Can’t read this without thinking about the founders I know who started (and are still running) a successful unicorn. When they were founding this unicorn, they applied to YC and were rejected. Why, I’ll never know, but they’re both fairly immigranty and the cynical side of me wonders if the “social radar” didn’t like that about them. There’s a thin line between social radar and unconscious bias.
Jessica Livingston (2015)
161–170 of 202 posts
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for delicious. Funny note: I went to jail for 10 years. One of only about three sites (out of thousands I had accounts on) that I could log into when I was released was delicious. Sadly 99% of my bookmarks now pointed to dead wood.
Do you remember the other ones?
I'm guessing those sites probably ruined their reputation by selling out their users, refusing to listen to them and belittling their genuine concerns about UX and API access.
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#163One of the things she's best at is judging people. She's one of those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character. She can see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her nickname within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is A manager at a past job also had a similar "x-ray vision". During interviews, she would always sit in with another interviewer an…
I am extremely skeptical of someone who claims this ability in themselves or others. What this tells me is that someone is misjudging a lot of circumstances very confidently. You just can't understand people on a snap judgment, there are too many outliers. Imagine if we applied this kind of thinking in courts. We would convict a lot of innocent people. We wouldn't feel that we need to wait for all the facts and evide…
You just can't understand people on a snap judgment, there are too many outliers.
Not so long ago, I would have certainly agreed with you until I met this one girl.
So we started dating and, a couple months in, sometimes, as a joke, I use to say to her: "the first time I saw you, blablabla beautiful blablabla a star in the sky blablabla". I did that not only once but many many times. And every time, every time, she would have the exact same answer. She would say: "the first time I saw you, I thought 'oh bof'" (meaning she thought I was mediocre). So you know, I thought she only plays hard to get, like women do. That didnt bother me. Time passes and I kept going with my "the first time I saw you .."s. Kind of know she liked it anyway. And she kept on having the same answer.
At one point I thought something was strange. She kept on having those exact same words again and again. 'Oh bof'. Again and again. I could sense she was actually trying to tell me something entirely else.
Until I realised what she was saying. When I did realised what she was saying, I was shocked.
The first time I saw her... what I really thought was... 'Oh bof'. This is literally word for word what I thought the first time I saw her. I thought in my head: 'Oh bof'. But not only the words matched perfectly, the ton as well.
I pass on the details but let me tell you that girl knew exactly my state of mind even when I was in the next room.
Thats the time I learnt some people can tell exactly what you think just by looking at you. This is frightening. They can because they started observing people at a very young age. They love to observe people. Exactly like it is said in that pg's post: they observe.
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#164[deleted]
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#165> No one understands female founders better than Jessica. But it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the topic. She ventured a toe in that water a while ago, and the reaction was so violent that she decided "never again." I wonder how much wisdom has been lost bc of this effect. I feel like society needs to create a much larger incentive for thoughtful people to share their wisdom. Today, you st…
I doubt the violent reaction was based on anything other than gender.
Yeah, very probably.
But there's no chance of truth nor justice once the Internet Hate Machine really gets going.
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#166thanks for the link back to this, was a great story. i think women in general are more like this and as the article states, tend to never get enough credit for the things they achieve.
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Careful, this seems to be falling for the prosecutor's fallacy where the probabilities aren't normalized to account for base rates of the hypothesis occuring. So in this case, the percent of successful valuations that have a female founders will likely be extremely low simply because the gender ratio is disproportionaly male, and being successful is extremely rare. For example, let's say probability of being successf…
I commented the same thing in another thread. I am not arguing the base rate or whether female founders experience discrimination, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is definitely not higher than other VC's which pg hints at due to Jessica. In fact I think other VCs have something in the range of 20% IIRC(would not mind to be corrected though).
Okay fair enough, but why look at female founders in terms total valuation percent, then? I think my point about the distortion from the (likely) exponential distribution of total valuation still stands, although in this case with regards to comparison between VCs.
Isn't it straightforward to just look at percent of female founders?
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#168I wonder what her Social Radar picks up off cryptocurrency-adjacent individuals. Because she's seen their pitches to YC. And that Social Radar of hers should get a good read on crypto bros. And so the question is how many of them are grifters and con artists trying to cash in on the next Bitcoin, and how many of them are true believers of the ideals being spouted. And how many of them are, actually, honestly, good pe…
Can you point to a single YC crypto / "cryptocurrency-adjacent" company that is a "grift"?
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#169I wonder what her Social Radar picks up off cryptocurrency-adjacent individuals. Because she's seen their pitches to YC. And that Social Radar of hers should get a good read on crypto bros. And so the question is how many of them are grifters and con artists trying to cash in on the next Bitcoin, and how many of them are true believers of the ideals being spouted. And how many of them are, actually, honestly, good pe…
Crypto is by definition a red flag. I don’t believe honest good people involve themselves with crypto.
Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)
#170I wish pg the best but I think everyone should know how much legal liability these kind of public writings creates. A person I know closely had 25 year marriage in CA and he always believed in love and lifelong relationship. But as their kids went to college, wife's priorities changed. She started affair, started helping out her partner financially etc. Husband discovered all these accidently from her phone. After ma…
This is an extremely weird thing to say, since Jessica is legitimately a cofounder of YC…
Right? It's strange that the whole point of the essay is still lost on lots of people.