Comment by G79YAX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by G79YAX | Hacker News Reader

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I realise I'm opening a can of very sensitive worms here, but just so I'm clear from that recount...

1. Jessica was asked by a man if she was on her own or on a date

2. She responded that she co-founded Y-Combinator

3. He asked if she had some startups in her portfolio that other investors had overlooked, and asked for her contact details

4. She told him to contact PG

All that left her "shaken" - "'I’m not crazy, right?' she said. “He was hitting on me? He was offering to invest in our weaker companies as a way to get me on a date, right? Did that just happen? [...] Livingston said she wasn’t sure if this man was just flirting, actually attempting to talk investments, or offering venture funding for a date."

If that kind of interaction in public leaves someone "shaken" I struggle to understand how they manage go about their day without having a nervous breakdown.

She was spoken to by an unknown man, and politely dismissed him. How that is worthy of an entire news article leaves me shocked. I am not denying there are gender/harassment issues in tech, but this is hardly one of them.

EDIT: To clarify, as per one commenter's response, my shock is at the news article, not Jessica's (supposed) response.

The several times I've ever been quoted in a blurb/paper/article, it was taken horribly and embarrassingly out of context. So, in my experience, these quotes almost certainly don't reflect reality.

Hold up. Before this turns into an HN firestorm, PG's essay notes:

> Jessica was mortified, partly because the guy had done nothing wrong, but more because the story treated her as a victim significant only for being a woman, rather than one of the most knowledgeable investors in the Valley.

You're exactly right, it was sensationalism. They acknowledged that with

> After that she told the PR firm to stop.

It's unfortunate that such sensationalized articles tend to get so much attention. They make it all the more difficult to have a reasoned discussion on the matter, because they introduce so much "outrage fatigue".

One of the points in PG's essay is that the story told there is bogus. It was supposed to be a story about Jessica as one of the most knowledgeable investors in SV. It got turned into something about sexism over a non-event, as far as she was concerned.

Important tip for dealing with journalists: they aren't there to write your story. They'll be writing their story. And what that story is has a lot more to do with what they and their readers find interesting than what you want readers to know.

In particular, that piece came out at a time where the general public was discovering that women in tech get a heap of bullshit that men in tech mainly don't. I'm surprised that she was surprised that telling a story like that got attention; it seems like an obvious thing for a PR person to have prepped her for.

It is true that the vast majority of companies engage in spin and carefully consider what is said from a PR perspective.

Examples of this are so obvious and ubiquitous, it would be insulting to most HN readers to point them out. So, why should we not be equally skeptical when it's YC? Do we consider them above brand management and putting a positive spin on a mistake by an exec?

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