Here Are The Women of Y Combinator And They Are Awesome
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
How is this fair? Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"? You know the thing that was heavily debated on HN in the last weeks when some people were treated based on their gender? "I mean these people are put forward because they are %s, and if they were not %s they would not even qualify to a full page article. Based on that story %s seem to have an easier time because of their gender" % ( "women", "women", "women"). Sorry for the Pythonic syntax but if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism.
Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly". If I were a girl I would certainly feel kind of weird that out of the 4 ideas 1 is directed towards women, 2 are directly relevant to "standard" feminine tastes: clothing. Also the journalist is a woman... I want to see women promising us Big Data analysis or the new portal around cars, not some stuff that reinforce stereotypes!
I am sorry but I will say that sexism is gone when EVERY trace of it will have disappeared, and there won't be any "X women that succeed and they are awesome" but the title will be "Z ideas that will help you buy clothes" with guys and girls in the same article.
It's great that the ideas are girly. They know what they want better than we do. If more women are going into YC now than before, than I'll bet PG and the gang can hardly wipe the grins off their faces thinking about all the money they're going to make.
Having had a chance to a/b test this, the real problem is that they do actually do this, not that people simply assume they do.
It's real, it happens. Either start learning about how it effects people or continue going through the world blind to these issues. Your call.
Privilege blinds. Waking up to what you have a hard time seeing can be hard. Good luck. Or not, if you'd prefer things stay as they are.
I'm sure there are a lot of great anonymous posters here but I don't follow them.
I believe it's part of a broader problem in the US. I come from another culture in Europe and that puts me in a position where I am able to analyze things from very close but still with a great deal of distance. Also forgive me for my english mistakes it is hard to develop long thoughts in a language which is not your mother language!
In the US there is a culture of the celebration of differences. It's true at every level in every aspect of the organization of the society here (I live in the US). I can take a very simple example: schools. In the US the "different" students which happen to be defined by the school administrations as the smartest students have it very easy: they are put aside from the rest, put in special classes, get incredible scholarship. The "normal"(again, by the definition of the administration) students are ignored.
Now take the example of the Finnish schools. In these schools the rule is: everybody should be at the same level: equal. [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...]. They have no standardized test to set the "normal" and "different" kids apart, they are very little homework.
Guess what happens next ? US pupils are just killed in the tests and Finnish students are far ahead.
This example can be extended to the case of women and to many more. By celebrating the excellence of some you only reinforce the sexism because of very complex externalities, that are not fully understood from the point of view of social sciences. I truly believe that creating role models is a curse, not a cure for the problem of women absence in technologies. This subject would merit a bigger post than mine but that's my thoughts put simply.
Sorry for the digression, thank you if you read until here :).
"I don't see color, I just see qualifications" was often the very first claim by a hiring manager at a company where everyone but the janitor was white. As a result, claiming to be colorblind convinces no one. People believe you will hire and promote members of disadvantaged minority groups only when tangible evidence from the makeup of your staff proves it.
I understand your distate for the situation, but it's kind of like you came in to the theater in the middle of the movie. People here are like this for very good reasons. Are there problems as a result? Sure. But things are the way they are as a result of responding to a situation that was even worse.
They just have fewer immigrants so the overall effect is small.
Amen. But given that we aren't there yet, why are you complaining about an article which has women in it instead of the four hundred that don't?
You must not read much tech news if you're not doing that kind of smiting several times a day.
"The key difference is that most of tech news is about a group of 10 people who happen to be men...."
It's not a group of 10 people who happen to be men. It's more like 8 or 9 of them happen to be men and 1 of them happens to be a woman. If the community keeps perceiving and portraying itself as so homogeneous, how will young women recognize that they can have a place here too?
It's just an article about a notable subgroup. Would you be annoyed if it was (as another poster amusingly points out below) Minnesotan or Indian founders? Local Texan sons done good out west? University of Subterranean Boston alumni notes? It's clear you're peeved because, for whatever reason, you don't like "identity politics" and you pigeonholed this as being an example.
Well, get over yourself. It's not. It's about women with startups. Being underrepresented (wildly so, relative to the population) I think women constitute a "notable" subgroup. You don't?
Well as a matter of fact I really answered rationally... Well at least I hope I did. If you want to read my real motivation, beyond the immediate answer here it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3779310
I am French, and I tell you what, I'd just HATE an article that would say "Some French that are really good in tech.". I want to be integrated in the society, I want people to simply ignore my country of origin, I'm not ashamed it's just not relevant to the fact that I am an engineer or an entrepreneur, just as being a women, black, chinese or anything different than white american male!
This is just hearsay and stray recollections of things I've read, but doesn't France, officially at least, have a very different approach to equality than the US? I believe that it is illegal in France to recognize racial or gender differences in official contexts, is that true? This might cause a French person to view such an article as in bad taste and as an impediment to equality.
In the US there is long history of affirmative action and other remedial measures and I think the current culture reflects that. When you have a group as underrepresented as women in tech are, then the tendency is to try to boost them by whatever means necessary. Being an American I tend to agree with this approach but I can see the opposite side.
I guess you could ask what is the effect of articles like these? Are they doing more good by encouraging people to view women in tech as an accepted fact or are they entrenching the status quo by calling it out as it if were something special? I think the former effect outweighs the latter.
Edit: the lightbulb went on, not off. ;)
As for the effects, I personally don't have the answer either, even if I try to draft possible outcomes (in another comment in this thread taking the finnish school example). From what I have read in the tech crunch article the encouragement had a weird effect in the Y Combinator selection: they may have managed to introduce "femininity" in tech but not "women". As somebody pointed out in another comment none of the women are technical founders...
But thanks for staying open minded, I believe that's how solutions are found: everybody listen to each other and a better understanding begin to take shape after a while, hopefully my indigenous perspective will help :).
Like I said, I favor the American approach but I cannot say for sure which is better. Racism is far from gone in France according to my French acquaintances. Job applications may not ask your authenticity but I am told having the right type of name is often very valuable. Of course, once it comes to personal interviews it doesn't matter so much what is on the application.
I believe when some government departments collect demographic information they are also not allowed to collect ethnic information.
Public culture (in the media) in France does seem much more homogenous to me than in the US.
Why does it need to be fair? This isn't grade school... (For the record, I don't think this article is unfair but I don't see why that would matter.)
Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"?
No... How would this be sexism (discrimination based on gender)?
if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism.
Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground. Women are typically underrepresented in this group, so this is noteworthy.
Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly".
Websites that cater to women are few and far between, women are typically willing to spend a lot of money on these types of sites, and it shouldn't be suprising that women develop businesses that they themselves would want to use. If you haven't noticed most startups tend to be a bunch of geeky guys developing geek-related crap that only geeks are really interested in. Same difference.
Also the journalist is a woman...
And? Isn't that appropriate? I'm sure the article would be fine if a male journalist wrote it but you shouldn't be suprised that a female journalist was hilighting sucessful women in tech.
Your weird interpretation of sexism is baffling.
Women will get attention because they're the minority, and because they pursue business opportunities that don't occur to male geeks. If we had Eskimos launching sites, they'd get covered too.
There's a massive market out there that isn't getting served by the rank and file tech entrepreneur. More power to whoever finds a way to exploit it. Crying 'reverse sexism' strikes me as simply pathetic.
This is true. From an information theoretic perspective, this story more interesting than the converse would be. However, I've been told many times that information theory and probability is not a defense against charges of sexism.
For example, consider the question "do you plan to have children soon?" From an information theory perspective, it provides useful information when making a hiring decision. And the information is more notable for a woman than for a man, since a woman who gives an affirmative answer is far more likely than a man to vanish from the workforce. Yet it's normally considered sexist to ask this question, particularly if you ask the question only of women.
How do you reconcile this difference?
This is one thing that jumped out at me too at first blush, but thinking on it more, while it may be the case I don't know that it's actually objectionable. Some of the more "girly" opportunities are still untapped by the mostly-male founder base, and if women choose to tap them, isn't that just good business sense on their part?
Of course, some of it is just that women are more likely to be interested in girly things, and people in general tend to want to start companies that they are personally interested in. I don't see why that's a problem.
You could use "Bla bla bla {0}, because {0} and {0}".format("women") to avoid using a tuple of "women". Or, if you're stuck with old Python, just use %(noun)s three times and format with {"noun": "women"}.
I was hoping the compiler inside everybody's brain would be able to detect this minor inefficiencies and correct them on the fly. And yes, I was using Python2.7, I wanted to use 3.0 but the sexist libraries haven't been updated. (Just joking).
But thanks for pointing that out!
I think these kinds of contradictions are more common in the U.S. than elsewhere. I have always wondered: if race plays no role, why does it figure as a question in the census and in most college applications?
Pretending inequalities don't exist doesn't get rid of them. The only people who benefit from this line of thinking are those that are in privileged positions to begin with.
>If I were a woman running a company, I would prefer not to be featured in an article like that.
There goes that line again... I'm sure women can speak for themselves on this matter.
The moment this or a similar statement is about to come out of your mouth, just stop yourself. There is no possible way a sentence that starts out like this will be anything but close-minded and/or self-serving. If women have a problem with women owned businesses being about "woman" things, they can say so. Do not presume to speak for other women from your place of privilege.
I apologize if this comes off as a strange sentiment, but I find stories like this pretty condescending. It's almost like reading a story about some achievement by a kid with special needs and I need to stand up and cheer for these women. These women are amazing for whatever they have done, regardless of gender.
A hard working guy with a world-changing idea shouldn't be overlooked in favour of a mediocre woman who is remarkable because she is a woman.
For now, I'm okay with these types of lady showcases if only because I get comfort from seeing almost any example of female leadership in this corner of the internet. It's unfortunate that focusing on gender's the most surefire way to get these women on the front page, but stories like this and articles on female struggles in the tech world are mostly the only times I get a sense of female camaraderie around here. It feels less condescending when it's so much more difficult to get acknowledgment in a community of male-dominated interests.
Shoptiques is a particularly interesting business. It creates value where none really existed before. Boutiques can't establish a real web presence, and mid market girls don't have access to NY/LA/London boutiques. This is an online business that creates value from thin air. Execution is the key, and the execs seem to be totally on track.
99 dresses is a potential home run but like all marketplace businesses it is tough. My favorite thing is that they are so low class. I love the idea that chicks are swapping dresses from F21. It is just so real and honest. I want them to be a major success just to spite the people behind renttherunway.
The daily muse looks like a newspaper to me, so I don't get the business. Hireart seems like a gimmick.
Women or no women, I'll be an ass and say what I think.
Excellent point. I think the key to true equality is to disregard the differences (gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc) and just look at simple things, such as performance, execution, success, value creation.
I'd have to infer that at least some of them can both cook and code, and further that neither fact was significant in of itself in being able to found an internet based business.
Obviously it can save money if you can make your own sandwiches, which many may choose to do.
As the comment I replied to remarked about the tech ability of the founders I'd have to say that I'm willing to bet that the young Australian woman that started a trading site with her younger brother very probably has a good grip on the mechanics of web site building and operation. Further she appears to have had the good sense to outsource for the tech when scaling up for the American market.
I've been involved in a number of businesses that have gone from small to international, nearly half with women founders and nearly half with tech founders (with some overlap). In almost all cases the telling important factors weren't gender or tech ability but that elusive EQ ... the ability of the founders to rally a team and have them hold the faith while deals were formed and products deployed.
My wife and I co-founded a successful web company together. We have pretty much the exact same background: Engineering grads from same program at the same school, same age within 10 days of each other, we both worked in SV as software engineers before launching our startup. We even both played competitive soccer.
However, over the years it is has been a common occurrence that with an introduction to a new tech/startup person, there's an assumption that I'm the technical person. I get spoken to in that way, and my wife is assumed to be non-(or less)-technical than I am. In one such a meeting, we were asked who is the CEO (from a veteran entrepreneur), she responded that she was, and the guy chuckled. We asked him why what was so funny about that? He mumbled and tripped over his words without explanation.
When we work together, thoughts of gender don't even come to mind. We're too damn busy trying to build something that someone gives a sh about.
Also this
We really try to work with data to understand which questions work the best. You can think about it like designing the SATs for different jobs
is for all practical purposes illegal in the USA due to Griggs v. Duke Power Company[0] and the misbegotten offspring of legal reasoning uncontaminated by any knowledge of statistics that is the 80% rule[1].
But who knows they might survive and thrive and hiring is a ridiculously huge market. Good luck to them.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Company
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_impact#The_80.25_rule
What's up with that?
For every demographic that you consciously or unconsciously ignore as an investor or business owner, you're depriving yourself of all the potential business that demographic attracts.
She neglected to include the co-founders of Plangrid (Tracy Young) and Medmonk (Somaira Punjwani). They, too, have fascinating backgrounds. (Since presentations were only 2.5 minutes, it was easy to miss some if you had to leave the room.)