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Comment by maceo | Hacker News Reader

"The good news is that there is no disadvantage to applying to YC as a female or minority founder."

I don't understand why that's good news.

It'd be good news if YC were actively preferring female and minority founders. Everyone acknowledges the glaring diversity problem in tech, but apparently YC is happy standing on the sidelines.

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> I don't understand why that's good news.

This is because of "implicit bias", wherein people discriminate against women and/or minorities unconsciously and unintentionally.

For example, here is an article demonstrating that orchestra auditions were subject to bias against women:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/orchestrating_...

I suspect that everyone (or nearly everyone, anyway) evaluating the auditions wanted the best musicians regardless of gender, but the linked study determined that when orchestras began using blind auditions, more women were offered positions.

In YC it is impractical to conduct "blind interviews", so that it is good practice for the partners to ensure that they aren't accidentally disadvantaging women and minorities.

Whether YC should actively prefer female and minority founders is, I believe, much more subjective.

From the OP:

> "We want to be sure we’re not discriminating against founders in our funding decisions at YC"

This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity. It primarily seeks long term positive returns, and to do that you have to evaluate people and their ideas based on merit, not their gender. Having more female founders would probably be better for the startup ecosystem as a whole, but "actively preferring" a class of candidates based on attributes poorly correlated with their probability of success would be bad for YC.

Look, whether we like it or not, VCs prefer white or asian founders over black or hispanic founders. That's fact, not conjecture [1]. I understand that YC is an accelerator. It's also a cultural institution. Blacks and hispanics are at a disadvantage when raising because VCs DON'T evaluate strictly on merit; they evaluate on a whole host of characteristics, many of which are subject to bias.

The YC stamp of approval is a valuable badge when fundraising. I'd like to see them find a way to use this to combat the inherent bias that women, blacks, and hispanics face when fundraising.

[1] https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-demographics...

The YC article suggests that black and hispanic founders are slightly more likely to be funded by YC than other ethnicities. 3% of applicants to the batch were black or hispanic but 7.7% of funded founders in the batch were black or hispanic.

The article you linked does not seem to adjust for demographics of the applicants, it only discusses those who were funded.

> Look, whether we like it or not, VCs prefer white or asian founders over black or hispanic founders.

Something something correlation, causation...

I mean look at the YC numbers here. When 90+% of your applicants are white or Asian that's going to be reflected in the final numbers unless you actively favor a certain group of applicants over another.

We're talking about greedy VCs. Not a single one of them is listening to a pitch and going "man this is a billion dollar idea, but they're _black_, ugh..."

This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity.

Let's not inject FUD about affirmative action into this conversation.

MIT, for instance, has a robust affirmative action program and I can assure you the Institute isn't in the business of picking unqualified applicants. One of the most famous (and successful) affirmative action programs in the world is implemented by the NFL — hardly a charity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule

Institutions that implement affirmative action do so selfishly to ensure that they're fielding the best proverbial team possible.

Why should they prefer different genders or races? What was that thing called... oh yes, equality.

Who gives a shit? YC should fund good ideas with good founders regardless of skin color, gender or whatever else.

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