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Female founders who've had a great 2016

techcrunch.com

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Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#21

Post by tptacek »

blowski wrote: post #7
malloreon wrote: post #3

Will techcrunch publish a similar list for non-white founders?

That's the problem with these kinds of lists - why not lists for gay founders and over-60s founders and disabled founders? Making lists of people in groups that suffer discrimination doesn't do any harm, but it's not clearly helpful either.

That an initiative to correct an imbalance doesn't correct all imbalances is hardly an meaningful criticism. It's true: there aren't enough technology entrepreneurs of color, and probably not enough disabled founders either. Start the thing that helps those cohorts, by all means.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#22

Post by danso »

I support these kinds of lists. Like #BlackLivesMatter, the focus on a purportedly disenfranchised group doesn't mean that the "main" group doesn't matter -- but it's an acknowledgement that we see plenty of representation of the main group -- in this case, men -- by default. Unless you believe that there really are no barriers specific to women (and it doesn't necessarily have to be sexism) and that women just are terrible at business/tech, why see such lists as threatening to non-women?

Note: There's a (very gray) "View All" button in the top-right of the slideshow. I was just going to complain about the hypocrisy of stuffing a list of purportedly successful women into a photo slideshow in a cynical attempt to increase page views.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#23

Post by exstudent2 »

BLM is a group that represents economically disadvantaged people. This list is pulled from the upper most echelons of society. Do you think it's ok to represent the wealthy as somehow oppressed?

Please don't take my question as an attack, I'm genuinely curious how people who support these initiatives view wealth.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#24

Post by tptacek »

exstudent2 wrote: post #23

BLM is a group that represents economically disadvantaged people. This list is pulled from the upper most echelons of society. Do you think it's ok to represent the wealthy as somehow oppressed? Please don't take my question as an attack, I'm genuinely curious how people who support these initiatives view wealth.

BLM is a group that exists to call attention to the ways that American society structurally devalues the lives of African Americans, most significantly by stubbornly assuming that African Americans killed by police officers (and by their surrogates, such as homeowners patrolling their property with firearms) represent justifiable homicides.

It is not primarily an economic justice movement and cannot therefore reasonably be attacked on the grounds you're attempting to attack it on.

This is, obviously, a tangent not relevant to article. 'danso was drawing an illustrative parallel, between the (implied) "All Lives Matter" rebuttal to Black Lives Matter, to "where's the men-only event" rebuttal to women-in-tech initiatives.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#25

Post by exstudent2 »

tptacek wrote: post #24
exstudent2 wrote: post #23

BLM is a group that represents economically disadvantaged people. This list is pulled from the upper most echelons of society. Do you think it's ok to represent the wealthy as somehow oppressed? Please don't take my question as an attack, I'm genuinely curious how people who support these initiatives view wealth.

BLM is a group that exists to call attention to the ways that American society structurally devalues the lives of African Americans, most significantly by stubbornly assuming that African Americans killed by police officers (and by their surrogates, such as homeowners patrolling their property with firearms) represent justifiable homicides. It is not primarily an economic justice movement and cannot therefore reasona…

I'm not attacking BLM. I support it.

This list however I don't support because the members are from wealthy backgrounds and are being presented as needing extra help.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#26

Post by tptacek »

exstudent2 wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BLM is a group that exists to call attention to the ways that American society structurally devalues the lives of African Americans, most significantly by stubbornly assuming that African Americans killed by police officers (and by their surrogates, such as homeowners patrolling their property with firearms) represent justifiable homicides. It is not primarily an economic justice movement and cannot therefore reasona…

I'm not attacking BLM. I support it. This list however I don't support because the members are from wealthy backgrounds and are being presented as needing extra help.

It's not even a valid observation about BLM.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#28

Post by exstudent2 »

tptacek wrote: post #26
exstudent2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not attacking BLM. I support it. This list however I don't support because the members are from wealthy backgrounds and are being presented as needing extra help.

It's not even a valid observation about BLM.

We're way off topic but again I support BLM and do feel economics play a role.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#29

Post by dang »

xkiwi wrote: post #9

I lookup your list due to curiosity. So far I am on the third one, and I learned few thing from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pKR212H5vQ #1 Y Combinator hosted a Female only founder conferences in the year of 2015. Where is the Male only founder conference? #2 She explain why her spirit animal is a beaver in the video 23:13. Later she explained how a small honey beaver can take down the lion king. The method i…

> Where is the Male only founder conference?

Sorry, but this is off-topic because it predictably leads to tedium (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13241873). It also breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to do classic flamewar topics on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13259484 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#30

Post by bsder »

dmsv wrote: post #11

I always feel sad when I see these lists. I've always heard once we have female founders then we will see companies that are useful to women. But all those companies looks so useless to me. I think the problem is that they're targeted toward rich women. I hope someday people will create companies for poor women.

It is hard to get funding for a company that targets the non-rich. Your only option is to grow that company organically.

And organically grown companies aren't going to make a "Top N List" of anything until they're so big that it doesn't matter anymore.

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