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If you make a list of the most successful tech investors, you're going to find that they're not as a rule all technologists. Ron Conway has a poli sci degree. Fred Wilson has a finance background. Peter Fenton at Benchmark has a Philosphy degree.

Note though that it's only the women who get dinged as "girlfriends" tagging along with their technologist boyfriends when they co-found immensely successful venture capital firms.

Hopefully that helps you understand the immediate negative reaction your comments generated.


It's sorta weird to read your comments because they have a certain lens on the world that's very much at-odds with published stories about how YC actually got started.

They didn't "recruit" RTM or TLB because they had specific skills that YC needed. They asked them because PG, RTM, and TLB had previously founded Viaweb together, and so they knew they could work well together and all had shared history and cultural knowledge. And then if you go back to the founding of Viaweb, PG and RTM started it because they were best friends at Harvard, well before RTM wrote the Morris Worm (indeed, if you read some of the news articles on the worm, PG is quoted). TLB was brought on because they asked all their friends "Who's the smartest person you know?", Trevor's name came up, and then when they met him, he rewrote their entire product in Smalltalk in 2 weeks.


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she was dating the founder

No. She was not "dating the founder". She was a founder.

Your position isn't "controversial"; it's based on a broken and insulting premise. Please stop pushing it.


You said she was "dating the founder" and "brought on to handle their marketing", and now you're "not belittling her role"?

You're in no position to criticize someone else's "wording" and "tone". Please stop.


I'm just curious why you think these are "odd" parts of her personality, particularly when you've said elsewhere in this comment and elsewhere that this role and these skills are very necessary for a business and she's made a huge impact on the company?

She is a founder of YC, BTW - that's what it means to be a co-founder. You could just as easily say that PG was dating the founder of YC, and she made use of his technical expertise and that of his friends in judging startups.




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