Female Would-be Founders: Learn More About Startups by Grubbing with YC Alumni | Hacker News Reader

Female Would-be Founders: Learn More About Startups by Grubbing with YC Alumni

foundersatwork.com

79 pointsjl15 comments

My friends at Grubwithus (YC W11) are going to help me by organizing a series of dinners in the Bay Area...

Do people outside of California use/understand "grub" as a verb meaning "to eat"? http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/grub

As a Brit I understand it in terms of the noun, not verb. "Food with us" is just as understandable as "Eat with us", though.

On the East Coast, I've only heard it used as a noun, and that was maybe 20 years ago. It's been a bootloader for the past 10-ish.

I'm an east coaster with lots of west coast friends, from whom I've picked up a lot of west coast slang and mannerisms (e.g. "the 95", "fuckin A"). But I've never heard grub as a verb.

Sigh, I bought this (when I saw only 1 seat left) for a female potential-startup-founder friend of mine, and of course it puts me as the "attending this event" person, without telling me it would publish my name/photo to the event.

Hey Ryan, sorry about the confusion, as we have strict orders for females only, but glad we could make it work out in the end!

Yes, you did a great job resolving this! I'm very impressed by your customer service. In addition to an almost immediate response via email, live help was also available (even late in the evening bay area time) and came to a creative solution. (it looks like the original spot was full, so it was rebooked at another location, and then transfered to my friend's account).

This is a great example of how a startup wins by being nimble and creative. Customer service is maybe something a huge company can outsource, but in a startup, definitely should be handled by the team directly, just like this.

creepy

I'm curious if you followed the link, I do not get a "creepy" vibe from this blog entry whatsoever. What in particular do you regard as creepy? I'm genuinely confused.

"Female would-be starlets: learn more about the movie industry by going out to dinner with established directors!"

It's different when you go to the link and realize it's a female's blog (and an established startup mentor too, at that), but the title does kind of give off a 'casting couch' vibe.

That is exactly what I surmised the motivation for the "creepy" comment was, hence my speculation the commenter had not actually followed the link. If this is correct, then perhaps the real creepiness is how quickly and superficially we apply our assumptions without checking the evidence. Since the original poster of the comment hasn't spoken up, though, perhaps we are falling into the same trap of making assumptions about an intended meaning. I admit I had the same half-formed reaction before I followed the link, and I was instantly somewhat ashamed of myself for the fact that my imagination had already conjured up a stereotype that proved to be completely off-base.

People won't follow the link if it sounds creepy.

And addressing real-live women as "Female" definitely sets off most women's creep-dars.

I guess better wording would have been:

Learn More About Startups by Grubbing with YC Alumnae

Except I think most of the YC alums attending are actually Alumni.

If you click all the way through to the grubwithus site, it's pretty funny to see that the "Females Only" is not being obeyed eg. "Adam G."

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