
Study: Attractive men fare best in gaining venture capital - rbanffy
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/study-says-attractive-men-fare-best-in-gaining-venture-capital
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apsec112
I have zero trouble believing that VCs are biased, but this is a terrible
terrible study.

First, their study collected literally zero data about venture capitalists.
Their first experiment looked at "pitch competitions", where people give
speeches and/or submit business plans to a set of judges, and the judges pick
a winner. This is distinct from events like Demo Day because there is no
follow-up or due diligence: choices are made solely based on the
speech/written plan. For obvious reasons, these "competitions" usually don't
involve serious money. Picking three at random from Google, the first prizes
were $1,000, $3,000, and "a meeting with Andreesen Horowitz", plus a bunch of
discounts from Rackspace and so on.

The second and third experiments were even sillier. They literally recruited a
bunch of random people on Mechanical Turk, asked them to watch a pitch video,
and then asked them to judge which company they thought was more likely to
succeed.

And even if you did a study showing that VCs invested in men more often, that
wouldn't mean VCs are biased: you have to control for a bunch of other factors
too. If, eg. startup employees preferred to work for companies run by
attractive men, a perfectly unbiased VC would invest in attractive men more
often, just because their companies were objectively doing better.

Here's a link to the original paper:
[http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Brooks%20Huan...](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Brooks%20Huang%20Kearney%20Murray_59b551a9-8218-4b84-be15-eaff58009767.pdf)

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roymurdock
I'm not sure if there's any quicker and more effective way to draw a metric
ton of scrutiny and skepticism on a study than to have the two words
"mechanical turk" somewhere in your paper. Classic.

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woah
How is it worse than recruiting random undergrads?

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d0m
Attractive "anything" fare best in gaining "everything".

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NhanH
I remember reading that attractive women is discriminated against in certain
situation, fundraising being one of those (men will probably do better in
fundraising). Although in aggregate of everything in life, I wouldn't be
surprised if they (attractive women) still fare better than ugly "anything".

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TazeTSchnitzel
So in the stuff that doesn't matter, attractive women do better, but in the
big picture, they do worse?

So uh, they do worse, then.

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NhanH
I don't know about that conclusion. And that wasn't what I said either.

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d357r0y3r
New study: Attractive people fare best in getting what they want

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sportanova
Time to start a fund that only invests in ugly people. "ButterFace Ventures'
investment thesis entails value generation through arbitraging network effects
across the lower end of the visual anthropomorphic spectrum"

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vasilipupkin
I am fundraising for a new VC fund called FUBU. For ugly by ugly.

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adubashi
"What's the most important factor in making partner at McKinsey? A good
hairline."

~~~
brookside
Balding is the most depressing thing. Wish I had started taking Finasteride
years ago when I decided the risks weren't worth it.

~~~
chatmasta
Just shave it off. Bald heads have actually been shown to be a positive status
indicator, probably because it takes serious confidence to pre-emptively shave
off all your hair. Besides, I've always thought bald heads look way better
than a head with patches of hair on it.

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laichzeit0
Some people look ridiculous with shaved heads. They literally look like
aliens/eggs.

To pull off the shaved head successfully you need to have a strong jaw and
squarish face. Not all faces are created equal.

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dylanjermiah
Marc Andreesen for example has a suboptimal head structure for baldness,
however I'd venture to say straggles of the remaining hair would look worse.
Shaved head > BLding head IMO

~~~
laichzeit0
Sure. I agree that shaving is better than the desperate attempt to cling to
the last remaining follicles look.

However, shaving your head does not necessarily mean you're going to look
"good", aka Jason Statham mode. A lot of people just look like eggs or aliens
when they shave their heads.

~~~
dylanjermiah
Oh yeah for sure. Very few people have the correct proportions and bone
structure for a bald head.

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meow_mix
Study: Another Thing You'd Think To Be Correct Is Correct

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dilipd
If getting VC funding is considered partly as a sales job, then Bill Porter's
story may be interesting. Consistency in 'top selling' requires qualities like
determination & efforts. Natural born 'attractive people' generally are not
inclined to put in that extra effort just because they, in their lives so far,
probably didn't need to.

Wiki: Bill Porter born with cerebral palsy, was unable to gain employment, but
refused to go on disability. Porter eventually convinced Watkins Incorporated
to give him a door-to-door salesman job, selling its products on a seven-mile
route in the Portland area. He eventually became the top seller for the
company.

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reagency
Porter also likely benefited from emotionally manipulating his clients to buy
stuff out of a sense of charity. That works on the general public face to
face, but not other parts of industry.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Another success for "merit"ocracy.

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001sky
Ha. That's only because nobody (rationaly) wants to negotiate with a beautiful
woman.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/11707591/Why-
me...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/11707591/Why-men-should-
never-negotiate-with-a-beautiful-woman.html)

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raspasov
"Attractiv"ocracy

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letstryagain
We knew this already.

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orthoganol
Maybe attractive people (that is, clean cut, white attractive people) are more
likely to come from upper middle class backgrounds, which means they already
have substantial money supporting them their entire lives, so they not only
fit in better, but are in much better positions to be starting companies &
pitching VCs.

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ForHackernews
Hooray for rational and efficient markets!

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xacaxulu
Now we should also test the 'blondes have more fun' hypothesis :-D

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moridinamael
Water wet, more at eleven

