Second: There is no less compelling argument to make on HN than a citation to that post, particularly when the argument involves the word "ad hominem", which for some reason seems to be a particularly difficult concept for message board nerds like us to grok.
> That doesn't disqualify her from having opinions about how women should handle gender-based bias, team dynamic, and motivational challenges in startups. But it doesn't automatically qualify her, either.
These two paragraphs do exactly that. The third paragraph could have stood on its own. I was not arguing against you, I was simply pointing out that most of what you wrote was to dismiss what the author wrote without reason. If your point was indeed not so, then why not leave out the first two paragraphs? What do they add?
Think of it this way: if she was a reporter or science writer writing a sourced, reported piece --- or even if she was an essayist constructing a series of arguments for why women shouldn't be talking about their challenges publicly or attending symposia --- her authority would in fact probably be out of bounds. But this piece is neither of those two things.
This is exactly the question, why does her authority matter at all?
Another way to look at it is that she's committing an appeal to (her own) authority fallacy. Pointing out fallacies is not ad hominem.
> Here's the profile of a female entrepreneur that I want to work with
Note the use of the word "I". When the author brings herself into the article like this, discussing the author is entirely relevant.