YCPages - List of Y Combinator companies, founders and jobs with statistics

Many thanks, any feedback would be highly appreciated.

If you assume that the YC partners aren't biased (do you have any evidence otherwise?) this implies the self-selection isn't based on capability. (i.e. women seem equally confident to apply as men with the same abilities) Which pretty much just leaves us with the usual statistic of the percentage of women working in tech being low.

I know of dozens of incredibly talented potential male founders who applied with killer ideas and were rejected. Seriously.

> I think it is very likely that YC has a strong bias towards men, which this data certainly supports.

Why do you think it's very likely? What data supports that. As one of the other commentators already pointed out, the percentage of YC founders that are women is about equal to the percentage that apply. Saying that the "data support" the argument that YC is biased when there is such an obvious alternative explanation (namely, that there are less female founders) is disingenuous.

> since YC is a for profit business they are making economically sound decisions.

Wait, what? Are you saying that since Silicon Valley (I'm guessing you mean investors in this context?) favors men, YC intentionally (and consciously) chooses to fund men in order to increase the chances that YC founders raise subsequent rounds of financing? That's crazy talk...

> saying any fault lies with women is really unfair.

I don't think anybody is "faulting" women. They are just stating the facts - there are less female engineers, and less female YC applicants.

Also, a "killer idea" isn't what YC looks for. They look for good teams.

I wasn't suggesting that any of the women I suggested should apply to YC would have necessarily gotten in (none of the men I've recommended to YC have, so far). Odds are simply against it, but I think people should do it anyway, if they want to start a company that fits the YC model. My point was that of the people I've encouraged to start businesses, only the men have actually done so. The women always have too many good reasons not to. Their job pays too well, they like the food at Google too much and don't like to cook, they don't want to move away from their friends to live in the valley, they don't want to give up the security they currently enjoy for something uncertain, they don't want to give up their weekends, etc. There's always good reasons to take the safe path...men just seem to be more willing to ignore all those reasons and start a company anyway. Not all men or women fit this description, of course...free will seems to exist, and humans are widely variable. But, it's true enough of the time that I'm absolutely confident YC is not exhibiting a preference for male founders, and that the percentage of accepted female founders is reflective of the percentage of female applicants.

There is much evidence of this, and not just in tech startups, and it's not merely anecdotal, though I think the overwhelming nature of the anecdotal is pretty convincing on its own. Vastly more men die in the line of work than women do, across many fields, for example. More men than women were pioneers by a couple orders of magnitude. More men choose the military, police or fire department as their career than women by an order of magnitude. More men become astronauts, revolutionaries, and stock brokers.

It seems highly unlikely that these disparities are entirely systemic, or based entirely on our society's norms and expectations; though I'm willing to believe that some of the differences are based on environment rather than genetics, and I hope that if I have daughters they will be given ample opportunities to choose any path they want, including startups (in whatever field startups are interesting in 25-30 years).

My point is that it is silly to suggest that just encouraging girls to take a more active interest in math and sciences will not solve this gender disparity. And, it may even be impossible to "solve" it. Women may just not want to start companies at the same rate as men. If that's the case, there's nothing we can do to "fix" it. I quoted "solve" and "fix" because it assumes that there's something wrong with people who don't want to start companies. I don't know that that's the case. We might be the ones taking unnecessary risks for things that may not be as good for long-term health, happiness, and well-being. After all, once basic needs are met, money doesn't buy happiness, and startups can be a lonely and stressful process that lasts years and may never pay off.

It's easy to pretend there are no barriers, or that the barriers are related to talent, but whether YC is biased or not (I don't think it is), this says a lot about how much we lose as a society when talent goes untapped for no good reason.