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Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly? You're all so anti-sexist it sickens me. Whenever a female posts, you put away the boxing gloves and take out the kid skin gloves. The only people that actually say negative things are the unapologetic sexists, and no, I don't like that either. But it doesn't bother me as much. So it might just be my imagination, but just to be safe I prefer to be one of the guys for my recreational forum activities.
Bullshit! I support your right to portray yourself in whatever light you can muster, but there's no shortage of critical thinkers on Hacker News. The phenomena that you're describing is often called "othering" and it generally sums up nicely as "a room full of dudes bending over backwards to be so accepting to a woman that it's creepy". It is a real problem. However, I know I'm not the only person on here who couldn'…
I doubt I have much to gain from being a female on HN, unless I a) wanted to take advantage of my rarity and b) wanted to apply to HN. In which case they would find out I was female when I submitted my application, anyway. And I'm not applying.
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#83At Startup School a few years ago, I pitched my idea to Paul and he invited me to apply for the summer class even though I'd missed the deadline. I against it. That whole "dropping out of high school and college" thing pretty much proved how much I chafe against what I consider hoop-jumping and YC was too much hoop-jumping for me. Didn't stop me though: http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/ (Differ…
In your post you mention that the figures are gross revenue. While people seem to be (understandably?) reluctant to talk publicly about profit rather than revenue what's your thoughts on focussing on revenue rather than profit when talking about success?
I'm focusing on revenue because our profits are very low right now - by choice. I believe that 12 mos from now, Freckle could be earning $450k-650k/yr... if I can keep up the growth rate we've had so far. Therefore, as I said in the article, we roll almost all of the money from Freckle back into Freckle - advertising, hiring freelancers, etc.
Otherwise, most of our endeavors are almost pure profit. What overhead does a two-person business have? Tech goodies, fonts, clip art, software, internet access, hosting, occasional travel... almost all things we could skip if we chose to. We have a home office - before, we were paying about $900/month. We'll have an office again but not right away. My husband's business (Austrian, not counted in my reckoning) has a part-time office manager. We pay for a cleaner to come twice a week, and about half of that is considered a business expense.
The biggest profit suck that we can't avoid is transaction fees. But I'm not a cost-cutter, I'm a revenue-grower. It works better in the end.
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#84At Startup School a few years ago, I pitched my idea to Paul and he invited me to apply for the summer class even though I'd missed the deadline. I against it. That whole "dropping out of high school and college" thing pretty much proved how much I chafe against what I consider hoop-jumping and YC was too much hoop-jumping for me. Didn't stop me though: http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/ (Differ…
Really dislike people who downvote because they disagree, rather than arguing against. Very passive aggressive. Can you expand on the hoop jumping and YC with some specific examples? I'm sincerely curious.
It's all really summed up in "Startup School," don't you think? You have to move somewhere (Cambridge) for 3 mos, for very low resources, and the whole thing just smacks of a system -- for people who claim they want to buck "the system." Sure, it's less controlling than regular investment but a whole lot more than a bank loan.
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really dislike people who downvote because they disagree, rather than arguing against. Very passive aggressive. Can you expand on the hoop jumping and YC with some specific examples? I'm sincerely curious.
It's all really summed up in "Startup School," don't you think? You have to move somewhere (Cambridge) for 3 mos, for very low resources, and the whole thing just smacks of a system -- for people who claim they want to buck "the system." Sure, it's less controlling than regular investment but a whole lot more than a bank loan.
Actually you move to the Silicon Valley, not Cambridge anymore. Technically, having living expenses to cover 3 mo in SV would make most out-of-state startups happy. :) $17k for 2 founders to last 3 months doesn't seem that bad to me personally, but to each their own.
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#86Not this time, but applied with a female cofounder previously. (no interview, pretty sure it was a combination of technically unproven idea and no terribly impressive achievements between us so far; also, lame video) The application wouldn't really have improved much at this point, as developing the product part-time didn't work out (too many distractions from consulting customers). Instead we've been focusing 100% o…
> also, lame video
Since the videos don't have to be that polished, what do you mean?
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all really summed up in "Startup School," don't you think? You have to move somewhere (Cambridge) for 3 mos, for very low resources, and the whole thing just smacks of a system -- for people who claim they want to buck "the system." Sure, it's less controlling than regular investment but a whole lot more than a bank loan.
Actually you move to the Silicon Valley, not Cambridge anymore. Technically, having living expenses to cover 3 mo in SV would make most out-of-state startups happy. :) $17k for 2 founders to last 3 months doesn't seem that bad to me personally, but to each their own.
So, are you interested in "discussion" so you can justify your choices, or did you actually want to know why I didn't do it? "Actually" everything I said is true, because it is about my decision, when I made it.
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#88Not me. Co-founder (3-person team) is @mediamum who is doing a PhD as a Research Assistant at the School of Computer Science at CU (alum include David Morin from Facebook and Woz). She's doing research into the use of social media for crisis communications (hurricanes, wildfires etc) in the Crisis Informatics Lab there. Doesn't hang out on HN so much (must be startup and PhD getting in the way). Interestingly, Woz go…
To which CU are you referring?
University of Colorado at Boulder. Like the commenter above notes, Dave Morin and in earlier times the Woz are alumni.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak (search for Colorado)
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cheating is a breach of trust. Had I meant monogamy, I would have said so.
You seem to be implicitly assuming that everyone can resist temptation through sheer force of will. Even if you're that way, a lot of people aren't; they have to carefully engineer temptation out of their lives. (There's a known cognitive bias for assuming everyone else is psychologically like yourself, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called right now.)
Why are you determined to identify a subtext in my remarks? First monogamy, now self-denial - you're disputing ideas which I don't hold. There are a good many people in open or group relationships who are happy, stable and committed to each other as they are, rather than on a conditional basis. People generally don't carefully engineer temptation out of their lives by signalling in such detail.
The belief that others' cognitive processes are essentially similar to one's own is called projection bias, BTW.
Re: Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
#90Not this time, but applied with a female cofounder previously. (no interview, pretty sure it was a combination of technically unproven idea and no terribly impressive achievements between us so far; also, lame video) The application wouldn't really have improved much at this point, as developing the product part-time didn't work out (too many distractions from consulting customers). Instead we've been focusing 100% o…
> also, lame video Since the videos don't have to be that polished, what do you mean?
I think we tried too hard, and it came over unnatural and pitch-y.