tianaco

Since the beginning, I have found this sexism. People are VERY hesitant to talk about it. I always hope it will go away, but when I consistently walk into meetings and men will not look me in the face and they re-ask my male partner the same questions they ask me... well, you learn from past experiences.

I expect them for better or for worse to reinforce what they've already seen at y-combinator.

As I said, I don't think they're going to relate to me.

long time lurker, short time commenter

I know it's verboten to talk about HN on HN, but it's fun clicking refresh and watching people upvote and downvote my comment. Talking about male prejudice in the tech community really gets under people's skin, including my cofounder bravura who said that maybe I shouldn't have posted and rankled people.

I feel like this is going to work against me - in a really serious way.

First of all, I really liked knowing that I had a one in three chance of a woman, Jessica Livingston, reading my application.

I liked how the application felt like a college application; they judge you based upon your potential and what you've done in your circumstances, not like an investor who says: "What experience and traction do you have?".

I totally trusted PG, Jessica + TLB to see my potential and tailored my application to the rubric they stated on the website--looking for outstanding "outside of the box" people.

Having entrepreneurs, who may not be as used to thinking outside the box of "who is a good founder?" will be more biased towards founders like themselves - i.e. male coders.

This comes as a very sad surprise to me. I have a feeling I'm going to be treated as I usually am by the men in technology - which is an outsider. I know that there are VERY FEW female YC founders and I know that having male coders looking at my application is going to totally work against me, if for no other reason than they don't relate to me.

[edit: I sincerely apologize that my comment has generated so much heat. I wanted to raise a concern, I'm sorry this got out of hand.]