Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
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Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
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Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#2I don’t know why this comment struck me as odd … maybe it’s because the only people I know who identify themselves specifically as “nontechnical cofounders” are women.
This means that you seriously need to go meet more founders. There are probably as many non-tech founders who are men as tech founders. These founders(such as Alexis from reddit) have filled the role in a very similar manner as Jessica describes.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#3I don’t know why this comment struck me as odd … maybe it’s because the only people I know who identify themselves specifically as “nontechnical cofounders” are women. This means that you seriously need to go meet more founders. There are probably as many non-tech founders who are men as tech founders. These founders(such as Alexis from reddit) have filled the role in a very similar manner as Jessica describes.
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Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#4It occurred to me recently that if the goal is to eventually get to gender equality, female focused tech groups should set the proportion of their tickets available at x% female, y% male where x and y are the inverse of their proportions at some equivalent male dominated group. Over time, this policy should pull men and women together instead of apart.
What good is it if women only know other women and men only know other men?
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#5I don’t know why this comment struck me as odd … maybe it’s because the only people I know who identify themselves specifically as “nontechnical cofounders” are women. This means that you seriously need to go meet more founders. There are probably as many non-tech founders who are men as tech founders. These founders(such as Alexis from reddit) have filled the role in a very similar manner as Jessica describes.
Sure, but I think her point stands. They don't identify themselves as a nontechnical cofounder: they're the business guy, the money guy, the sales guy or the industry guy. Using a negative to describe one's own role comes across as very self-deprecating.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#6I don’t know why this comment struck me as odd … maybe it’s because the only people I know who identify themselves specifically as “nontechnical cofounders” are women. This means that you seriously need to go meet more founders. There are probably as many non-tech founders who are men as tech founders. These founders(such as Alexis from reddit) have filled the role in a very similar manner as Jessica describes.
Sure, but I think her point stands. They don't identify themselves as a nontechnical cofounder: they're the business guy, the money guy, the sales guy or the industry guy. Using a negative to describe one's own role comes across as very self-deprecating.
Alexis has a record of identifying himself as the non-technical founder. So do many, many other founders. Just do a google on this query to see founders describing themselves as non-technical: non-technical founder site:news.ycombinator.com
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#7It occurred to me recently that if the goal is to eventually get to gender equality, female focused tech groups should set the proportion of their tickets available at x% female, y% male where x and y are the inverse of their proportions at some equivalent male dominated group. Over time, this policy should pull men and women together instead of apart. What good is it if women only know other women and men only know…
I do think that there is good in a only women conference. But i also do think that your suggestion is incredibly smart.
Minimize criticism of those who think this is sexism, while keeping its goal of both making a statement that there is inequality and providing inspiration to women - and still giving a chance to a few men understand how difficult can be to be on a environment dominated by the other gender.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#8It's expected that every word anybody said during that conference will be scrutinized beyond what's appropriate, simply because it's such a touchy subject. That's probably the reason why the video of the conference was already taken offline today while I was watching it (edit: it's not, see below). Generally I think it would be more productive if judgements weren't done on a hair trigger, because that's what makes this topic so toxic when in fact it shouldn't be.
Personally I found the presentations very entertaining and insightful - and even though I didn't have the opportunity to watch the panel to the end, I was struck by the impression that for the most part these were normal startup stories. That's a good thing, because it means while there is work to do when it comes to making the playing field fairer to women founders, we're at a state where the main issue is not "how to cope with my gender" but "how do we get our startup off the ground".
The area where I believe much more work is required is how we get more woman programmers started. The article touches very slightly on that, but then misses the mark:
> To get a male founder to admit he doesn’t write the code his startup depends on you have to twist his arm. With a female founder it’s the second sentence out of her mouth. As if to say “PS - don’t take me seriously”
A completely different way to read this is that people who code don't have a lot of status in circles of non-programmers. So a non-technical founder might in fact expect to be taken more seriously by professing hacking ignorance.
One reason why non-technical women founders are quick to volunteer that info might be a subconscious reflection of that nerd stigma, and of course that's probably a large reason why women don't become programmers as often as men in the first place. It seems to me that perception of social status is the core issue.
To be fair though it was a founders' conference, not a female hackers conference.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#9Filed under: no good deed goes unpunished.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#10It's expected that every word anybody said during that conference will be scrutinized beyond what's appropriate, simply because it's such a touchy subject. That's probably the reason why the video of the conference was already taken offline today while I was watching it (edit: it's not, see below). Generally I think it would be more productive if judgements weren't done on a hair trigger, because that's what makes th…
That's probably the reason why the video of the conference was already taken offline today while I was watching it.
No, we took the video offline because one of the speakers hadn't realized the talks were being filmed. It will be back once we edit that one out.