An Entrepreneur Who Took a Chance on Herself | Hacker News Reader

An Entrepreneur Who Took a Chance on Herself

nytimes.com

81 pointsthunk41 comments

Obviously NYT was having a slow day. However, what I'd like to point out is the discrimination: Do you think the same piece would be created if the entrepreneur in question was an average looking guy? People always talk about how women get discriminated against in CS, EE and the like (which is true to a point) while refusing to see the advantages of being a woman in these areas.

When we were interviewing people for positions, I always sensed somewhat more enthusiasm before interviewing a woman in my colleagues, even if it's a phone interview.

You may find these comments Summers-like, but let me know if you have not experienced similar things in your work environment.

I started to agree with you (my first initial reaction while reading this article was "Huh, typical 'I don't do what's easy and became an entrepreneur and now I'm semi successful' story"). But what does make it different that is that women don't usually go this route, whereas it might seem more normal for a man. So it's worth heralding someone who is technically a minority for doing something difficult. I don't see it as discrimination, rather, making it an example for more women to follow.

Of course, I am a woman, so my viewpoint may be skewed.

She did not do it alone, she did it with her partner, now her husband.

She may not have done it if on her own, unfortunately.

She may not have done it if on her own, unfortunately.

care to elaborate on this conjecture?

Completely agree with you, need more role models in that area. My point was that, the fact that her appearance was predominantly pushed on her personal web page, may send the wrong message, i.e. you have to be intelligent and beautiful/sexy or something to be featured in NYT, not that there's anything wrong with a beautiful entrepreneur woman, but that shouldn't be the first thing that is pushed on you.

There are awesome hacker role models, such as Leah Buechley, that can be covered. HN recently had an excellent discussion on exactly this topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430281

Ugh, yes. I'll admit that since I've quit my day job and started building my own company, I've also started to really focus on my diet and my appearance, since there is a chance that people might pay more attention to me if I fit the standard of beauty. I love getting healthier as well, but it does kind of suck to have that message pushed on my brain.

Disagree.

The NYT site didn't make it easy, but I just browsed about 12 months worth of this column(?) "Preoccupations."

Female and male profiles were about 50-50, and everybody else seemed pretty average looking.

Less than half the time is it a profile of an individual, the rest of the time it's a profile of a "trend" (This Hashrocket pair programming article that was on HN a while back, is from this same NYT column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/jobs/20pre.html?)

All the rest of the profiles were equally as interesting-but-not-mind-blowing. (Though I'm less critical than you about the slow-news-day part. That's "slice of life" journalism. It's always like that, heh. In that regard, every day is a slow news day. )

I suggest a study: One where when a post's author/subject is a female, we count how frequently her appearance is brought up when it's not otherwise the topic of the post, versus when it's an average looking guy posting about how he organizes his email folders/ moved to git/ almost took VC.

Does that stuff get called a slow news day?

If female and male profiles are 50-50, then the website is slanted towards women. Male take up a huge portion of the technology space.

The NYT Preoccupations column isn't about technology. It's about trends in the workplace/ jobs.

An interesting addition to your proposed study would be this: in addition to other people, how often does the person covered push their appearance. This was my main objection to this lady, when you go to her web page, her modeling and vanity shots are predominant, e.g. this is how she chooses to represent herself. She may be thinking that this would be advantageous in a male dominated profession.

Heh, I didn't check out her site. It sounds obnoxious. (And I see from your other HN comments, we share a distaste for another cheeseball who flaunts his/her appearance, w/multiple "in action" shots all over his/her website, who I won't give further attention by typing his/her name :D).

But I'm simply objecting to you using the word discrimination, and suggesting an average looking guy would not get this piece written. I even covered the "citation please" angle (not that you said that, but so many people on HN abuse that construct as a way to discredit pretty reasonable ideas, without having to provide a citation themselves.)

I'll take your word that she's pushing her appearance, just not that it's responsible for her coverage.

And my "proposed study" tone was maybe too snarky, I apologize. (I try to avoid that), I just had to give you a hard time about using "discrimination" and "average looking guys" in the same posit. Are we on the same site, seeing the same stories that make the front page?! (Said in friendly tone, poking as much as fun at myself for reading, as HN for posting 99% of its content about/by average looking guys, usually comparing Android + iPhone.)

I agree with you, "discrimination" was perhaps too strong, a subliminal preferance, perhaps?

BTW, this is by far the best/nicest response I got to one of my comments.

It is a well-written and interesting article. So unlike some of the comments below, I wouldn't chalk this up to some sort of discrimination (in favor of women)

It is true that her history/accomplishments aren't necessarily extraordinary. A few years ago, in a salaried job, she was "was on track to be earning six figures within three years." Now, she has one iPhone app that is doing well in the app store (the app never made it to the top 3 in the Music category, but it is currently at #7 in Music)

I think that her accomplishments not being extra-ordinary may make the story more interesting to a lot of people. The fact that it is #5 on HN is a testament to the story's relevance. Kudos to Prerna Gupta for a well-written article, for generating positive PR for her company and also for taking the risk of leaving her salaried job to take up entrepreneurship.

She shares the last attribute with many of us on HN :)

Oh now I remember who the entrepreneur actually is. She started one social networking site in India called http://yaari.com which was absolutely spammy. Mailed tons of spam endlessly - probably that's why it didn't work out and now that site simply shows her personal blog.

She's a Stanford grad, entrepreneur, surfer, model and apparently she has been published in the NYT. She also created this diet, which looks interesting: http://thenaturalfoodsdiet.com/about.php

I had no idea human beings like this existed. I feel inferior.

http://prernagupta.com/

That is a great diet. I haven't heard of her before, but that's exactly what I eat already, actually. I think it comes naturally to anyone who has an interest in natural foods and is a vegetarian.

So that "diet" website is a little tongue-in-cheek, right?

There are tons of people who have bios like this, especially in San Francisco. You quickly come to realize that most of the people who have done 50 million different "impressive" things in a short period of time are either dilettantes who seek the most recognition for the least work investment, or people who have one or two serious interests, and a strong ability to promote all of their other minor achievements.

(Protip: my vanity meter goes off the scale when the self-promoter is a woman who prominently features her amateur modeling portfolio on a personal website, or intermixes pictures of herself in a bikini in otherwise unrelated content.)

I think the thing to learn here is that noise level for self-promotion is set pretty high. If you think you're bragging too much about an accomplishment...well, you probably aren't. ;-)

Dude Seriously, I couldn't agree more! I would be rather be Tim Berners Lee rather than some multidimensional above average being

Any time someone lists "Microsoft Word" as a skill on their resume (other than a secretary, and then I'd expect a lot more detail) my gut reaction is to assume they're the kind of person who enjoys listing accomplishments no matter how deep or meaningful.

Add to the list those who write: ASP,XML,ORACLE,SAP,Javascript,AWK,GREP,PERL,.Net and few more capitalized abbreviations

In fact beauty is in minimalism. Such as Google which just say C++,Java and Python

That description reminds me of the 4 hour workweek guy to a t.

I find it mildly interesting that the NYT article omits CS from her dossier. Does branding her as purely an Economics grad make her more of an 'everyman' and thus result in a more relatable story?

yeah CS would mean she is geek, shyaa. They must keep the whole econ major models can design an Iphone app feel!

Maybe I value my time more than my net worth. Maybe my fear of boredom outweighs my fear of failure. Or, maybe I have an irrational belief that I will succeed against all odds. Whatever it is, I find the risk of entrepreneurship to be not only worthwhile but also necessary for fulfillment. Work is no longer work. It is life, and a good one.

Is it just me or do those last paragraphes sound like beautiful poetry?

Sounds more like banal, run-of-the-mill inspirational speech (not that I have anything against that)

Relief! So I wasn't the only one thinking that. It sounds like a warmed up version of Timothy Ferriss-like mantra.

It sounds like anaphora, and correctly used anaphora at that =]

It sounds like the language I used to end essays with when I wasn't sure how to write an appropriate conclusion. In other words, mostly BS.

She gets points for cajoling a fluff self-promotion piece out of the nytimes. That's not easy.

And very effective, I was stunned how much sales a mention in the NYT can bring. Wish I could repeat that for my next startup.

Her other venture was Yaari.com, which was a scammy dating site aimed at Indians. It was big with some Indian VC's here in Bangalore but eventually got shut down.

the social networking site if I'm not mistaken is www.yaari.com (targeted towards indians) -- as someone who's closely followed the indian startup scene, i seriously doubt if they had anywhere close to 2 million users. besides, think about it - if you have close to 2 mill users, why would you just abandon it ?

...I started Khush Inc., which makes an iPhone music application called LaDiDa. It’s a kind of reverse karaoke — it creates background music when people sing lyrics into a microphone...

Someone managed to make Microsoft SongSmith into something that doesn't suck?

One of the more interesting profiles to be featured on NYTimes - interesting for the fact that she could easily have had an easy high-lifestyle life financed by her consulting career and gave it up to make her own destiny.

I know someone who worked for the Monitor Group - which is the unnamed consulting group - she was super sharp.

The title sounds like a tautology. Don't all entrepreneurs take a chance on themselves, by definition? :)

In spite of the positive outcome for that woman, do you find that article having a depressing effect for you? She was on track for "six figure salary in 3 years" and worked for very reputable enterprises, and still she was not able to come up with any realistic business-model for herself.

An iPhone app while definitely an achievement may as well serve as a proof of a "normal" web-oriented startups going out of fashion.

These who downvote silently are the freaks afraid of expressing their opinion.

Isn't the whole purpose of a website like HN to have discussions?

Sorry but I really find her website too cheesy!

Someone who claims to have 5 Million $ worth web company should know better.

Also her modelling portfolio is like HFCS worst than cheesy.

haters gonna hate! srsly?

dude please check it out. http://prernagupta.com/ its nor functionally oriented nor asthetically oriented nor minimalistic.

Its a wordpress blog with different pages done by making them categories, the top menu bar gives it a feel of the website.

Yet its just a wordpress blog. I have seen much better cheap templates for wordpres.

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