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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#431

Post by ghshephard »

hayksaakian wrote: post #427
ghshephard wrote: post #424

The one thing that caught my attention in this essay as I read over it a couple times, was PG's emphasis on the being a computer programmer, as opposed to computer hacker. My sense (and someone feel free to correct me), is that YCombinator does have a pretty significant (and, I believe, appropriate) bias towards hackers. Someone can become a computer programmer in a fairly straightforward fashion - just take a dozen…

Maybe because he correctly described the problem: Think about it like a funnel 1) Some % of people are women 2) Some % of women are programmers 3) Some % of programmers who are women are hackers PG posits that the biggest "bounce rate" is woman -> programmer rather than woman programmer -> woman hacker Empirically, I recall the article claiming around 1/5 founding teams having 1 woman, (notably this is not a % of fou…

The point I was trying to make is that he never once mentioned the word "hacker" in his essay. Didn't try and dive into it's connotations, and implications. Didn't want to even take a paragraph to capture the essence of being a computer hacker.

I'm guessing that it might have been in an earlier draft, when he decided that it was distracting from the actual point he was trying to make, which was relatively straightforward.

Re: Female Founders

#432

Post by heterogenic »

Gigablah wrote: post #428
heterogenic wrote: post #425

You know what I'd love to see the next time one of these inflammatory gender-related posts comes up? One thread that only women are allowed to post to. No men to challenge them, play devil's advocate or otherwise defend their privilege. Just one place for us to say our piece without being downvoted into oblivion, where our voice can be heard (in all its glorious heterogeneity). Because that's what's missing in this c…

"mansplaining"? "boys"? Are you serious?

Totally serious.

Try to imagine reading this as a female developer/founder. It's not that it's all crazy/insulting/aaargh, but enough is. And it's happening without our input.

So. Frustrating.

Re: Female Founders

#433

Post by sanj »

Most YC companies have at least two founders. Many have three.

PG's language here:

In the current YC batch, 16 out of 68 companies, or 24%, have female founders.

is ambiguous.

If we assume for the moment that the average YC company has 2.5 founders, this statement could vary between the 24% number quoted (when all of the cofounders are women) and 9% (where only one of the cofounders is a woman).

It'd be helpful to have that clarified.

Re: Female Founders

#434

Post by Dewie »

heterogenic wrote: post #425

You know what I'd love to see the next time one of these inflammatory gender-related posts comes up? One thread that only women are allowed to post to. No men to challenge them, play devil's advocate or otherwise defend their privilege. Just one place for us to say our piece without being downvoted into oblivion, where our voice can be heard (in all its glorious heterogeneity). Because that's what's missing in this c…

Sure, but how would that even work in practice? Ban every poster that seems like a man from that specific thread? Invite-only?

Re: Female Founders

#435

Post by mudil »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #162
MrZongle2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps a sizeable number of women simply don't find the idea of starting a business as interesting as other endeavors. Less than 10% of nurses in the United States are male. Why isn't there a hue and cry about this gender imbalance? Is it even a real problem ? And guys, what could the nursing industry do to make it more welcoming to you ? Anything? Or are you simply not interested in it? Could women in technology…

Less than 10% of nurses in the United States are male. Why isn't there a hue and cry about this gender imbalance? Is it even a real problem? There is, but you're probably not that exposed to it often by dint of (presumably) not being part of that industry. But if you look into it, there's concern about the lack of male nurses and a concerted effort to improve diversity (the same for other professions with traditional…

Diversity, when it comes to sexes, is such a nebulous idea. Here is a comment I left above.

What amazes me is that in this whole conversation no one even mentions the differences between men and women, as these differences were shaped by evolutionary forces. In all our attempts to make women and men "equal", not just in this country, but across the world, women and men still go into different professions and do have different interests, and are good in their gender-specific things. There is a reason for that: men and women are different. Surely, there will be women in tech and men in nursing. But the differences are there and they go back hundreds of millions of years, and they've been shaped by real evolutionary forces, and they play out every day in myriads of ways. For all the scorn that Harvard University President Lawrence Summers got in 2005 for bringing out these issues, he was coming from a serious scientifically-based view on differences of sexes. For those who want to understand how evolution shaped women and men, I recommend to start with Dawkins' books (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene), and then to read "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley, and "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller. And, hey, I am talking to the audience here, since it is mostly composed of men (there is a reason for it): understanding the evolution of sex will make you better at picking up women!

Re: Female Founders

#436

Post by girvo »

xiaoma wrote: post #335
Zikes wrote: post #146

Judging by the comments on this article, it would appear that once you've been labeled a sexist it is downright impossible to dispel. I'm not sure what people expect, exactly. Is pg supposed to give up all his worldly goals and possessions and live as some sort of equality monk? Should he know of and contribute to every one of the many groups and organizations involved in gender equality? And what exactly is wrong wi…

The thing that sticks out most is this: Of the very angry people who were repeatedly tweeting attacks at him after the Valleywag article, I haven't seen even one apologize. It's just sad. Edit: @antics, I just reread the stream of angry @paulg tweets from Dec. 28th and have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe I missed tptacek's tweet both times. Please don't attack me over it.

'tptaeck didn't tweet, it was a comment on HN, just FYI. I think you two are taking about two different things.

Re: Female Founders

#437

Post by abalone »

jammur wrote: post #325
abalone wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also this gem. PG: "A lot of people outside the startup world seem to assume that investors have the same sort of naive bias ordinary people do when deciding who to invite to join a club—that they simply fund the people most like them. That is not true." John Doerr, famous investor: "That correlates more with any other success factor that I’ve seen in the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. If you look at Bezos,…

I think you misinterpreted that. PG said funding decisions aren't made based on similarity to the people making the funding decision. John Doerr is saying that sometimes one of factors in making a funding decision is similarity to other massively successful founders, not the people making the funding decisions. PG has been pretty open about the fact that pattern matching to other successful founders is very common.

Do you really think that interpretation would improve PG's position? That pattern matching based on gender and race is "very common"? Are you implying that is ok so long as it's the race/gender of other founders?

Thankfully PG does not actually take as extreme a position as Doerr. He merely downplays the existence of it in the VC community.

Re: Female Founders

#439

Post by lancewiggs »

pyrocat wrote: post #155
lancewiggs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case are clearly not under represented if you reflect that PG also says they wield genuine power at YC.

Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"

Sure - my wording was poor. I mean to say that the women wield enough collective and individual power to ensure that they are not an ignored minority. It's not yet close enough to 50/50, the female voices are clearly central to the group.

Let's remember that this is a journey, that YC seems to be at the forefront of it and we should encourage the progress to date while maintaining high expectations for the future.

Meanwhile there are genuine benefits to being at the forefront of diversity, as it widens the pool of awesome founders.

Moreover other players tend to take note of what YC does, and as the evidence builds this will help change the industry.

This reminds me of the industry groups going after Apple for their manufacturing practises, which turn out to be amongst the best in the game. While I felt that Apple was unjustly accused, they did open their books about their sustainable practices, and that's helped improve industry expectations.

Re: Female Founders

#440

Post by jammur »

abalone wrote: post #437
jammur wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misinterpreted that. PG said funding decisions aren't made based on similarity to the people making the funding decision. John Doerr is saying that sometimes one of factors in making a funding decision is similarity to other massively successful founders, not the people making the funding decisions. PG has been pretty open about the fact that pattern matching to other successful founders is very common.

Do you really think that interpretation would improve PG's position? That pattern matching based on gender and race is "very common"? Are you implying that is ok so long as it's the race/gender of other founders? Thankfully PG does not actually take as extreme a position as Doerr. He merely downplays the existence of it in the VC community.

I think you've already made up your mind about PG, and there's nothing I can say that will change that. So I just won't say anything.
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