Hacker News Reader

Comment by whitehat2k9 | Hacker News Reader

Number of females with an explicit mention of technical expertise: 0.

Taking "technical expertise" to mean "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics", and having nothing to do with art or psychology or anything else that could be dismissed by a certain type of person as "fuzzy":

"Cindy is a transplant from Seattle, where she was previously a Research Scientist and Engineer @UW Bioengineering." --Seems to qualify.

"Kelly was previously at Google as a UX design intern for YouTube and is currently Senior at Carnegie Mellon University double majoring in Human Computer Interaction and Industrial Design." --Borderline. I'm not sure whether UX design includes handling code or not; if so, it would definitely qualify; if not, it could be dismissed.

"Prior to Goldbely Vanessa headed up UX and Visual Design at Blip.tv, and was a Senior Interactive Designer for Gilt Groupe. [...] Vanessa handles UI/UX and all things creative at Goldbely." --Again, if "UI/UX" includes handling code, that would seem to qualify; if not, maybe not.

So it looks like 1 to 3, assuming you mean what I think you mean.

[Edit: not originally included was this: "Iolanthe received her Masters of Engineering, EECS in 2010 from MIT and also holds a B.S., EECS, Physics from MIT." This brings the count up to 2-4 out of 10.]

Fei Deyle is an electrical engineer.

So %50 are technical of the ones who are known.

Two more are still in stealth mode.

As a coder, why would you join one of these companies with non-technical founders instead of just building or co-founding your own product and collecting vastly more equity? I don't see the draw.

75% equity in a company with a product no one knows about, or 30% equity in a company everyone uses?

By the time everyone is using it, it's too late to be a co-founder and 30% equity is certainly out the window.

I think dmor's implication is that if you start a company with no non-technical cofounders, you'll be much less likely to gain so many users than if you started it with some non-technical cofounders. Feel free to argue about that. I will sit back.

You're right, and by that point they don't need a technical cofounder, they just hire an engineer as an employee. Getting work with people who can actually reliably acquire customers is as valuable as getting to work with someone who can reliably write code.

http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2010/09/startup-marketing-2nd...

Is it? Of the most highly traffic'd sites, the vast majority have technical founders: Facebook, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter. I'm not saying marketing isn't valuable, but it seems neither necessary nor sufficient.

I'm not saying it's mutually exclusive, and having a CS or other engineering degree is neither necessary nor sufficient to create a company.

Why wouldn't you want to ride in on the coattails of affirmative action?

> Number of females with an explicit mention of technical expertise: 0.

Ummm

> Iolanthe received her Masters of Engineering, EECS in 2010 from MIT and also holds a B.S., EECS, Physics from MIT.

that's a pretty huge mention of techincal expertise by pretty much anyones definition

That was a curious oversight. She wasn't included in the original lineup.

Sorry about that, I didn't recognize her name as a woman's name and just added her when she let me know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com