Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

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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 your fate list", but thats not clickbait enough.

1. Alex Depledge - University of Nottingham and the University of Chicago

2. Minnie Ingersol - Stanford University and Harvard Business School

3. Tracy Young - California State University-Sacramento

4. Melody McCloskey - University of California, Davis

5. Robin Chase - MIT and harvard

6. Angie Nwandu - ?

7. Payal Kakadi - MIT

8. Maran Nelson - UT austin

9. Adi Tatarko - ??

10 . Christina Lomasney - Harvard and University of Washington

11. Piraye Beim - Cornell

12. Valerie Wagoner - Stanford

13. Hooi Ling Tan - Harvard and Bath

14. Maria Ressa - ?

15. Danielle Morrill - ?

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 still won't be starting a startup.

I don't know about this theory. There is no shortage of people, including right here on HN, who've founded businesses.

I'd like to see the rate at which alum from these schools found businesses vs everyone else; also, the percentage of successful founders in both groups.

I do think that parentage counts in other ways, including as part of the overall network to which these folks have access.

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.

'Only 3.8 percent of American families make more than $200,000 per year. But at Harvard University, 45.6 percent of incoming freshman come from families making $200,000 or more. A mere 4 percent of Harvard students come from a family in the bottom quintile of US incomes, and only 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles'[1].

We already have an accurate system of measuring privilege in form of parent wealth.

1. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/10/immorality-...

I'm not disputing that many students at elite universities have wealthy parents, but you can't just claim that anyone who went to an elite university automatically has wealthy parents. For one thing, it's very unfair to the people who have worked hard to get there despite not having wealthy parents.

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.

I'm really skeptical that the financial aid you speak of is as accessible as you think it is.

Speaking completely anecdotally, someone very close to me chose not to go to Stanford, simply because her family couldn't afford it. And that was with a scholarship.

I've never asked her about financial aid, and if she investigated it. My guess is though that she fell into the category of middle class... aka, too rich to qualify for financial aid, too poor to afford $100K+ a year college.

Upper middle class, maybe. This can happen when your household income is $200k. Not $55k (national median) and certainly not below.

Higher ed financial aid leaves middle-upper middle class kids in a tough spot because their parents don't feel like they have income to spare, but the financial aid office doesn't feel they need charity. But this does not really happen to socioeconomically disadvantaged children, only those too far into the upper middle class.

The line where this happens is a lower income in mediocre private schools, and a higher income on good ones.

Higher ed financial aid leaves middle-upper middle class kids in a tough spot because their parents don't feel like they have income to spare, but the financial aid office doesn't feel they need charity. But this does not really happen to socioeconomically disadvantaged children, only those too far into the upper middle class.

They've got this thing nailed down to a T. Upper/middle kids can't go because their parents can't afford it. For a variety of reasons, lower income kids can't get the marks to get in to these schools so they never reach the point where financial aid would matter.

This lets these schools preserve their elite enrolment while providing nominally generous support.

The income distribution at Harvard doesn't fit your theory: http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions....

About 14 percent of the incoming freshman said their families earn above $500,000

Sure it does. If everybody in the US had equal access to primary and secondary education and Harvard had income-blind admissions, do you really think that number would be so high?

Harvard does have income-blind admissions. Admissions officers don't look at your financial aid information when you apply and it's not a factor.

Of course, there's still the factor that wealthy parents can pay for a better education. Also that intelligence is largely hereditary.

Harvard has 30 percent legacy admissions. Those are definitely not income-blind.

While I agree that legacy admissions should probably be phased out, they're still "income blind." Knowing someone's a Harvard graduate does not mean you know their income.

> For a variety of reasons, lower income kids can't get the marks to get in to these schools so they never reach the point where financial aid would matter.

Again with the sweeping generalizations which are completely incorrect.

Because all low income kids are too stupid to get good marks, right?

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.

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

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

Both of those linked lists are from 2015.

Yes, there is overlap.

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