EDIT: Knowing HN's audience, I expected the downvotes. What I don't get is why my comments are being flagged. Please stop abusing HN's tools to silence dissenting opinions.
Edit: as one illustrative example, the top two comments on this submission are currently both by women substantively critiquing the article, one of whom happens to be using a breast pump these days (and has amazingly detailed things to say about it, very much in the spirit of this site). Surprising? Not really. HN is just more diverse than many people say it is.
(I imagine users flagged your comment because it failed to be civil and substantive as the site guidelines ask.)
And it wasn't just this comment that was flagged. It was my other one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305765), which lays out the substantive reasons why I disagreed with the parent comment. Though that one was subsequently unflagged (and then upvoted).
I can't agree with that. These perceptions are notoriously in the eye of the beholder.
Let me put it this way: HN "demonstrates" a lot of things—that's how user-generated content works. People pick the ones that stand out to them and call that "HN", but they could just as easily have picked the opposite ones, and indeed many others do.
> it's not a particularly diverse one
That's particularly off; it's hugely diverse (or at least divided), which is why the generalizations people make about it are contradictorily all over the place. At some point I need to put together a big list to illustrate this. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who sees it, since it's my job to look at this stuff all day.
> And it wasn't just this comment that was flagged. It was my other one
It's easy to understand why it was flagged: conducting disagreement via "Bullshit", "Cry me a river", etc. breaks the site guidelines. Changing the subject slightly, I sometimes wonder whether this bullying, pugnacious approach to online commenting doesn't contribute to the very exclusionary dynamic that people on your side of the argument deplore. I deplore it too, and can't help but notice how comments on both sides can be equally bro-ey, douchey, and wincey. It makes HN less welcoming all around. Many people seem to think they get a pass for being right (one doesn't, of course), and then use that to vent what feel more like personal fumes.
In case it helps, I don't disagree with your underlying views (though mostly I don't read comments closely for that—it's too hard, and there are too many). Perhaps you noticed that I replied no less critically to the person you were objecting to, who broke the site guidelines as well.
Moderating this sort of thing is routine to the point of tedium on Hacker News and doesn't have to do with your specific views, let alone 'silencing dissent' (a rather bombastic phrase which I hear a lot, from every ideological quarter). It just has to do with people's tendency to attack each other on the internet, which the spirit of HN is to try to work around, in the hope of good and interesting conversation. That's all.
Actually these attacks mirror each other across all ideological divides. We moderate them routinely as best we can, and then people routinely accuse us of siding with their enemies [1], but (a) these claims are contradictory and so cancel each other out, and (b) I'm pretty sure the majority of readers trust that we're not biased that way—or at least not ridiculously so, because our job would be impossible if we were.
1. An example from a few minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310419.
I can teach you how to get your baby to latch, how to efficiently express, what nipple cream you need depending on what is going on between mom and baby, when or when not to pump/breastfeed based on your diet etc...
Pretty sure I know the market bud.
My wife stopped using the pump altogether because of discomfort and the knowledge that saliva-to-aureola contact is healthier for the child.
The price really isn’t the problem as insurance will cover at least part of it, and it is marketed to breastfeeding women who have jobs and health insurance (have the means to make the purchase), and the developer is sending clear signals they understand the price issue and the price will likely scale down as production scales up. And there’s also an exit strategy as Medela would probably buy them too.
The key problems for this market are breast pumps are often handed down to other families, limiting the sales potential, and there is a large segment that will prefer contact breast feeding over pumping due to the health benefits.
And why is it that when a man understands the full implications of a crowdsourcing campaign and chums the water with press, he’s a “growth hacker”, yet you employ an invective by labeling this woman’s effort as “Submarine PR”?
> Oh ok, so VC's do like it
Some VCs liked it enough for an initial round. But you're using that to imply that the article's claims about VC reactions to their current attempt to raise money is "spinning a yarn", with zero evidence that this is true.
> Ah, got it. Their product is too expensive for too small of a market.
No it's not. Hospital-grade Medela pumps are much more expensive than the prices listed in the article. I don't know how the Naya compares to the hospital grade pumps, but the current crop of home-grade pumps are really really crappy, and if the Naya can improve on them, it can absolutely demand a higher price. And I don't know how large the pump market is, but given that pumps are something that every single mother can use (whether or not they choose to do so), I don't think that's a particularly small market.
The real problem isn't market size, it's competing with the free home pumps many parents get, and convincing people who do buy pumps that it's worth paying for the better pump. If their product is significantly better, they have a chance.
> I'm male and I've been sexually harassed or had a casually racist comment lobbed past me more times than I can count by a potential investor. It sucks.
Cry me a river.
In the context of this article, this line is actually pretty insulting. You're casually dismissing a really serious problem that female CEOs face on the basis that men occasionally see crappy behavior too. It's not at all comparable.
> It is not however why it's proving hard to close a massively risky, and I assume hugely expensive A round.
Bullshit. It sounds (and I can very easily believe this) like the VCs aren't even getting to the point of properly evaluating the product and company, because they're too hung up on it being a female CEO with a product that the male VCs don't have any experience with and think is "gross". Here you're completely dismissing that and just assuming that the VCs are actually doing something that the article provides direct evidence to the contrary.
If Juicero can get funded, Naya should be able to get funded too. The problem is VCs could easily understand the appeal of Juicero's product, but they don't seem to be even trying to understand Naya's product and market.