61–70 of 80 posts
Startup: http://www.allthecooks.com
Role: Founder, wrote the iOS app and some server stuff.
How did you start: HTML Blogging when I was 13.
Why did I start: The internet is a really cool thing.
Proof of cred: http://www.linkedin.com/in/silviacurioni
Has your gender made any of this hard?: no
These are the selling points for CS that worked really well in my conversations with 10-18 year-old girls so far (Aggregated so you can use them for your niece if you find the opportunity) : - You can do this really cool thing you wanted to do (ex: build a cringe Justin Bieber /cringe fan app ) and it's easy, let me show you how. - This girl who was just like you is now heading Yahoo/building the top fan site for XYZ…
> - (When all else fails) Hacker girls get hit on quite frequently. Amen! Brain power is indeed a beautiful thing.
I noticed that, by default, you don't make the doerhub.com profiles public. Somebody has to explicitly choose to do so. I'd be interested in understanding what pushed you in that direction. It would seem like it might slow down growth?
I want to make it a go to place for people to establish and grow their identity as doers - to nurture their pursuits and benefit when they help others (If you are great at something you can mentor and invest/contribute open source in that field. The social capital you generate from doing that should come back to you as help in areas you are trying to grow in). Not everyone is comfortable putting that out there (espec…
I'm interested coz I'm involved with a new community site and think about different ways to grow the audience.
> Tired of all the gender banter lately? Me too. I'm curious what exactly you find tiresome about it. Is it the sexism that often spawns these discussions? the implication that women need extra help? the bad attitudes often displayed in comments? etc.
I think it is more productive to focus on fixing things going forward, than trying to place blame by resurfacing or redefining stereotypes. I'd rather us spread "gateway drugs to hacking" for everyone to use regardless of gender, race, or location. (plus I want us to surface more of the dormant role models we have on HN and elsewhere instead of letting journalists put dramatic spins on a plot that claims female tech…
Its probably supposed to be obvious too, but what exactly do we need to fix?
Although I don't think female tech founders are going extinct or something I do believe based on data that they are a minority and that is not being blown out of proportion particularly - although I base that on the overall data that women are a minority in STEM fields in general. The idea that they are a minority is imo valid - but I don't think that itself is a problem - we are we not conversely worried about the minority of men in the care, fashion or sex industries for instance.
Any tips on entry points for coding that you've found worked well or badly? For example - a few years back I saw several young folk move over into coding by poking away at their MySpace pages to make them do "cool" things. For those people it seemed to be the same sort of starting point as the '10 PRINT "HELLO'; 20 GOTO 10;' type stuff did for mine.
I tried to aggregate those as a sub-thread. You make a great point with the MySpace example. Legos with built in robotics might be fun as well. I never had a lego (too expensive) and I only saw the $200 robotic kits in college in the US. In Chicago, a state organization is trying to create a programable robot with LED lights to get kids interested in coding and putting together simple hardware hacks. I think that is…
I'm interested that some of those seem more social than how I got into coding. I was the cliche fat-nerdy kid who spent many, many hours with the computer rather than interacting with humans ;-)
It's one of the things I noticed from the MySpace folk - they were very much more oriented towards sharing/showing their stuff with others.
Do you feel your location matters for your start-up and for you as a founder?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to make it a go to place for people to establish and grow their identity as doers - to nurture their pursuits and benefit when they help others (If you are great at something you can mentor and invest/contribute open source in that field. The social capital you generate from doing that should come back to you as help in areas you are trying to grow in). Not everyone is comfortable putting that out there (espec…
Cool. Did you get that feedback from users in some way (interviews?) - or is it something that you're testing now with the site? I'm interested coz I'm involved with a new community site and think about different ways to grow the audience.
I'll go first.. Why in the world would you feel a need to make this post?
Wow, although I guess Reddit with an AMA might be a better platform, didn't expect to see Reddit like comments :/ There's a lot of posts on here about women in tech (and the lack thereof) so she thought it may be pertinent and interesting. Men are always posting about their startups, and I don't see people saying they're "just trying to call attention to themselves".