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Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

Something I've noticed going through founder's LinkedIn pages is that it seems that entrepreneurs seem to be significantly more attractive than the average person. I assume a partial causative factor could be that the number of positive impressions you make on people with influence correlates with success of your startup, and one's capacity to make positive interpersonal impressions correlates with physical attractiveness.

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Contrary to Hollywood stereotypes, attractiveness and IQ are extremely strongly correlated. You can find a million studies affirming this with a search - it's not controversial, though the reason for it is. For the lazy here's a random study. [1] The typical effort to dismiss it is to claim it's a bias or halo effect.

But as that paper lays out there's a really simple and logical explanation for it as well. Intelligence is highly heritable, attractiveness is highly heritable. Intelligent people are more likely to succeed making them more able to seek out other attractive/intelligent individuals, thus resulting in more attractive/intelligent offspring.

[1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

Unfortunately this is going backwards now.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25131282/

> One-standard-deviation increase in childhood general intelligence (15 IQ points) decreases women's odds of parenthood by 21-25%. Because women have a greater impact on the average intelligence of future generations, the dysgenic fertility among women is predicted to lead to a decline in the average intelligence of the population in advanced industrial nations.

It's not exactly scientific evidence that intelligence is highly heritable.

There's a ton of well controlled studies that show the degree to which intelligence is heritable. This is not really controversial.

Or they pay for professional headshots for their LinkedIn page?

I did this. I went to a photographer who specializes in it. He booked a makeup artist, a hair person, and they took a few dozen shots at a couple different locations and with different outfits. The whole thing was half a day and like $500.

I look way better in my professional headshots than in reality (I'm also 10 years younger!).

So this tracks for my N of 1.

I'm obviously talking about features which aren't attributable to the quality of the photo. Facial structure, symmetry, etc.

A good photographer can work wonders ;)

And pay to groom themselves.

I've never noticed a correlation between "amount of money" and "capability to groom and present self," positive or negative.

Sure, you have. Many professional cliques have unstated dress codes. The more rarefied the clique, the more expensive the look. Banking and venture capital come to mind. If you make it to the top you can wear what you want again.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/motivate/202306/do-p...

I’ve known of this phenomenon since I was a kid and saw a 20/20 episode on it where they took attractive people and not attractive people and ran them through job interviews etc. The outcome was as you might expect.

If you take the intersection of people who are basically fit and lack latent or unmanaged anxiety disorders, then add people who are self motivated and driven, you're going to get a fairly attractive cohort.

Attractiveness is basically fitness and low neuroticism. If you have those and enough emotional intelligence to not be a criminal, you're going to generally fail upwards. Add any one of an elite education, a stdev above average intelligence, good mentoring, self awareness, or a competition level skill, and you can get a seat a most tables.

How does low neuroticism contribute to physical attractiveness?

Presence.

What does that even mean? Do you mean to use presence as a term combining posture, grooming, style, facial resting position, body language, etc? I understand that but my original point was about the structure of the founders' faces, not whether they have an undefinable charisma.

A) professional headshots make a big difference

B) the people promoting themselves the most on LinkedIn also tend to care the most about their image (including looks)

C) there’s a large component of sales for any startup. There’s plenty of ugly yet successful entrepreneurs, but looks do seem to matter.

I don't believe that there's a well defined thing called "physical attractiveness". It's quite possible that "looks like an entrepreneur" is part of your definition of "attractive" in this instance, in which case your observation rather boils down to "people look like what they are", which is still an interesting observation, of course, and one might want to ask how/why people look like what they are.

I think I once had to pick a medical doctor from just names and photographs. Probably my choice was different from what I'd have chosen if I'd been picking a partner in a tennis competition, though they'd be a strong positive correlation, I expect, between those two things. On the other hand, if I'd been picking a bouncer for a one-off event at a nightclub, they'd be less correlation, probably.

My definition of attractive generally means harmonious facial features (nothing too big or too small, positioned visibly weirdly), clear skin, symmetry, sexual dimorphism, class 1 bite with good teeth well aligned with the face and forward-grown jaw structure. Id say there is a specific "looks like an entrepreneur" element to it where these people tend to have a somewhat friendly, vaguely supercilious, clean cut, non-distinctive look. However a preponderance of the former objectively attractive features is hard to ignore compared to the people you see on the street, at Starbucks, at the Post Office, etc. I do also agree grooming and the effects of a good diet/exercise routine which correlates with the strata of educated middle upper class people who apply to YC is a factor too.

its very useful for a roadshow, yes.

and everything else in life that helped you get in a position to be able to drop everything and go on a roadshow.

just maybe they are all using AI headshots ;)

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