him?

(Incidentally: I know four very skilled people who moved for their wife's
career, and zero who moved for their husband).

The notion of "new-mommy-land" is equally revolting, especially given the
reality of "new-daddy-land" as I experienced it.

~~~
yummyfajitas
They are legitimate in the sense that the answer affects the probability of
success of the investment. The legality of similar questions in the context of
a job interview is an irrelevant red herring, not sure why you brought it up.

 _To see why this is a problem, think about the questions in the equally-valid
context of a man. Are you planning to have kids? What if your wife has to move
for work one day? Will go you with him?_

They are perfectly legitimate questions for a man as well. The only reason
they aren't asked is because the probability of a negative answer is lower for
a man than for a woman.

Similarly, I'm often asked (on job interviews) "do you plan to return to
academia?" You are probably not asked this (unless you are a former academic),
since the odds of you pursuing an academic career are much lower than mine.

Incidentally, if you were a new stay at home daddy, I probably wouldn't give
you VC either.

~~~
tptacek
You demonstrated to your potential employer that you're interested in pursuing
a career in academia. The potential employer is generalizing from your own
past behavior.

That's why it's lawful for the employer to ask about your academic
proclivities, but flatly unlawful for them to ask women about family planning.

I think you summed your position up nicely with your last sentence ("... if
you were a new stay at home daddy, I probably wouldn't give you VC either"),
since we're _not actually talking about new mothers_. We're talking about an
entire gender, and the generalizations you're OK with making about them.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm not making a generalization. I'm making a probabilistic statement.

P(me vanishing into academia) >> P(you vanishing into academia). That's why
they ask me but not you.

P(woman vanishing into mommyland) >> P(man vanishing into daddyland). That's
why they ask women but not men.

As for legality of employers, who cares? A) Legality != legitimacy. B) We are
talking about VCs doing their due diligence with their client's money (e.g.,
my pension fund), so the legality of employers asking such questions is
irrelevant.

~~~
tptacek
You have no idea what the probability of a woman startup founder "vanishing
into mommyhood" is. Your own behavior makes you more likely to vanish into
academia. Your analysis is overtly sexist.

What's great about your logic is you can use it to justify _any_
discriminatory conduct. P(academia)? Hey, then P(black person)! They're much
more likely to end up in prison, statistically!

~~~
yummyfajitas
I have no idea what the probability of a male startup founder vanishing into
daddyhood is either. So I'm estimating it with the best available information,
namely the relative probabilities of people in general.

Similarly, people who assume I'll vanish back into academia don't know the
probability of this (it's actually quite low, due to the way the academic job
market works), but they are making a best guess.

Also, my logic doesn't justify anything unless the estimated probabilities are
large enough. Is P(jail | black ) anywhere near as large as P(misses work due
to baby | woman)? Somehow I doubt it.

In any case, I'd really like it if you could explain the sexism in my
analysis. Specifically, tell me how my conclusions change if you replace
gender with other characteristics yielding similar probabilities. Or are we
supposed to pay attention to all probabilistically relevant characteristics
except for gender?

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AlisdairO
He hasn't fully accounted for the motivations of women as to why they don't
create more businesses. He shows that female entrepreneurs have the same
motivations as male entrepreneurs, but that says nothing about what proportion
of females _have_ those particular motivators.

A potential explanation, then, is that fewer women have the motivations that
cause people to create businesses. Given that men trend more towards risk-
taking, it's plausible that more men have entrepreneurial tendencies.

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jchonphoenix
"So, it is clear we have a problem here: we’re holding back the most
productive half of our population."

The author completely ignores the most obvious reason for this divide: there
are fewer women who enjoy programming. It is quite evident at Universities.
The gender imbalance in Computer Science programs is completely evident. It
makes perfect sense that this would translate into the business world.

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Mz
_Is the background or motivation of women that prevents them from becoming
entrepreneurs?_

Women tend to do the entrepreneurial thing differently from men and one of
those differences is scale: Women often start small businesses ("lifestyle
business"), with no intent to grow it into a multinational corporation. Women
are still saddled with the primary responsibility of (bearing and) raising
kids. My ex was career military. Prime soldiering years are age 18 to 40. That
also happens to be prime childbearing and childrearing years for a woman. So
women are unlikely to ever compete equally with men for military careers.
Although I don't have much hard data, it seems to me that founding a large
company (the type that seeks VC) is probably also mostly a young person's
game. (IIRC, the average age of founders in companies that got Y-Combinator
funding was in the low to mid 20's.)

