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What Stops Female Founders?

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Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#71

Post by jdp23 »

fractallyte wrote: post #69
jdp23 wrote: post #63

One of the things YC could do to help with their horrible 4% ratio is get Hacker News to be less hostile to women. Quite a few women founders have told me how unpleasant they find it here. This thread is a good example of why.

It's funny, I see comments like yours in most related threads, and I don't agree. There's enough of a sensible audience here to downvote hostile replies, and - far more importantly - to upvote the supportive ones. Guess which type of reply is likely to receive more respect and attention, particularly among female readers? So I would venture to say that the '4% ratio' is due to something else, and we'd be far better o…

Really? You think all these women founders are lying to me?

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#72

Post by JoeAltmaier »

bokonist wrote: post #7

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…

Yes, the sacrifices are the lead points in that article.

Folks who actually found/join startups are ignorant of/don't care about the sacrifices. Save enough to be comfortable? What's wrong with crashing on a couch, living in the office/a friend's basement, eating ramen?

I think the article is very telling. Women (that woman at any rate) won't consider a job that is uncomfortable.

Yes, there may be reasons for THAT, but the comfort issue is at the heart.

And, for some of us, the asymmetric return is not really the biggest part of the value proposition. Its the control, the innovation, the environment that appeals. We use many excuses but stim-junkies and thrill-seekers are what they are.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#73

Post by silverlake »

chollida1 wrote: post #45

Sheryl Sandberg gave a good talk on a very similar topic at Ted. Her conclusion was that women tended to "check out" of work sooner then men. One example she gave was that when women start trying to get pregnant, they will often stop applying for promotions because they know they'll be leaving work soon. http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few...

This is also the reason that the BLS statistics that claim men make more than women for comparable work is misleading. Women take a leave for a few years, downshift their careers, or purposely pick easier career paths so they can spend more time with children and family. For women who choose to continue their career at top-speed, they have a huge advantage. Since companies are looking to promote more women, they choose from the smaller pool of women who want to climb the corporate ladder.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#74

Post by cap4life »

tjic wrote: post #5

The vast majority of people are not founders. So, instead of asking "what stops 99.99% of women from founding [ ... and 99.98% of men ]", I think it might be more productive to ask "what causes 0.015 of people to become founders".

Not only would that be more productive, I think it would make for a much more interesting study. What are the common traits found in the 0.015% of women who choose to create startups, and how can we encourage these traits in other women who have an interest in entrepreneurial ventures of any kind?

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#75

Post by krupan »

shawnee_ wrote: post #27

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…

s/There is a breed of female founder/There is a breed of founder/

There, fixed that for you.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#76

Post by Charuru »

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #39
Charuru wrote: post #33

How many male English majors are founding companies? I would think being an English major is the first problem, you need more women in CS/Engineering first.

The discussion of founding a company has been artificially limited to web start-ups. What if Jessica had started a "PR firm for the rest of us" which made professional PR more accessible to small companies? There might be a technology component, but I would argue that her experience in corporate communications would be closer to the start-up's core competencies.

...

Tech companies is not an artificial limitation... just happens to be what we're talking about right now. The numbers cited are about SV startups, I think if you look outside SV there's way more than 5% female founders.

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#77

Post by KMStraub »

Jun8 wrote: post #59
KMStraub wrote: post #41

"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…

YIKES, I loved your post and wanted to upvote, but with the tiny buttons on my Droid I downvoted instead. So, if you want to know what kind of jerk would downvote such an inspiring remark, well...

No worries, I'm just happy to hear it registered with someone else. There's a much bigger goal here than Karma points :)

Re: What Stops Female Founders?

#78

Post by dgabriel »

fractallyte wrote: post #69
jdp23 wrote: post #63

One of the things YC could do to help with their horrible 4% ratio is get Hacker News to be less hostile to women. Quite a few women founders have told me how unpleasant they find it here. This thread is a good example of why.

It's funny, I see comments like yours in most related threads, and I don't agree. There's enough of a sensible audience here to downvote hostile replies, and - far more importantly - to upvote the supportive ones. Guess which type of reply is likely to receive more respect and attention, particularly among female readers? So I would venture to say that the '4% ratio' is due to something else, and we'd be far better o…

I find the atmosphere at hacker news quite hostile to women, which is why I skim these days and rarely post.
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