Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think parent was excusing that behavior. If the author had written the post focusing on those aspects, it would have been a compelling article on the discrimination they faced while fundraising. And like you said, it needs to be dealt with harshly and exposed.

What has happened instead is that the tone seemed to suggest that it is easy for white men* to succeed. This is in a way dismissing the efforts of countless white nerds who have spent their entire youth fiddling with their computer projects. The internet is full of obscure projects that exist purely for the love of hacking. The author misses out the correlation between this and the relatively larger number of successful white men in the industry.

Discrimination is real. But we shouldn't rush to attribute success to being white and male, unless there is a study which tells us: (no of hours white men have spent/successful white men) vs (no of hours X group has spent/successful X group people)

To me, it seems that the way to fix it is to get kids to start programming early irrespective of gender and color.

* I am male, but not white.

> What has happened instead is that the tone seemed to suggest that it is easy for white men* to succeed.

Having read the article I can say I did not get that impression at all. The article argues it's easier for men to be funded than women and that there are implicit biases at work in the VC-funding-system that unfairly disadvantage women. This sounds perfectly reasonable to me; it's a common and valid criticism made by feminists all the time.

Here's the relevant quote from the article.

> I knew the founders of many other companies pretty closely – their backgrounds, their revenue, their valuations, how much they raised. Sure, it’s comparing apples and oranges, but one company (with a 6’ tall, attractive white, male CEO) that was pre-product and just a few LOIs raised over a million with 3x the valuation. A smaller B2B company that had 10% of our revenue raised the same amount as us, at twice the valuation. Another B2C company, with a quarter of our revenue and much stronger, well-funded competitors, raised 3x what we raised, at twice the valuation. The main difference? They were all run by all male founders.

I don't believe any reasonable person is going to read that and walk away believing the author wasn't implying that white men get funded easier than women.

The question is for what reason. She's making an argument that was the only difference. With support & evidence.

Easier, not easy.

someone needs to read up on their IFF logic tables.

That's right -- the article is saying that white guys (especially tall and handsome ones -- remember that short guys oh wait you already know) have less difficulty than many other people in the funding game. But in this discussion, the claim a few posts above was that the article says that white guys have it easy. Different.

It's like claiming A greater than B means A very large, if we're talking about, say, real numbers. But just because a .5 percent chance is bigger than a .2 percent chance doesn't imply that either of these numbers is very large.

In particular, it's useful to play with numbers because it reminds you that a very small difference in funding rates at the beginning may compound, leading to big differences later. If a few important investors get distracted by the idea of dating you or don't take you seriously because of small biases, that may have a substantial long-term impact.

The tone doesn't seem to reflect 0.2 -> 0.5, more like 0.1 -> "sure thing, impossible not to get funded"

I guess not everybody perceived the tone in the same way. It seemed much more neutral to me.

The term 'easy' is also relative, stop trying to be pedantic.

It's easier for white men* to get funding than white women*.

http://fortune.com/2015/05/06/silicon-valley-asians-report/

A vast majority of men are still discriminated more than white women in Silicon Valley. So you need to specify which group of men, and which group of women.

Since right now, White men > White Women > Hispanic Men > Asian Men > Black Men > Asian Women > Black Women > Hispanic Women

Do you not see that this isn't just a gender problem? This is a racial and cultural problem. White women are one of the least discriminated groups at large in the grand scheme of things.

Sure, discrimination and bias are wrong. But guess what, the world doesn't work in ideals. Learn how the system is run, and do the best you can at the moment given your advantages and disadvantages.

If your a white women, look for other women for mentorship and/or funding. She's gone through it before, she understands the nuances of trying to be successful, and the social prowess needed to get there. You can use your gender to your advantage, or it can be to your detriment.

If your a non-white male, put your face to the grindstone because you have to work that much harder to get to where you want to be. There is no if and or buts, this is how it is. You can try and create social change to the detriment of your career, you can point it out all you want but this is it. This is the environment you are working in at this moment of time. Either embrace the hardship, or become an activist to create change.

>> Even given that, the kind of shady behaviour that the investors tried to pull (groping, conversations with dates attached, etc) is absolutely intolerable and should be dealt with incredibly harshly.

Some of those should not be invited back to YC. Isn't that one of the things YC does, bring in quality investors? What about the drunk at demo day? These are examples of the investors not taking the founders and what they're doing seriously. Has YC passed its peak?

I am honestly completely unqualified to comment on how good their product is. I know very little about the 'dating application' space. I did find the comments about finding funding to be somewhat entitled, but I guess most people who go through YC compare themselves to their (very highly successful) peers.

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