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What Stops Female Founders?

foundersatwork.com

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Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#41

Post by KMStraub »

"I wanted to do x, but no one would hire me even though I was capable because I didn’t have sufficient experience in x on my resume."

I definitely identify with this line. I'm a 27-year-old woman and I left a cushy (read: boring) job writing for Vogue magazine so I could create a dating site that women will actually feel proud to join. Like so many, I was under the assumption you had to have ninja coding skills, an MBA, Google on your resume, or a genius gene to become a founder. I had none of those, and having worked as a print journalist, I missed the boat on the importance of developing your online brand. I had nothing to give me credibility--not even a Twitter page. And let's face it, my one laurel, ie that shiny "Vogue" on my resume, meant nothing to this audience.

I tried to get a job at a startup just to see what I was getting myself into, and no one would hire me. I had pretty much one friend in the biz--Meetup's cofounder Matt Meeker--and once he heard my idea, he said, "You've got to do this." I said, "But I don't have experience or any sort of reputation," and he said, "The best and most efficient way to get those things is to just do it."

So, I'm doing it. I probably wouldn't have if Matt hadn't offered those words of wisdom and created such an unthreatening environment in which to pitch him. The other thing that helped me plow forward when I wanted to give in to all the judgmental haters out there was the research I did on what sort of skills investors look for in the entrepreneurs they fund. If more women knew that it's about PERSPIRATION and PERSEVERANCE above all, I truly believe we'd have more female founders.

I've always had that fire in the belly that makes for a good entrepreneur. If it weren't for the misconceptions that you have to be some sort of savant to start something, I would have, like Jessica, maybe done this at 25. Though I've got a lot of catching up to do, I'm so thankful I realized I CAN do this, I SHOULD do this (to gain experience if nothing else), and I WANT to do this--because if I pull this off, I'll have accomplished something 100x more gratifying than anything I could have ever done working in corporate.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#42

Post by webwright »

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #38
webwright wrote: post #6

"Duh. Of course no one should live beyond their means. But I’d never thought about the implications of that when I was 25." I read a while ago that 40% of American households spend more than they make in post-tax income. I imagine this has gone down a bit, but it's still astounding. People are really good at convincing themselves that their "ship will come in" and they'll be able to wipe that debt clean.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/when-it-com... Consider a Standford CS undergrad working part-time in an on-campus computer lab who will graduate in a few months. Given that he/she has decided to take a market-rate job somewhere upon graduation, what is the probability that his income will be substantially higher a few months from now? How concerned should he be that his ship will not come in? Would…

They'd probably be fine. But debt (or lack of savings), as Jessica points out, limits options.

Failure to save also results in a lifestyle inflation. Cable bills, expensive hobbies, etc. It's hard to step out of that tarpit once you're in it.

Your CS undergrad would be LESS fine if, at the last minute, they realized they wanted to start their own company.

My understanding is that (until very recently) household debt tended to go up every year. That seems to indicate that most people are pretty bad about judging when and if their ship will come in.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#43

Post by patio11 »

DaniFong wrote: post #28

Interesting anecdote: so far 100% of the female engineers we've tried to hire who've turned us down (four so far...) did so in order to try to start their own startup, for at least a while. Of those two (that's 50%) raised outside capital so far, each just a few months after our offer. I wonder if this is a fluke, or a result of the massive influx of women into greentech?

I would not have been surprised by this, at all, given the relative ratios in Environmental Engineering (don't quote me on this, but I perceived it as about 60:40 in favor of women) as compared to Computer Science at my alma mater (that was, ahem, not 60:40 -- closer to 4:96).

Edit for context: major American research university, 2000 - 2004. The bulk of people I knew at university would be late twenties or early thirties now.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#44

Post by YuriNiyazov »

Joakal wrote: post #40
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. A Startup is all-enveloping, and a pregnancy is all-enveloping, and there's only one person

What do you mean by pregnancy as all-enveloping?

Same thing I mean by startup being all-enveloping. A startup fully takes over the founder's life. A pregnancy fully takes over the expecting mother's life.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#45

Post by chollida1 »

Sheryl Sandberg gave a good talk on a very similar topic at Ted. Her conclusion was that women tended to "check out" of work sooner then men.

One example she gave was that when women start trying to get pregnant, they will often stop applying for promotions because they know they'll be leaving work soon.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few...

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#46

Post by imkevingao »

I believe it's simply societal influences. Growing up, young girls follow the influence of older women. Mostly the pop culture nowadays. You have a small portion of female overachievers, but out of the small portion, even a smaller amount would pursue entrepreneurship.

I believe women are just as capable as men in all abilities, but ever since the nascence of civilization, women just had a different role. As society progress, the roles have shifted a bit, but the overall theme is still relatively similar as thousands of years ago. Nothing stops female founders except for themselves.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#47

Post by jseliger »

KMStraub wrote: post #41

"I wanted to do x, but no one would hire me even though I was capable because I didn’t have sufficient experience in x on my resume." I definitely identify with this line. I'm a 27-year-old woman and I left a cushy (read: boring) job writing for Vogue magazine so I could create a dating site that women will actually feel proud to join. Like so many, I was under the assumption you had to have ninja coding skills, an M…

This sounds interesting. You should put a link to your site in your profile.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#48

Post by [deleted] »

webwright wrote: post #6

"Duh. Of course no one should live beyond their means. But I’d never thought about the implications of that when I was 25." I read a while ago that 40% of American households spend more than they make in post-tax income. I imagine this has gone down a bit, but it's still astounding. People are really good at convincing themselves that their "ship will come in" and they'll be able to wipe that debt clean.

[deleted]

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#49

Post by wtracy »

shawnee_ wrote: post #27

It's probably a combination of factors that make "the female founder" seem more rare than she actually is. There is a breed of female founder that lives to pose for cameras and magazine covers and to be mentioned in Valleywag. But more common are those who are happy to grow their companies to a certain point that is manageable enough. They don't want or get a lot of attention, which makes them seem more rare than the…

So you're suggesting that women might be less likely to found companies that have big exits, and be more likely to try to found lifestyle businesses? Interesting.

I'm curious, do you have any numbers to back up this claim?

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#50

Post by lizzard »

WildUtah wrote: post #30
kakaylor wrote: post #2

I wonder if this is more a symptom of having few women in the field of computer science / software engineering [1] than a lack of women who want to be founders [2]. It isn't too surprising when you consider only a small percentage of people in computer science decide to become founders, and then a small percentage of that pool ends up being women. [1] I am assuming that most people in startups are computer science ty…

I wonder if this is more a symptom of having few women in the field of computer science / software engineering Women -- girls -- with talent and potential mostly leave the STEM track when they're twelve to fifteen years old. Looking for the cause of different quantities of company founders in factors that affect thirty-year-olds isn't going to address the biggest difference.

Looking at 14 year olds isn't going to help the 30 year olds who did stick with STEM and are here right now. It's great to help girls, but I have to wonder that that is so often the answer when grown women point out there are problems.
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