Why female entrepreneurs should apply to YC | Hacker News Reader

Why female entrepreneurs should apply to YC

women2.org

16 pointsjlees18 comments

I think this is an excellent essay. I would add: different people have different problems; the best ideas for companies come from people fed up with working around their problems; so the world needs a wide variety of entrepreneurs to move the ball forward.

I enjoyed my YC experience, but it was 100% male, IIRC. YC was for me a social exercise, and as in most social exercises, the more perspectives you can canvas the better; and YC participants started by women would bring new perspectives.

I would also encourage older people to give it a shot, too, but that's a topic for a different post.

I'm a female founder and I applied to YC, not technical though. I did find a tech cofounder, and if need be, I can add another third tech cofounder as well. One of my strengths is keeping the programmers motivated and focused. Wish me luck. :-)

All the best :-)

" rain and hot chocolate " == excellent

This low rate may also have to do with biases extant in engineering / sciences etc. Couple that with YC's preference for hard-core tech founders ( a perfectly reasonable delimiter ), these results are not surprising.

You can see similar composition in YC leadership where Jessica is the only female partner ( http://ycombinator.com/people.html ) and from my limited understanding, she brings in a much needed balance to their approach.

A system that produces great results should perhaps focus on

".. but by the content of their character " - Martin Luther King, Jr.

This I think, pg emphasizes via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU

I agree that the smaller proportion of women in science means that there are naturally fewer women hacker founders, but 4% is lower than the percentages of women in science commonly quoted (anywhere from 10 to 38%). My feeling is that this is the subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive -- not all male CS students become entrepreneurs -- but it's pretty low, and some of the other barriers mentioned in the article may be keeping it down.

Agreed. A few years ago, when I first asked around regarding my plans for branching out on my own.. the first line I got was " you must be a sucker for pain ".

As it turns out , the line has been proven on the dot.

So a better refinement of the question would be , why aren't there more female founders ?

I look at all the blockbuster companies, can't think of one woman who's gone for the scale of a Gates , Jobs etc. The few female execs that have come to the arena at that scale were non-founders.

Furthermore, the women in my life are having far more empathy, compassion and care. If there is some way to have more of that without losing track of overall merit, get it done is all I can say.

Here's a really interesting project with a female founder from my line of work :

http://qubes-os.org

Like Kellco I'm a female co-founder with no tech experience. Growing up I was encouraged to be creative and expressive. It wasn't until college that I was drawn in to the sciences and ultimately entered a male dominated field (as an adjunct professor in a lab oriented discipline). It works for me because I'm a people person but I love the creative impact of the scientific method, its structure, and how it opens the mind. When I began teaching myself to code and program for our company, I realized it isn't much different and I'm quickly growing to love the process. It's still a science after all. I think the hacker stereotype of the nerdy guy with no social skills needs to go the way of the dodo. :)

" as an adjunct professor in a lab oriented discipline " == much respect

" It works for me because I'm a people person " == that is around 99% of the start-up game. 1% is randomness or grace depending one one's perspective.

And most nerds who scaled up companies and became public faces as founders acquired serious social skills.. so nod again.

All the best !

p.s. I really hope that both Kellco and you get in. That would be awesome.

Thanks, Hitchhiker!

My thoughts:

1) As jlees mentioned below, you need to look at the "subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive" when looking at something like YC. The 4% doesn't really surprise me at all.

2) My observation is that women tend to be on a timeline about 5 years "faster" than men because of their biological clock. As in, they'll start thinking seriously of marriage and kids late 20's, early 30's whereas men will deal with this issue more like early to mid 30's. So their window for doing a startup is smaller.

3) This is a bit of a generalization, but the dynamics are really different when you have all-guy co-founders versus mixed versus all-female co-founders. With mixed sometimes personal relationships develop which can make things messy. And when you have a couple of alpha-females together, sometimes that can also lead to problems (for example, see the all-female startup in the TechStars Reality show). [These are just my own observations. Please don't flame me for this!]

1)I'm not necessarily negating you, rottendoubt, but I'd be curious to know what the women who have applied to YC and those who have been accepted think of marriage and kids. There may be no correlation at all. I personally think a large part of the discrepancy is our culture and can easily be changed, especially in the minds of the kids who are currently growing up.

2) As for dynamics...yeah, I'll agree with you on that. Women can be catty. That doesn't mean we are catty, but we can be. Where does that leave us though? It actually appears that we have to prove ourselves above and beyond. "I won't be catty, I won't go after my co-founder and hopefully he won't come after me, and I'm sorry I'm not a dude so I can't create an all male cohort." Doesn't mean it will stop me but it does make it more difficult.

3) Call me biased because I'm an educator, but I think a big obstacle is our science education in this country. Or lack thereof. Tech information is geared towards males, not females and it is a poor show at that. If more females became involved at a younger age, I think YC would have a hard time keeping the women out. :)

I was just having dinner with a female friend that was an EECS major (electrical engineering computer science) from UC Berkeley and she brought up another point. She said whenever she took classes and needed a partner, she'd always have guys come up to try to help her and that usually they were among the smartest guys in the class.

As far as the marriage/kids issue goes ... I think I read that the average age of the people at YCombinator is 26; and as far as my own observation goes, that's right around the time that my female friends started seriously thinking about the marriage/kids issue. I think the discrepancy is really driven by the biological clock. Men can have kids well into their 50's, but it's pretty dangerous for women to have kids past 40.

Well, anecdotes are anecdotes. I know plenty of women the same age as me (I'm 29) who also don't want kids any time soon, though more and more of us are getting married. I really don't know of any of the women I went to college with at undergrad or postgrad level having kids as young as 26, and only one that I can think of that has kids at 30.

Maybe I'm too much of an outlier, but to me, achieving my dreams is more important than having a kid, which has never been something I particularly prioritised in life. I have at least 5 more years before I really have to worry anyway. Plus, we're having babies long after 40 now.

Oh, I agree. I'm the same way (I'm 37). It's just that differences in biology force women to consider the issue earlier than men. I'm guessing that societal pressure also plays a part as well -- ie. parents may push a woman at 30 to get married/have kids much harder than a man at 30.

I don't think it is so different for men and women in today's day and age. IVF and surrogacy have changed the game quite a bit. I'm 32 and don't plan on having kids for a few more years, but I also know I have options that didn't exist for my parents. Because of these options, I feel I've had the freedom to explore my education and career and I know so many women in their 30's who either don't want children or plan on waiting. This whole "women can have it all thing" is partially true in the sense that it comes in increments, but rarely all at once.

Not sure if you all have seen this. One of the co-founders of YC, Jessica Livingston, wrote a great blog post on this exact subject: www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2011/01/what-stops-female-founders.html

Thanks for posting this. I hadn't seen it, some interesting points!

Not the same thing, but reminds me of this video presentation:

http://igniteshow.com/videos/im-barbie-girl-cs-world

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