FWIW, The Information's piece definitely crossed the "too indignation-inducing to be true" threshold for me. And I for one, would enjoy an essay about such topic as it would be very relevant to the HN community that is often just as eager as journalists to see certain individuals or startups fail for whatever reason.
What I Didn't Say
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Re: What I Didn't Say
#32As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech.
In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following:
1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use technology to change their voices so every voice sounds the same. I think it would be a really cool experiment to see if different types of companies or a more diverse founder set would get funded.
2) Publish more stats on the success of YC companies, and publish stats on % of female(, black, ...) founder applications submitted, % accepted, % funded after acceptance, etc. Of course, I'd fully expect that this would be "opt-in" from the founders as well--i.e. each set of founders would need to agree as part of the application to have their data anonymously shared. You could also share data on % who opted to not have their data shared. (Techstars is doing some great stuff with their stats here: http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ )
I've talked to many female founders and YC does have a reputation as a "frat house" (I told one of the YC partners that personally when he asked me to apply.) I decided to not apply to YC and instead was in the first Techstars Austin cohort, which was a fantastic program overall. Techstars definitely seemed more welcoming to women from my perspective as a geek-turned-tech-entrepreneur.
I'm hoping this is the start of breaking down the "frat house" reputation around YC and getting more women actively involved with it.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#33Jakob Kaplan Moss owes PG a public apology for his behavior. The witch hunt tweets that were coming out of him without getting the facts straight are downright disheartening.
I'm of mixed opinions about him. On the one hand, he's been influential in making Pycon more friendly to women, which I support[1]. On the other hand, he appears to have swallowed the feminist kool-aid without reflection. He has a knee-jerk reaction whenever an alleged case of "sexism" comes up - he is inclined to take the side of the "oppressed" group and facts be damned. He takes a guilty until proven innocent standard for people with a Y chromosome.
[1] The anti-harassment policies of Pycon are a gold-standard for the industry
Re: What I Didn't Say
#34My favorite quote: "I err on the side of late binding for everything.."
Re: What I Didn't Say
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no gatekeepers in the startup culture. How would that even work? Would pg deny you a business license? Stop you from getting a VPS? Remotely invalidate your copy of The Art of Computer Programming?
Not PG specifically, but unless you operate on the premise that getting into YC does nothing to help your startup OR that YC's acceptance processes are flawless (two assertions I'm 100% certain PG would not make) then there is a layer of gatekeeperdome inherit in what YC does. I would personally argue it's a large one, but it certainly IS one.
If you think like this, even a little, I think you can find a way to see everything in life as having a gate. Can't get on TV, radio, on some blog, etc. ... gatekeeper present. That's the wrong mindset to have IMO.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#36I'm not sure I want to work in an industry where some offhanded quip can lead to the kind witchhunt and character assassination like we saw over the last few days. Paul Graham may have some views that seem controversial to some people, but don't we all? I really blame the tabloidization of the tech press and the "twitter controversy of the day" bandwagon effect for these kind of incidents.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#37Thats what happens when you get your news from a p0rn outlet!
Re: What I Didn't Say
#38I apologize. I took it on faith that when The Information said they were running a "complete interview" with you, that it was in fact both complete and an actual interview. It seems very clear how this piece misrepresented you; the entire elided question you cite is particularly damning. I retain some of my misgivings (which have much more to do with the industry than with YC), but the "interview" clearly wasn't a go…
I'm impressed with both your response as well as pg's. Definitely refreshing to not see the pitchforks come out for everyone.
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Re: What I Didn't Say
#39Thanks for the clarification. It is unfortunate that your statements were taken out of context and spun. I typically look for the original source, and am relatively skeptical of poorly edited viral stories such as this one.
With that said, I do think that the moderation / upvoting / flagging of Hacker News is overwhelmingly male. I sometimes see sexist comments here, and there doesn't seem to be a good system for women to flag and remove those. This is a problem in my opinion.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which makes the fact that the material was published as if it had been an interview, without any explanation of the actual circumstances, particularly bothersome IMO.
Yeah, publishing remarks made to a reporter as part of background on a story is unethical.
Publishing anything that's not presented in a "this is blatantly on the record" or "this is blatantly in public and observable/reportable by anyone" context is unethical. Unfortunately, this happens all the time because it generates a lot of buzz for the outlet, just as happened here. In fact, there are outlets whose entire business is made up of publishing "off the record" stuff, like tabloids.