51–60 of 78 posts
While there are quite a few IT people who are very good at programming and even do it as part of their job, the skills required for maintaining a server farm and developing an application are very different.
Of course, anyone with strong skills in both IT and development is likely to be a hero in a small startup. :-)
I suspect those are the same reasons that women are less inclined to start a business.
Men are more inclined to leave where they grew up, venture out, confront the unknown, focus on just one thing relentlessly and disagree with the group.
That doesn't mean women don't or can't, just that they are less likely to, for whatever reasons.
When the author writes out all the sacrifices needed, it makes it look incredibly hard. And, in fact, starting a startup is in general a very long slog. What makes it worth while is the prospect of asymmetric returns (either in money or in future freedom). If you had asked my mom at age 30 (before she had me), "What would you do if you had enough money that you didn't have to work?". She would have probably said some…
Are you sure it's still far more socially normal for the guys than girls? http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/05/22/lw.manimony/in...
Anyway, here's my opinion on the subject. I had a very bright economics teacher in collage who had many terribly enlightening stories [read most boring but some nuggets of pure gold]. Among them, he said once that some people just arn't cut out for owning a business. Anyone can operate a business, just not many people can deal with the amount of risk associated with owning a business. This teacher likened it to being able to sleep at night knowing there was a chance however small that your company would burn down that night. Some people just can't do it.
Anyway, this article pretty much gave a very long list of reasons why to AVOID starting a company. Mainly, because its hard, there is a great deal of risk, oh yeah and its really hard.
Why do women seldom start companies? Why are there seldom women firefighters? I don't know, because its a damn dirty job and they just don't want to do it. Nothing wrong with that, plenty of men don't want to be firefighters and for that matter entrepreneurs. Its stressful, its hard, and just as often as you hear about facebook hitting it big you can count off dozens of companies that fail every year.
The question isn't why don't we have more women, the question is why do we have so many men?
It's probably a combination of factors that make "the female founder" seem more rare than she actually is. There is a breed of female founder that lives to pose for cameras and magazine covers and to be mentioned in Valleywag. But more common are those who are happy to grow their companies to a certain point that is manageable enough. They don't want or get a lot of attention, which makes them seem more rare than the…
Your comment seems to suggest there's some special rule that women cannot/should not seek to be recognized in the press for their work. Judging by the frequent coverage of foursquare, facebook, twitter, google, etc male founders don't seem to have any issue self-promoting. Does your rule apply to men too?
Perhaps the title should read, "What Stops Women from Becoming Founders? I was hoping to read an essay on women who are already founders and their challenges (as the title implies).
I am a founder and will be launching my start-up soon, and I have a newborn. I am truly thankful that I can stay home, take care of my baby and continue working on executing my idea.
I agree with Jessica's points and appreciate her sharing her personal experience, however, there aren't specific to women.
IMO, what can really stop a female founder from pushing their idea through to execution is:
--pregnancy hormones --post-pregnancy hormones --motherhood
Seriously, when facing these three factors, you must be absolutely certain about your idea and driven to keep it moving; especially when it's easier to hold your sweet baby all day and simply throw in the towel.
She was Buffett's most favorite founder at Berkshire Hathaway. Granted that she's quite the outlier (started her first business when she was 44 and then worked 7 days/week until the age of 104!), she's a clear-cut example of someone who defies the stereotype. She's one of the most hardcore founders I have ever read about. Another great piece on her life: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-reta...
"Put her up against the top graduates of the top business schools or chief executives of the Fortune 500 and, assuming an even start with the same resources, she'd run rings around them" - Buffett
"I wanted to do x, but no one would hire me even though I was capable because I didn’t have sufficient experience in x on my resume." I definitely identify with this line. I'm a 27-year-old woman and I left a cushy (read: boring) job writing for Vogue magazine so I could create a dating site that women will actually feel proud to join. Like so many, I was under the assumption you had to have ninja coding skills, an M…
When the author writes out all the sacrifices needed, it makes it look incredibly hard. And, in fact, starting a startup is in general a very long slog. What makes it worth while is the prospect of asymmetric returns (either in money or in future freedom). If you had asked my mom at age 30 (before she had me), "What would you do if you had enough money that you didn't have to work?". She would have probably said some…
All of the women I know who are full-time mothers do so out of personal choice. Most left careers of some type or another to do so.
Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, but there remains a large amount of families out there where the man is happy to bring in the money and the woman is happy to look after the kids. It's still the mainstream family model, even if the mother is working, it's usually for financial rather than career-aspiration reasons.
I do hope this post leads someone out there to make the big jump. A world with a female version of Zuckerberg out there would be a very interesting one indeed.