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Female founders who've had a great 2016

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Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#41

Post by xiaoma »

dominotw wrote: post #2

Links to the lists 1. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/18-more-female-founders-whove... 2. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/21-female-founders-who-killed... I looked up people from first list on linkedin to see what path they took to end up there. One commonality that immediately obvious is studying at Ivy league/private university. Perhaps a more inspiring new year list would have been " where you are born doesn't seal…

I agree on a general level. The bay area tech scene is nearly as credentialist as the finance industry at this point. However...

Danielle Morrill did it without a degree at all. She jumped into a super early startup with friends and was an early employee at Twilio, too. Her story is worth hearing: https://soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-episode...

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#42

Post by cbeach »

danso wrote: post #22

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 t…

I don't think any of us feel "threatened" by these identity politics articles. Just a little sad that we still patronise women and minorities in this way.

Why do we see women and minorities as fair game to be tokens for our social engineering and clickbait?

Have we stopped to ask any of these women if they want to be on our special-interest gendered side-shows, or whether they'd prefer to be part of the "main" competition instead?

To me this is like entering female athletes into the paralympics on the basis of their gender. Without any evidence of their consent.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#43

Post by cbeach »

Joeboy wrote: post #36
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.

I thoroughly agree about some of these (artisanal tampons, eyebrow pomade), but Open Bionics is a great thing and some of the others definitely look like worthwhile ventures.

To claim Samantha was the founder of Open Bionics does a massive disservice to the CEO, Joel, who is the guy that actually came up with the concept (before Sam joined as a "bizdev" person). It's Joel who had been making bionic hands since his teens, and who spoke at the Hacker News London conference about his work.

But hey ho - I suppose we have important social engineering to do...

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#44

Post by dominotw »

xiaoma wrote: post #41
dominotw wrote: post #2

Links to the lists 1. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/18-more-female-founders-whove... 2. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/21-female-founders-who-killed... I looked up people from first list on linkedin to see what path they took to end up there. One commonality that immediately obvious is studying at Ivy league/private university. Perhaps a more inspiring new year list would have been " where you are born doesn't seal…

I agree on a general level. The bay area tech scene is nearly as credentialist as the finance industry at this point. However... Danielle Morrill did it without a degree at all. She jumped into a super early startup with friends and was an early employee at Twilio, too. Her story is worth hearing: https://soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-episode...

http://www.femalefounderstories.com/danielle-morrill.html

> While I was growing up, my dad worked on startups in the financial services industry.

> Eventually my dad started his own company and I worked for him from age 13 to 19.

>I was extremely rebellious at this point and, despite scoring a 1390 on the SAT and a high GPA, I didn't apply to any colleges at all.

Not exactly an underdog story. Almost nobody on the planet get this type of deal. Forget about jumping in with startup founders, I don't think most people know one in real life.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#45

Post by xiaoma »

dominotw wrote: post #44
xiaoma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on a general level. The bay area tech scene is nearly as credentialist as the finance industry at this point. However... Danielle Morrill did it without a degree at all. She jumped into a super early startup with friends and was an early employee at Twilio, too. Her story is worth hearing: https://soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-episode...

http://www.femalefounderstories.com/danielle-morrill.html > While I was growing up, my dad worked on startups in the financial services industry. > Eventually my dad started his own company and I worked for him from age 13 to 19. >I was extremely rebellious at this point and, despite scoring a 1390 on the SAT and a high GPA, I didn't apply to any colleges at all. Not exactly an underdog story. Almost nobody on the pl…

That part of the story wasn't in the podcast :/

Still, I'm glad to see a non-conformist on this list :)

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#46

Post by matt4077 »

danso wrote: post #22

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 t…

May be more necessary than usual – I got the feeling that women were overrepresented in the "Founder-does-something-terrible" articles, at least on HN.

Some was certainly deserved, although I'm not sure about the proportionality of the 20th "No, seriously, Elizabeth Holmes is a terrible terrible person!" - article.

Some was offensive, misogynistic, backwards bullshit that I can only hope is highly correlated with the writer's chances at next year's Darwin awards – like about 90% of anything ever written about Ellen Pao.

Some was in between – Marissa Meyer comes to mind.

I have no idea why about a third of men feel threatened by the whole idea, but I believe those are problems that need to be addressed offline. I've seen a few cases where some measures to reduce discrimination succeeded even with some initial scepticism. 1:1 talks seem to work quite well, as does starting with something blatantly obvious (dropping the photo requirement for applicants and blinding the names are two common options in my country). Once you get a team above a certain threshold (around 35% women I'd say) the whole dynamic shifts. Suddenly there's picnics and Tuesday morning runs and journal clubs etc. That's something that everyone notices and I believe it has dramatic impact.

The effects continue with any other measure of diversity you can introduce: having a few different nationalities around is an improvement, having someone with a completely different background can be a plus (met a 75-year old office manager once who was beloved at her startup) etc.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#47

Post by tptacek »

cbeach wrote: post #42
danso wrote: post #22

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 t…

I don't think any of us feel "threatened" by these identity politics articles. Just a little sad that we still patronise women and minorities in this way. Why do we see women and minorities as fair game to be tokens for our social engineering and clickbait? Have we stopped to ask any of these women if they want to be on our special-interest gendered side-shows, or whether they'd prefer to be part of the "main" compet…

We don't. We recognize that there is a significant gender imbalance in technology professions, markedly larger than that of any other cognitive non-routine profession, and are happy to acknowledge anything that might suggest a countervailing trend.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#48

Post by morgante »

dominotw wrote: post #2

Links to the lists 1. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/18-more-female-founders-whove... 2. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/21-female-founders-who-killed... I looked up people from first list on linkedin to see what path they took to end up there. One commonality that immediately obvious is studying at Ivy league/private university. Perhaps a more inspiring new year list would have been " where you are born doesn't seal…

I'm sick of hearing this meme that Ivy league universities automatically mean you were born wealthy.

Top universities have, by far, the most generous financial aid you can get out there.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#49

Post by morgante »

bsder wrote: post #34
akhilcacharya wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. Sometimes it feels like upward mobility is limited in the very institutions we uphold as breaking those boundaries.

Partially. But I suspect it's more a case of attending one of those expensive institutions signals "Having the freedom to fail." If you attended one of those institutions, you have backup if things blow up. People whose parents struggled to send them to college aren't starting startups. They're probably paying off loans and attempting to bank money for 5-10 years. At which point, they probably start a family and stil…

Where do you get these assumptions from?

My parents absolutely could not have afforded to pay for college without extremely generous financial aid. Thankfully, that's exactly what elite universities provide.

I know plenty of other people who are interested in tech and startups who come from similar circumstances.

Also, for the record, if people's parents are genuinely poor then they will not have any loans from an elite university. It's all grant money.

Re: Female founders who've had a great 2016

#50

Post by cbeach »

tptacek wrote: post #47
cbeach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of us feel "threatened" by these identity politics articles. Just a little sad that we still patronise women and minorities in this way. Why do we see women and minorities as fair game to be tokens for our social engineering and clickbait? Have we stopped to ask any of these women if they want to be on our special-interest gendered side-shows, or whether they'd prefer to be part of the "main" compet…

We don't. We recognize that there is a significant gender imbalance in technology professions, markedly larger than that of any other cognitive non-routine profession, and are happy to acknowledge anything that might suggest a countervailing trend.

Do you have any evidence to suggest women are encouraged into our industry by this kind of tokenisation? And not discouraged by it?
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