The rise of the female founder | Hacker News Reader

The rise of the female founder

versiononeventures.com

43 pointsdomino20 comments

Curious how the number of female founders in non-US portfolios compares.

I wonder what the success rate is now for Pitched and Funded vs just funded (Male/Female)

My (anecdotal) experience is that the success rate of female founders to convert a pitch to funding is significantly higher - might be due to the fact that only the most talented female founders have currently the courage to think about starting a company.

If there is really a stronger success rate it is more than likely a bias than a gender based attribute.

Why do you think that? Compare it to the type of customers you attract at different stage of building a product: your first customers are always the most passionate, most valuable customers. As you broaden the customer base, you attract people that are way less into your product. Female founders are still a very small group, only the most passionate, most courageous, most talented ones are currently considering becoming entrepreneurs. Once being a female founder is the new normal, pitch to funding rates between males and females will be much closer again. Having said all that, this is just a theory based on anecdotal experience.

That would only be potentially true if more males in this industry are pitching as a percentage than females. I have not seen anything to suggest that this is the case.

I'm all for more women in engineering and technology, but as I said to a customer recently,"I don't think I have ever hear a female say,"I reballed the faulty nvida chip with artic 5 in the a with a hair dryer at 3 a.m., didn't work and I spent the next 40 hrs. trying to fix it!". Actually, I'm kind of glad most women aren't interested in the stuff I'm interested in. As to power and money, most guy's-- if their honest became rich because they knew it attracted women? Of yea, a rich father always helps. The sad part is it all works in reverse for wealthy women. Wealthy women scare off most guys. I have a very good looking ex-girlfriend, blond, wealthy, etc. move to Silicon Valley hoping to lasso some guy--she is still single. I truly believe men are intimidated by her position in life. In all honesty--I was extremely attracted to her, but wanted someone with different values--yes--children, introspective--a Zooey, or Fran, but there's a part of me who wondered if she was struggling would I look at her differently? I look at the personal ads and almost 100% of the time the ad I want to say "It all works in reverse." Meaning what's desirable for women is not desirable for men. I hope this changes in the future.

Ok, so, let me enlighten you as to why you're being downvoted.

First, your post reads very rambly. That doesn't help much, though it probably actually does help a little, since the more what you're saying becomes clear, the more likely you are to get downvoted.

Which brings me to the second point. Your post is highly misogynistic - read up about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny . At various points, you make the following arguments:

- Women simply aren't into tech

- You don't want women to be into tech

- Because it doesn't fit your stereotype of what women should be like

- Your view of what women should be like is they're there to help you with some aspects of your life, like having children, etc

- Successful women are doomed to not be successful by your stereotype of what women should do

- Successful women are scary

These are very distasteful, anti-women points that peg you clearly as either someone who believes this stuff because he's an asshole, or someone who believes this stuff because he hasn't spent 5 minutes researching the topic and is running on stereotypes. The latter's only advantage is that maybe there's hope for you to get better over time.

That's why you're being downvoted. You should really spend some time thinking about what kind of person the above beliefs make you, and start re-examining where they come from and how you can change them in yourself.

If your post is true it is an indictment of the poor logic and reading comprehension skills of the denizens of hacker news. Your post is bullying and stupid. Let's start with your "misogyny", which actually just means "prejudice against women".

If you say there cannot be such a thing as a woman who is into tech, that is prejudice. If you say that (generally) women aren't into tech, that IS NOT prejudice because you are NOT pre-judging.

So marincounty says he (I assume) has never seen women having monomaniacal focus on tech. He has seen men having that focus. He has seen such focus helping men careerwise in tech. And he has seen women more interested in marrying up than in careers. Stereotype yes, generalization yes, prejudice no. This is simply describing his observations. Just because someone says something that doesn't go along with "Grrl Power!" doesn't make it misogyny.

By the way, you can read up on the research by Professor Catherine Hakim at the London School of Economics showing how women are not so interested in careers, just as marincounty observed.

Secondly, when marincounty is describing that women should be not into tech and helpful for some aspects of his life, he's describing his own dating preferences! How the hell is that misogynist? What right do you have to tell him who he should like? And who on earth prefers hurtful women instead of helpful ones?

Finally, when marincounty describes successful women as scary, he is describing other men's opinions! He is NOT advocating for that position, in fact he worries that he might suffer from the same defect. If he thought this way of thinking were OK, he wouldn't have ended with "I hope this changes in the future".

Do you really think it's a good idea to down vote people for thought crimes when they deviate from orthodoxy? Do you think you should be in such a hurry to condemn people in this way that you don't even bother to read their posts properly before you write screeds shaming them?

thank you, especially for the first point about his observation not being misogyny.

As a female, thank you for your post. I should also mention, I find this attitude very attractive, and if you are single, I would like to take you out to dinner. As long as you don't mind, of course, that I will pay with all the money I make from my tech job.

Thank you for outing yourself as someone who finds witch-hunts and ad-hominem shaming behaviour attractive. As a male, I would pay not to have dinner with you.

>I would pay not to have dinner with you.

How nice of you! When can I collect my check? :)

Thanks for the invitation. I'm afraid I'm already married, however, and to a startup founder to boot! :-)

^ this here is the reason why you never know if the men really believe what they say, or if they just want that booty.

Maybe if you stop using your sexuality to show approval?

Maybe you should stop trying to dictate to others how they use or not use their sexuality? After all, it's theirs, not yours, and your opinion about how that is well used is largely irrelevant.

Since you used the term 'dictate' to describe my response, I'm sure you'll have no problem showing which definition of the word is applicable, and why.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dictate?s=t

1. to say or read (something) aloud for another person to transcribe or for a machine to record: to dictate some letters to a secretary. 2. to prescribe or lay down authoritatively or peremptorily; command unconditionally: to dictate peace terms to a conquered enemy. verb (used without object), dic·tat·ed, dic·tat·ing. 3. to say or read aloud something to be written down by a person or recorded by a machine. 4. to give orders. noun 5. an authoritative order or command. 6. a guiding or governing principle, requirement, etc.: to follow the dictates of one's conscience.

I learned from my lawyer that a typical reaction of people accused of something which they're guilty of is to criticise the process of how this is being handled, or the way the evidence has been collected, or the semantics of the question, etc.

Weird, I learned from my lawyer that the typical reaction of apologists is to accuse someone of dictating when nothing was actually dictated.

I also consulted my penis, but it just hung there, being impressive. I'm not sure what I expected.

Swombat is very much taken, and I can't imagine any viable competition even exists :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com