Comment by jenandre | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jenandre | Hacker News Reader

I sympathize with you, having also experienced subtle sexism in both the tech and investment world (I'm a technical co-founder, and I've fundraised successfully). Here's a couple of points I hope are helpful.

- You should look to connect with partners at firms that have female founders (ideally purely female-founding teams) among their portfolio. There are also a few female partners out there as well -- get access to them, with your YC network it should not be hard. Listen hard and press them to get honest, specific feedback when given "no"s.

- While the sexism is unfortunate and it's hard not to get frustrated, you may want to look long and hard at your pitch and company. If you've really talked to 40 investors and sent out ~500 emails, and this is a hot space for disruption, it's very unlikely that all of them are dismissing you due to gender; something isn't connecting. I's very easy to dismiss all feedback ("their feedback means nothing; they are rejecting me because I am a woman") just because you are soured by your bad sexist experiences.

Ask yourself these questions honestly: Are investors giving the same criticisms and feedback for saying no? Are there questions you struggle with in the pitch about your business? Is the value prop clear? Is the product demo well orchestrated? Try to examine all of the feedback you've gotten objectively, and see how can you improve the pitch. Find someone who is ideally involved in the venture community (e.g. as a partner, associate, EIR) that you can trust, that can give you brutally honest feedback on your pitch and business.

- Fundraising is hard for everyone. It's going to be harder for you. It sucks, but that's the truth of life. You are one of those pioneering women who are paving the path for others so hopefully in 20-30 years, it's not even an issue. It would be great if you didn't have to deal with this, but that's not the reality of the world. What doesn't kill your company will make you AND your company stronger.

> You should look to connect with partners at firms that have invested in female founding teams (ideally purely female teams).

Are there seriously investors that only back purely female teams? That seems ridiculously sexist and financially stupid to eliminate so many good startups that aren't all female.

> You are one of those pioneering women who are paving the path for others so hopefully in 20-30 years, it's not even an issue.

I see articles like this as a small step backwards. I don't know what the answer is to discrimination (of any kind), but I think complaining about it in articles like this is not helping to reach equality.

> Are there seriously investors that only back purely female teams? That seems ridiculously sexist and financially stupid to eliminate so many good startups that aren't all female.

I meant this to mean they have invested in all-female founding teams, not JUST all female teams. I have edited it to hopefully reflect that better.

Regarding your second point: I don't think the author's goal was purely to stop sexism in VC. She was describing her own experience. It's not a waste of time to educate people about the poor behaviors you see, regardless of whether or not she has a solution for it.

> Are there seriously investors that only back purely female teams? That seems ridiculously sexist and financially stupid to eliminate so many good startups that aren't all female.

That would neither be sexist nor would it necessarily be financially stupid.

As for the sexist part, reverse sexism is not a thing -- if the playing field is so imbalanced, then explicitly favoring the discriminated-against group is a fair measure to level the playing field. It's the same reason we have women's colleges and organizations devoted to advancement of women, and why similar institutions for men would be (generally speaking) incomprehensible.

As for the financial wisdom of investing purely in companies run by female co-founders, the whole point of investing is to find opportunities for investment that have been undervalued by the rest of the market. There are certainly some investors that have discovered that businesses run by women are undervalued in the market; maybe they have even calculated a rough figure for how undervalued they are, perhaps 15%. They may decide not to even look at male-led companies, as they would need to find 15% extra hidden value in order to match the hidden value -- unseen by the rest of the market -- they already know the female companies must (on average) have.

> As for the sexist part, reverse sexism is not a thing -- if the playing field is so imbalanced, then explicitly favoring the discriminated-against group is a fair measure to level the playing field.

You're conflating anti-discriminatory with reverse sexism.

Anti-discriminatory is passing a law that requires any company that gets tax breaks to meet some requirements of diversity.

reverse sexism is coming across a female owner who only hires women (I know of 1 such company).

There is no such thing as "reverse sexism." There is only sexism. Making decisions based on gender is always sexist.

the whole point of investing is to make money, not find "opportunities for investment that have been undervalued by the rest of the market."

you are confusing the means to an end as the end in itself.

Not quite the same thing, but I know of a company in my local town that hires only women. They'll contract out to men when they absolutely must (me, for example), but I shit you not, the owner was female, all of the engineers were female, every single person on the assembly line was female. There was literally 2 males involved in that entire company. Me, as a contract software developer, and another guy as a contract IT person.

That was it. Top to bottom that entire company was female, if I had to guess they had 20-30 employees, but of course I never saw all of them so it's just a guess.

for all the down votes you're getting, just wanted to let you know that I agree with you.

don't let the thought police get you down, and don't let all the other commenters shame you into thinking you are wrong or stupid just because they think your comments aren't politically correct.

you are right: it is sexist to discriminate against males, and these articles are a step back.

cheers, mate. keep on keeping on.

Thanks. I'm honestly starting to feel like a crazy person for thinking that men and women should be equal. The fact that I have to get behind a VPN and make a throwaway account to express that I think equality is good and positive-discrimination is bad is upsetting.

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