
Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs - karmel
https://hbr.org/2017/06/male-and-female-entrepreneurs-get-asked-different-questions-by-vcs-and-it-affects-how-much-funding-they-get
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WalterBright
How one dresses makes a big difference (see "Dress For Success" by Molloy), as
well as height and general level of physical attractiveness (for both men and
women). Scott Adams notes in "How To Fail" that even altering the timbre of
your voice makes a difference, as well as your word choices.

I suspect that everywhere you look for a difference, you'll find one.

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dkanze
This is precisely why we conducted an experiment to remove the influence of
variation in speech patterns, vocal intonation, nonverbal gestures and
physical appearance. Note that the co-author on the male attractiveness in
venture funding paper is a co-author on this paper, so we are well aware of
these factors. I would point you in the direction of that paper as well since
male not female attractiveness was found to improve funding outcomes.

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WalterBright
That's good. (I see the article did mention "Controlling for factors that may
influence funding outcomes — like measures of startups’ capital needs,
quality, and age, as well as entrepreneurs’ past experience" but not the other
factors.) How about height? I recall a study years ago that found that
salaries for men increased by $1,000 per inch of height. CEOs tend to be tall.

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paulddraper
This study does not adjust for age, experience, height, or anything really.

It's enormously suceptible to a hidden variable effect. E.g. suppose males and
females has different experience levels. The VCs questions might be the same
after controlling for that, and so we should be researching why males and
females have different experience levels. Instead, we're looking in all the
wrong places.

I'm not saying this is the case, but it reflects the quality of the study that
even the basic stuff wasn't considered.

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dkanze
Paul, If you read the paper itself, not just the highlights, you will find
that we have controlled for every factor that has been found to impact
funding, including past experience of the entrepreneur. The 2nd study (the
experiment) then controls for all these factors and only manipulates
prevention/promotion levels, finding that the allocation differences are
significant. And please note that it is really damaging to science in general
when people make comments like "the basic stuff wasn't considered" without
actually reading academic studies. Hope you will keep this in mind in the
future before posting comments!

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obibring
It seems "prevention" questions would imply skepticism on the part of the
questioner. You lightly touched upon this, but were there equally drastic
discrepancies between the types of questions posed to male versus female
founders in the presence of equal growth/success metrics? I would certainly
believe it -- maybe even expect it, but would love to hear more as this point
really hammers home the extent of the bias

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dkanze
Yes, these results hold when controlling for such factors; this study would
never have been published otherwise Obibring! I urge you to read the actual
paper since it appears you are interested.

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naiveattack
THIS. What a wonderful study.

Given a problem statement, the questions that emerge should objectively be
largely based on the problem itself: the industry, competition, business
models and risks. Regardless of whether it is being presented by a man, woman,
monkey, or dog.

The only way the questions could change is if you already knew about the
person, and if the objective of the questions was to test only weaknesses in
the whole system including the people driving it, assuming the strengths.

This would then imply that _on average_ the men _should_ being tested on what
the men are weaker at! And correspondingly for women.

I do not see this in the result set.

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ScottBurson
Excellent work and a fascinating result. Seems to me that both kinds of
questions are fair game for any entrepreneur. Maybe if men were asked more
"prevention" questions we'd get fewer big flameouts (Color Labs [0] comes to
mind).

(Though I wonder about their use of the term "Turing test" \-- do they mean
"A/B test"?)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs)

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kthejoker2
The original Turing test had the interlocutors guessing whether the subject
was a man or a woman, I think it's an oblique reference to that to suggest
disguising the entrepreneur's gender would make things fairer.

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rectang
This research illustrates beautifully how tech's pervasive and durable gender
disparity problems are not solely attributable to a handful of deviant
"assholes being assholes" and egregious actions such as obvious sexual
harassment.

Many people who think of themselves as well-meaning and who are perfectly
comfortable acknowledging that problems exist also play a role in perpetuating
the negative status quo. These individuals are an opportunity for constructive
engagement and real progress.

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ScottBurson
Yes. The unconscious assumption -- evidently made by female as well as male
VCs! -- seems to be that a female entrepreneur is much less likely to found a
company that will become huge. If an opportunity has less upside than others,
it is natural to look more closely at the downside risk.

I wonder whether YC has managed to free themselves to some extent from the
effects of this bias by standardizing their interview process.

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SomeStupidPoint
I would be interested to know if there were any variance in marketing
materials/information provided by male vs female led firms that might seed the
discrepancy.

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notliketherest
Men and women are different. It makes sense to ask different questions. If I'm
choosing which companies to invest millions of dollars in, you can bet I'll
take woman specific issues, such as pregnancy, into consideration. The idea of
a universal, gender blind rule set is absurd to rational decision making.

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jackmott
Something you should keep in mind is that a man is also affected if he has a
child. Available time, sleep quality, stress levels are all disrupted, and it
affects our cognitive abilities to extreme degrees often times. So just be
sure to discriminate against men who plan to have kids to some reasonable
factor as you do women.

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hasenj
It's obviously not the same. A man does not physically get pregnant.

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sidlls
What about the years (not weeks or even months) after pregnancy? Toddlers
aren't hands-off.

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randyrand
this is because men and women are not the same. they're different.

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KaoruAoiShiho
Clap clap, fantastic research.

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naiveattack
Women in cave feeding the babies. Men venture far and hunt with spear.

Welcome to the stone age all over again :)

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samnwa
Success of your project isn't entirely objective or logical. Why do we expect
the process to funding your project would be? You know, I heard that sometimes
wealthy parents will invest millions of dollars in their children's projects.
How incredibly biased of them. They don't even ask tough questions in the due
diligence process.

