Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#421

Post by xiphias2 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

snicksnak wrote: post #175

This trend isn't going away anytime soon, In fact I think it's just ramping up and is accelerating, especially with the racism narrative the main stream media outlets started to heavily push ~2 years ago and the big identity movement. It will continue until there is consensus, that this climate is bad, for everyone involved. I don't see that happen anytime soon, the cancelations will continue until moral improves.

I saw some improvement in the Netflix movies getting less extreme over time. Emily in Paris was the first movie where the woke Netflix made fun of itself using French people / culture as props. Disney and Netflix had to lose billions of dollars to understand that the loudest voices may not represent the majority of the people.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#422

Post by KODeKarnage » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #401

The solution to this is simple: Practice your communication skills. If you can’t think of a way to phrase advice that might be offensive, you are failing in intermediate communication skills. If you think it might be offensive, ask a close female in your life, your sister, your mother, grandma, etc. It’s in everyone’s best interest to treat others with love and respect. For extra safety, if you really think there is…

The problem being highlighted here isn't bad communicators. The problem is good communicators being incentivized out of communicating. It says something about you that you could not comprehend something that obvious.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#423

Post by uncoder0 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #215

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #75

>I don’t think most female founders even realize that they’re getting different advice than their male counterparts. Silicon Valley has always run on candor, but it’s being stifled at the moment, and no one is noticing that we are the collateral damage. Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that men are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that women…

I know a couple of female founders (including my wife). The biggest problem is that female might run into a creep and that makes very very stressful experience. For me... it is easy. First creeps do not want to meet me (I’m fat, older guy, short,..), and if I do meet somebody who is giving me creeps - my experience is not stressful at all. Btw, I still have not met a female VC: after 22 years in SV.

You've never met a female VC? We just raised our second round and we have 4 women VC's or angels on the captable now. Maybe it's just based on industry. I'm in sports/media tech.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#424

Post by tolbish » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #409

Thorentis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.

Its treating people different based on gender. It depends very much on semantics whether you call that sexism. It is certainly not the form of sexism that people these days are most worried about.

That would be discrimination based on sex, but no it would not be sexist in this case. Now if, for example, he treated people based on gender because he felt women belong in the kitchen, then that would be both sexist and discriminatory.

The words sexism/racism often get confused with discrimination.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#425

Post by oneplane » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #394

oneplane wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which students, and where? I don't see that happening locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?

Yeah, I see the opposite around me too. I literally had textbooks that referred to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression" at the turn of the millennium.

Isn't there some sort of vetting and accreditation system that would prevent that type of 'creative' stuff from getting in to an educational system?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#426

Post by entee » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

ridethebike wrote: post #232

DoreenMichele wrote: post #5

I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism , I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say. I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due…

Wasn't Theranos debacle because the tech was never going to work due to it being borderline snake oil and whishful thinking hyped by con(wom)man?

It should be noted that past the early stages virtually none of that investment and valuation came from institutional VCs and people who had a clue. The valuation was driven by rich people who didn’t know any better and they sadly got defrauded.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#427

Post by skissane » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

igorkraw wrote: post #342

LockAndLol wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in your case German) discussions and experiences from American ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc. It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topi…

Good points, thank you. It just seems like in this case, whenever the topic is discussed everyone points to "it is known" style twitter mobs, and the actual examples of twitter mobs that do show up tend to not be as unreasonable in general. E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up, thanks…

> he says some weird stuff and defended Eppstein in a tone-deaf manner

He was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. The former was twisted into the later.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#428

Post by kilroy123 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

docflabby wrote: post #20

I think fear is making people in general just clam up. Anything you say can be taken as offensive and the crowds bay for blood.

This is what I was thinking. I find myself just staying way quieter around everyone these days. Men and women.

It's too easy to say the wrong thing and take some serious heat.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#429

Post by kenjackson » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #395

oneplane wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which students, and where? I don't see that happening locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?

Well over 90% of people those ages I interacted with online are for throwing out principles like Free Speech and innocent until proven guilty -- it just depends on the context for them. To understand those principles, it's necessary to understand their historical origins. Virtually none of the young people in such conversations understood those things and none of them cared. All basically responded to such informatio…

You need to find new online circles. I know if no young kids who are against free speech and innocent until proven guilty. But they also feel like they don’t “personally” need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#430

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

The other day, I was in a Zoom meeting with another man and a woman. The call had too much latency, and the conversation was a tad heated, so we were all interrupting each other to some extent—but I noticed halfway through that I was interrupting the woman more, and she was speaking the least. Just like in all the research. While I certainly didn't go silent for the rest of the meeting, I made a concerted effort to let the woman talk more, and I'm glad I did, because she had good things to say.

I'm aware that I have the same biases as the rest of society. I do my best to recognize them, and, where applicable, to add a small mental counterweight before making decisions. I don't think this always leads to better outcomes, but I do think it's a net positive. And if investors act on similar frameworks, they've probably doomed some companies and saved others. The future is unknowable, and we'll never know what would have happened.

I wish this investor had acted out of a desire to be a better person, or a more successful VC, rather than from fear of a mob. I'm not a fan of mobs. But none of us are immune to cultural biases, and we should second-guess ourselves accordingly.