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Comment by joshbert | Hacker News Reader

Can someone tell me why it could possibly be relevant to say that she is single?

Is it referencing her status as a founder(a single founder, versus having a co-founder)?

Well in joshbert's defense the original phrasing already says "single, female, non-technical founder with no team" which would make this interpretation slightly redundant, so I can understand why he read it that way.

A solo founder can have a team (of non-founders), as the founder in this article does.

So they're employees. Paid / unpaid, stock?

The slides say she got a team...?

Exactly, that was the original title.

I think that it's about the single founder but even besides that, if you're married there's a good chance your spouse can provide a stable household while you're working on the company. This means you have a longer runway and more support than if you were socially single.

Because it's about not having a co-founder; not her marital status.

It's minus half a credibility point for being a lone wolf founder. The reasons to have founders plural are countless.

As are the reasons to not have a cofounder. There is no pure formula for success.

Never said their was.

The wrong cofounder/s is like the wrong spouse.

The right cofounder/s is like the right spouse.

Best to know them previously, it helps a lot.

Further, the biggest point of having other people around is killing off bad ideas quickly because people won't see the entire picture themselves but they will believe their own bullshit. It's harder to delude yourself in the wrong direction of thought if your cofounder/s are there to help you keep you honest.

A better choice of words would have been "solo"

Why is it relevant that she's female?

Specifying characteristics of exemplary people, can serve as an encouraging example for others with those characteristics. Maybe another potential future female founder will read about her example, and decide to pursue the same path. Not everyone needs that, but sometimes it helps.

Which is a great thing, due to the massive lack of female founders in the tech world.

Males and females look at things differently, too, so there must be huge markets for female founders, who really understands women much better than males does.

This was a perfect example, too, as shopping is something the female population really... Excels at. :)

It's also pretty common in headlines for all sorts of demographic characteristics. For example, just taking a random example from the HN search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4830140 ("22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder")

This is a really good point. In the context of the headline however, it's listed in a string of characteristics which would normally be considered obstacles which the founder overcame, and I do not see gender as an obstacle.

Mentioning the female gender (I am assuming cis-gender sex/gender terminology) is an identifier that points to the added difficulty of starting a company in a culture where women are treated as inferior or have less social power. So they're pointing out how the company was created under potentially difficult circumstances. The idea that it's difficult for women to start companies turns gender into a kind of 'selling point', as in, because this company was started by a woman, it's clear the founder must have extra-ordinary abilities to be able to survive in a culture that often treats women as inferior, and this company may have properties that make it "better" than any other average company not started by a woman. So gender mentioned here is not only falsely attributing greater business acuity to the company, it also acts as a PR flag to attract attention to the company. People therefore perceive it as important that the founder is female, hence mentioning it in the title.

It's only relevant because in today's startup environment, "single female, non-tech, no-team" is considered an outlier regarding the characteristics of a successful (subjective) founder.

That's the real question. It's not like being a female is a handicap or something.

It isn't but VCs have been known to avoid female founders for fear of them not working as hard as men since 'they'll have a baby sometime' or some nonsense like that [1]. Also women face gender discrimination in the bay area. [2]

source: [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/pregnant-founders-response-to...

[2] http://valleywag.gawker.com/this-is-why-there-arent-enough-w...

It's ever since the pg incident and reinforced by the github gate, the valley is in a "see we welcome women, women are great and we've always loved them" mode. Folks are already calling it "gender washing."

Let's hope it becomes one of those 'fake it until you make it' stories then...

Anything but folks arguing sex politics.

Did anyone even bother to look to see how this site compares in their market? Who's their closest competitors even?

Gender Baiting. It goes along with the whole Silicon Valley is Misogynistic theme.

Why is it not?

It's about as relevant as what size shoes she wears.

Except the fact that one is (most of the time): - a characteristic that is outwardly visible and generally perceivable -a characteristic upon which many societies have historically (and/or currently) organized biases around

While the other is generally related to how big one's feet are.

I would gather the submission intend to point out that this 'news event' was 'rare' and therefore worth submitting (rare because of the success, being a single founder, and being a woman in a field where (I presume) women are significantly less numerous). Anyway, looks like there were issues with the submission for some reason since it has been edited.

That was a typo. I did actually mean to say "solo" rather than single.

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