
An Entrepreneur Who Took a Chance on Herself - thunk
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/jobs/11pre.html?_r=1
======
Jun8
Obviously NYT was having a slow day. However, what I'd like to point out is
the discrimination: Do you think the same piece would be created if the
entrepreneur in question was an average looking guy? People always talk about
how women get discriminated against in CS, EE and the like (which _is_ true to
a point) while refusing to see the advantages of being a woman in these areas.

When we were interviewing people for positions, I always sensed somewhat more
enthusiasm before interviewing a woman in my colleagues, even if it's a _phone
interview_.

You may find these comments Summers-like, but let me know if you have not
experienced similar things in your work environment.

~~~
thesethings
Disagree.

The NYT site didn't make it easy, but I just browsed about 12 months worth of
this column(?) "Preoccupations."

Female and male profiles were about 50-50, and everybody else seemed pretty
average looking.

Less than half the time is it a profile of an individual, the rest of the time
it's a profile of a "trend" (This Hashrocket pair programming article that was
on HN a while back, is from this same NYT column:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/jobs/20pre.html?>)

All the rest of the profiles were equally as interesting-but-not-mind-blowing.
(Though I'm less critical than you about the slow-news-day part. That's "slice
of life" journalism. It's always like that, heh. In that regard, every day is
a slow news day. )

I suggest a study: One where when a post's author/subject is a female, we
count how frequently her appearance is brought up when it's not otherwise the
topic of the post, versus when it's an average looking guy posting about how
he organizes his email folders/ moved to git/ almost took VC.

Does that stuff get called a slow news day?

~~~
Jun8
An interesting addition to your proposed study would be this: in addition to
other people, how often does the person covered push their appearance. This
was my main objection to this lady, when you go to her web page, her modeling
and vanity shots are predominant, e.g. this is how she chooses to represent
herself. She may be thinking that this would be advantageous in a male
dominated profession.

~~~
thesethings
Heh, I didn't check out her site. It sounds obnoxious. (And I see from your
other HN comments, we share a distaste for another cheeseball who flaunts
his/her appearance, w/multiple "in action" shots all over his/her website, who
I won't give further attention by typing his/her name :D).

But I'm simply objecting to you using the word discrimination, and suggesting
an average looking guy would not get this piece written. I even covered the
"citation please" angle (not that you said that, but so many people on HN
abuse that construct as a way to discredit pretty reasonable ideas, without
having to provide a citation themselves.)

I'll take your word that she's pushing her appearance, just not that it's
responsible for her coverage.

And my "proposed study" tone was maybe too snarky, I apologize. (I try to
avoid that), I just had to give you a hard time about using "discrimination"
and "average looking guys" in the same posit. Are we on the same site, seeing
the same stories that make the front page?! (Said in friendly tone, poking as
much as fun at myself for reading, as HN for posting 99% of its content
about/by average looking guys, usually comparing Android + iPhone.)

~~~
Jun8
I agree with you, "discrimination" was perhaps too strong, a subliminal
preferance, perhaps?

BTW, this is by far the best/nicest response I got to one of my comments.

------
credo
It is a well-written and interesting article. So unlike some of the comments
below, I wouldn't chalk this up to some sort of discrimination (in favor of
women)

It is true that her history/accomplishments aren't necessarily extraordinary.
A few years ago, in a salaried job, she was "was on track to be earning six
figures within three years." Now, she has one iPhone app that is doing well in
the app store (the app never made it to the top 3 in the Music category, but
it is currently at #7 in Music)

I think that her accomplishments not being extra-ordinary may make the story
more interesting to a lot of people. The fact that it is #5 on HN is a
testament to the story's relevance. Kudos to Prerna Gupta for a well-written
article, for generating positive PR for her company and also for taking the
risk of leaving her salaried job to take up entrepreneurship.

She shares the last attribute with many of us on HN :)

------
paraschopra
Oh now I remember who the entrepreneur actually is. She started one social
networking site in India called <http://yaari.com> which was absolutely
spammy. Mailed tons of spam endlessly - probably that's why it didn't work out
and now that site simply shows her personal blog.

------
SMrF
She's a Stanford grad, entrepreneur, surfer, model and apparently she has been
published in the NYT. She also created this diet, which looks interesting:
<http://thenaturalfoodsdiet.com/about.php>

I had no idea human beings like this existed. I feel inferior.

<http://prernagupta.com/>

~~~
timr
There are tons of people who have bios like this, especially in San Francisco.
You quickly come to realize that most of the people who have done 50 million
different "impressive" things in a short period of time are either dilettantes
who seek the most recognition for the least work investment, or people who
have one or two serious interests, and a strong ability to promote all of
their other minor achievements.

(Protip: my vanity meter goes off the scale when the self-promoter is a woman
who prominently features her amateur modeling portfolio on a personal website,
or intermixes pictures of herself in a bikini in otherwise unrelated content.)

I think the thing to learn here is that noise level for self-promotion is set
pretty high. If you think you're bragging too much about an
accomplishment...well, you probably aren't. ;-)

~~~
abstractbill
Any time someone lists "Microsoft Word" as a skill on their resume (other than
a secretary, and then I'd expect a lot more detail) my gut reaction is to
assume they're the kind of person who enjoys listing accomplishments no matter
how deep or meaningful.

~~~
WEREA
Add to the list those who write:
ASP,XML,ORACLE,SAP,Javascript,AWK,GREP,PERL,.Net and few more capitalized
abbreviations

In fact beauty is in minimalism. Such as Google which just say C++,Java and
Python

------
Balsamic
I find it mildly interesting that the NYT article omits CS from her dossier.
Does branding her as purely an Economics grad make her more of an 'everyman'
and thus result in a more relatable story?

~~~
WEREA
yeah CS would mean she is geek, shyaa. They must keep the whole econ major
models can design an Iphone app feel!

------
jessor
_Maybe I value my time more than my net worth. Maybe my fear of boredom
outweighs my fear of failure. Or, maybe I have an irrational belief that I
will succeed against all odds. Whatever it is, I find the risk of
entrepreneurship to be not only worthwhile but also necessary for fulfillment.
Work is no longer work. It is life, and a good one._

Is it just me or do those last paragraphes sound like beautiful poetry?

~~~
mburney
Sounds more like banal, run-of-the-mill inspirational speech (not that I have
anything against that)

~~~
Jun8
Relief! So I wasn't the only one thinking that. It sounds like a warmed up
version of Timothy Ferriss-like mantra.

------
mmaunder
She gets points for cajoling a fluff self-promotion piece out of the nytimes.
That's not easy.

~~~
c1sc0
And _very_ effective, I was stunned how much sales a mention in the NYT can
bring. Wish I could repeat that for my next startup.

------
braindead_in
Her other venture was Yaari.com, which was a scammy dating site aimed at
Indians. It was big with some Indian VC's here in Bangalore but eventually got
shut down.

------
unohoo
the social networking site if I'm not mistaken is www.yaari.com (targeted
towards indians) -- as someone who's closely followed the indian startup
scene, i seriously doubt if they had anywhere close to 2 million users.
besides, think about it - if you have close to 2 mill users, why would you
just abandon it ?

------
mambodog
_...I started Khush Inc., which makes an iPhone music application called
LaDiDa. It’s a kind of reverse karaoke — it creates background music when
people sing lyrics into a microphone..._

Someone managed to make Microsoft SongSmith into something that doesn't suck?

------
wallflower
One of the more interesting profiles to be featured on NYTimes - interesting
for the fact that she could easily have had an easy high-lifestyle life
financed by her consulting career and gave it up to make her own destiny.

I know someone who worked for the Monitor Group - which is the unnamed
consulting group - she was super sharp.

------
savrajsingh
The title sounds like a tautology. Don't all entrepreneurs take a chance on
themselves, by definition? :)

------
alexro
In spite of the positive outcome for that woman, do you find that article
having a depressing effect for you? She was on track for "six figure salary in
3 years" and worked for very reputable enterprises, and still she was not able
to come up with any realistic business-model for herself.

An iPhone app while definitely an achievement may as well serve as a proof of
a "normal" web-oriented startups going out of fashion.

~~~
alexro
These who downvote silently are the freaks afraid of expressing their opinion.

Isn't the whole purpose of a website like HN to have discussions?

------
WEREA
Sorry but I really find her website too cheesy!

Someone who claims to have 5 Million $ worth web company should know better.

Also her modelling portfolio is like HFCS worst than cheesy.

~~~
jlcgull
haters gonna hate! srsly?

~~~
WEREA
dude please check it out. <http://prernagupta.com/> its nor functionally
oriented nor asthetically oriented nor minimalistic.

Its a wordpress blog with different pages done by making them categories, the
top menu bar gives it a feel of the website.

Yet its just a wordpress blog. I have seen much better cheap templates for
wordpres.

