Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#41

Post by jackowayed » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 5:53 AM UTC

jdp23 wrote: post #38

Four more guys! That'll really help scale to a more gender-balanced group of companies! No insult to Sam, Garry, Emmet, and Justin who I'm sure are very talented. But given how Jessica Livingston talks about how hard it's been for Y Combinator to attract female founders and then they do something like this, I really have to wonder how much they're trying to change.

What do you want from them?

Because they have a hard time getting female founders, they have almost no female alumni to pull on. They want only the cream of the crop for this highly important role, and I can't think of a single female YC alum whom they think of as highly as they think of Sam et. al. Maybe Jessica Mah in a few years, but inDinero is too young for her to lose focus now, and she doesn't have as much experience as they're looking for yet. And I don't think they're comfortable inviting in people with whom they haven't worked.

This problem is a lot bigger than YC. It's not that women don't do YC, it's that women don't do startups. YC has a few hundred active startups to herd, and I think they just don't have time to address these problems of the larger startup landscape.

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#42

Post by robryan » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 7:11 AM UTC

jdp23 wrote: post #38

Four more guys! That'll really help scale to a more gender-balanced group of companies! No insult to Sam, Garry, Emmet, and Justin who I'm sure are very talented. But given how Jessica Livingston talks about how hard it's been for Y Combinator to attract female founders and then they do something like this, I really have to wonder how much they're trying to change.

I would dislike it more if the decision on partners/ mentors was made based on some kind of gender quota and not merit.

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#43

Post by robryan » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 7:33 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #21

edanm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered taking on far more teams? You're growing from batch to batch, but if you could reach 200 startups by your estimates, why not grow even faster? Is it just a matter of "slow and steady"?

Our growth is entirely a function of the growth in applications. So we don't have much choice about our growth rate. To grow faster we'd have to fund people we thought would fail, and to grow slower we'd have to reject people we thought would succeed. Either would be painful.

An interesting metric to look at would be how many borderline rejected founders are going on to achieve valuation x compared with companies funded. Of course though the YC program itself introduces another variable into a measure like this.

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#44

Post by walter » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 7:55 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #39

jdp23 wrote: post #38

Four more guys! That'll really help scale to a more gender-balanced group of companies! No insult to Sam, Garry, Emmet, and Justin who I'm sure are very talented. But given how Jessica Livingston talks about how hard it's been for Y Combinator to attract female founders and then they do something like this, I really have to wonder how much they're trying to change.

I think you're insulting female founders by suggesting that their decision about whether to apply to something like YC would be determined by the gender of the partners. Surely male applicants wouldn't be scared off if most of the YC partners were female. Why assume female applicants are any different?

If more YC partners were female, it could result in more women applicants because it might provide encouragement to potential female startup founders who are on the fence that successful entrepreneurship in a male-dominated startup environment is achievable--and ultimately worth striving for. Social science studies point to a gap between similarly-qualified men and women on their respective levels of self-confidence and risk tolerance. The implication of this gap is that while the gender makeup of YC partners wouldn't affect the decision of most men to apply, the presence of women could have the effect of encouraging women to apply by demonstrating what can be achieved.

Ultimately, this is a pipeline issue--there are just not enough women founders who go on to be angels and VCs.

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#45

Post by leahculver » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 12:17 PM UTC

As part of YC winter 2011 I've already had office hours with both Sam and Garry. The nice part of having so many advisors is that each advisor tends to specialize in different areas (Garry is great with design and UX and Sam has good advice on social products and fundraising).

A wider variety of expertise is super helpful for the increasingly diverse group of YC companies.

Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin!

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#46

Post by jdp23 » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #39

jdp23 wrote: post #38

Four more guys! That'll really help scale to a more gender-balanced group of companies! No insult to Sam, Garry, Emmet, and Justin who I'm sure are very talented. But given how Jessica Livingston talks about how hard it's been for Y Combinator to attract female founders and then they do something like this, I really have to wonder how much they're trying to change.

I think you're insulting female founders by suggesting that their decision about whether to apply to something like YC would be determined by the gender of the partners. Surely male applicants wouldn't be scared off if most of the YC partners were female. Why assume female applicants are any different?

It's not a matter of women being "scared off". Diversifying the people at the top is one of the key steps to getting a more diverse organization. This was an opportunity to do it. YC chose not to.

In contrast, there's 500 Startups, where Dave McClure is actively reaching out.* Which environment is likely to look more attractive to women entrepeneurs?

* http://www.ezebis.com/venture/dave-mcclure500-startups-found...

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#47

Post by Mae2000 » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 3:56 PM UTC

jdp23 wrote: post #46

pg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're insulting female founders by suggesting that their decision about whether to apply to something like YC would be determined by the gender of the partners. Surely male applicants wouldn't be scared off if most of the YC partners were female. Why assume female applicants are any different?

It's not a matter of women being "scared off". Diversifying the people at the top is one of the key steps to getting a more diverse organization. This was an opportunity to do it. YC chose not to. In contrast, there's 500 Startups, where Dave McClure is actively reaching out.* Which environment is likely to look more attractive to women entrepeneurs? * http://www.ezebis.com/venture/dave-mcclure500-startups-found...

I agree with Jon. Dave McClure reminds me of Albert Passingham, the son of a single mom who helped encourage women to stand up for equal pay. The role of Albert was depicted in the film Made in Dagenham http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371155/

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#48

Post by byrneseyeview » Tue, Jun 14, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

jdp23 wrote: post #46

pg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're insulting female founders by suggesting that their decision about whether to apply to something like YC would be determined by the gender of the partners. Surely male applicants wouldn't be scared off if most of the YC partners were female. Why assume female applicants are any different?

It's not a matter of women being "scared off". Diversifying the people at the top is one of the key steps to getting a more diverse organization. This was an opportunity to do it. YC chose not to. In contrast, there's 500 Startups, where Dave McClure is actively reaching out.* Which environment is likely to look more attractive to women entrepeneurs? * http://www.ezebis.com/venture/dave-mcclure500-startups-found...

"She got into YCombinator. She must be good." vs "She got into 500 Startups. She must be good. Or they must have tried to recruit her because of that pronoun I keep using."

This is also why affirmative action hurts the careers of people who ostensibly benefit from it, if they don't get into Harvard: at Harvard, the black/white SAT gap is fairly small. Everywhere else, it's huge, so there's a big adverse selection problem, and of course employers know about it.

Re: Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin

#49

Post by pemo » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 10:42 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #39

jdp23 wrote: post #38

Four more guys! That'll really help scale to a more gender-balanced group of companies! No insult to Sam, Garry, Emmet, and Justin who I'm sure are very talented. But given how Jessica Livingston talks about how hard it's been for Y Combinator to attract female founders and then they do something like this, I really have to wonder how much they're trying to change.

I think you're insulting female founders by suggesting that their decision about whether to apply to something like YC would be determined by the gender of the partners. Surely male applicants wouldn't be scared off if most of the YC partners were female. Why assume female applicants are any different?

Paul as a woman I feel a bit offended that you would say this - I think it takes a bit more effort to get women on board because the numbers are smaller. When Bryce Roberts, OATV wanted women to apply for an associate position, he emailed me & asked me to spread the word, which I did. I have been doing a year long project interviewing vcs, angels & women founders on the shortfall of funding for women http://www.ezebis.com Recent posts regarding getting women to speak at conferences http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/pdf11-notes-curation & http://www.good.is/post/why-white-men-should-refuse-to-be-on... indicate that it just takes a little more effort. I think your response is a reflection of laziness & an attempt to fob the issue off rather than putting some extra effort in to #changetheratio. Really disappointing, considering Jessica says that this is an important issue.