Comment by eah13 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eah13 | Hacker News Reader

This is a great story and project.

An apology (in the original sense) of Jessica's work for those who think that the experiences of these individuals don't matter: What I think people don't get about Jessica's interviews is that they're part of a scientific process of understanding what makes great founders and great companies. Many discredit qualitative, observational scientific data. But for new, rare, or poorly understood phenomena, observation is the only way to make scientific progress. In engineering the phenomena are often well understood, common, and within the discipline, familiar. In this case deductive logic, reasoning from known principles, is quite fruitful; but its success biases engineers against inductive reasoning. But for other subjects, such as what makes a great startup founder, or what makes a great female startup founder, the inductive method is much more fruitful.

This is not some anomaly: all sciences started with observation and the inductive method. These are the beginnings of insight, generating hypotheses to be tested. We're still quite early in our understanding of startups, and even more so in our understanding of female-founded startups, that this approach is not just warranted, it's the only way to make true progress.

Jessica is like the Jane Goodall of startup science. Even though she's studying individual founders she's ultimately helping us understand more about ourselves.

I agree that this is a great project. But, do you think it's right to call this a "scientific process of understanding"?

It seems to me that the field (as it were) is simply in a pre-scientific phase of exploration and experimentation. Once we have a concrete basis for performing repeatable, independent experiments to (dis)prove concrete hypotheses, then the field will have entered a scientific stage.

No, though I don't think you're alone in drawing the line of science around deduction. I think of science as a cycle:

Phenomenon > observation > Induced hypothesis > Method choice > Deduction via metrics > Phenomenon ...

Starting at "a concrete basis for performing repeatable, independent experiments" is a skyhook. Scientists have a hand in generating that "basis" and it's called inductive logic.

I think we agree on the fact that the production of knowledge involves the testing of hypotheses but not whether the generation of hypotheses via observation of phenomena is part of science. Semantic, I suppose, but I think it's crucial to take the rudder so to speak by developing hypotheses deliberately.

Well, I was trying to start a discussion over semantics anyway.

"Science" is already a very vague term, and I think it's important to keep it as concrete as possible in meaning. In my mind, science is associated with testable hypotheses. The generation of hypotheses could be considered part of science, but only if those hypotheses are testable, and in fact tested through experimentation. Otherwise you are simply making guesses. I think this article falls into the "guessing" category.

I don't want "prescientific" to be seen as derogatory, though, which I think may confuse people. It's an important stage in the development of a field of thought. As they say, a field of human endeavor progresses through three stages as our understanding grows: first it's a philosophy, then a science, then an art.

It's only once people start saying anything and everything that improves human knowledge is "science" that "unscientific" becomes insulting. I think, if we keep the meaning of "science" concrete and explicit, then we can acknowledge that there are unscientific ways of learning and advancing without sounding insulting.

Interesting take, and I think I see your point with that clarification of your view of stages of thought. I don't share that concept of the progression of ideas, nor do I feel the need to make the distinction between science and pre science.

I do think that much of what humans do is ascientific. But Jessica's examination of founders, esp via a structured interview, is not in this category.

Einstein made "guesses", but I consider theoretical physics to be science, it's like preparation of food being part of digestion despite not being an internal biological process.

Speaking strictly to Einstein, he made testable predictions, and that's what made that work a part of the scientific process.

Whether something is science or not doesn't affect whether it's good or worthwhile knowledge, though! You wouldn't stop running user studies just because you're not going to get to population-level significance using them. There are many paths.

I don't think anyone discredits qualitative data. All of PG's essays, the rest of the startup club's stuff about 'starting a great company', and all business books are qualitative data. HN/we eat that up.

Also, your wording might be a little alienating. Female founders aren't a rare, 'phenomena' like proton decay or black holes, they're people too. Also, saying Jessica is the Jane Goodall of startups implies female founders are monkeys. They're not a different species either.

Startups, and startup founders as a whole are rare phenomena. Don't read anything more into the analogies than that. Thanks, though, for the word of caution.

Margaret Mead is probably a better analog than Jane Goodall, since it's humans studying humans, and the methodology most resembles cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology has been around for well over 100 years. Yet even today, the extent to which it is a "science" is controversial, even among anthropologists. The AAA removed the word from their mission statement a few years ago, which led to a lot of public debate and coverage.

So, while I agree that this sort of information-gathering is useful, I don't think your apology is helped by wrapping it so firmly in the mantle of science. Rather than lending an air of trust, you're tapping into a debate and controversy that goes far deeper than women in startups.

I'm happy to wade into that debate, because I think it's relevant. When this article first came out there were comments near the top questioning the relevance of this type of inquiry as, roughly, unscientific. I wanted to show how it fits into a scientific framework just fine.

You're likely right that an apology with less commitment could have been effective as well.

Interesting to think of Mead as the analog, and perhaps a more apt one. Thanks. Personally I'm much more familiar with biology and with Goodall. But, from my perspective cultural anthropology is a science whether or not it wants to be. The AAAs rejection of 'science' may be more indicative of science's rejection of inductive logic than anything.

I just finished my master's thesis on hardware founders and entrepreneurs in cleantech (http://amiculous.com/thesis.pdf). She is following something called the "case study research method." It is an accepted research method in social sciences, when there are too many variables to do a more classical scientific study. For more information, see: http://www.amazon.com/Case-Study-Research-Methods-Applied/dp...

Along the ways of furthering our understanding, it'd be really fascinating--if it hasn't been done already--to see a demographic breakdown of the YC founders.

For example, I notice that there don't appear to be any second-or-later generation African-Americans or Latino-Americans represented in the 40 women shown.

Similarly, it takes a little digging through all of the interviews to suss out whether they're immigrants, visiting, what they studied, whether they've had previous business experience, etc.

Agreed. A focus on gender is warranted, but not to the exclusion of other demographics. There are likely a great many large startups waiting to be built in each under-represented demographic. These startups aren't yet built because not enough domain experts have the technical ability and startup knowledge they need to build them. Which, I believe, is YC and 500's business rationale for encouraging diversity.

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