Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?
We know the number of women accepted to YC is pretty low, so I assume the number of women simply applying is pretty low as well. Being that Startup School was 99% guys, I wanted to see how many women are on here and who've applied (if only to say hello and rock on. :P). Or even, women who read HN regularly and haven't applied, and why.
Personally, I've applied this round with http://weddingtype.com.
EDIT: Also, any guys who've applied with a woman on their team, speak up. :)
100 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] thread(I made a wish list at some point and one of the items on it was something like "Get feedback from Paul Graham" (another was "get feedback from Millard Fuller", er, who happens to be dead it turns out). Decided I didn't need any special favors, I could just keep reading pg's articles and also hang here. So far, so good. Still don't have any answers for the impetus behind the Millard Fuller wish. Que sera, sera.)
Did you continue to start/continue a business, or was the path you decided on a non-entrepreneur path?
I have figured out how to get myself (and my oldest son, who has the same diagnosis) well when doctors and most of the world believe it cannot be done. I joined HN to ask how to quickly learn a programming language. I did this more than a year ago, shortly after I got off the last of my medication and finally had a clear head for the first time in many years, but I still have not learned the first thing about a programming language. The reason for the request for info on a programming language: I have concluded that I need a more information dense means to convey what I know. The written word on my website is just not cutting it. Only people who aren't already deeply rooted in current views of the problem seem able to use it at all. Everyone else is openly hostile. I think a simulation (aka game) could potentially solve the problem. But I still do not know a programming language and I am still working full time and still have a significant time burden in terms of continuing to get well. I have never met a single person who was as sick as I was and came back the way I have. So I have zero yardstick for judging how long this "should" take. I will get there when I get there, thus I am in no position to make promises to outsiders in terms of deliverable timeframes.
I also waffle a lot between this idea and other interests. The massive open hostility I have gotten for trying to help people doesn't go over terribly well with me. I often wonder if I should bother to try to solve this issue or if I should go off and try to live the "normal life" I always wanted now that I am nearly well enough to do something like that.
I remember you from another thread on learning programming -- keep perservering and I am sure the HN community is happy to help with your efforts. At least, I am.
For me, it is more complicated than that because I was so very sick, so I had to address a lot of complicated infections and stuff. But my son had not been on antibiotics for over three years prior to being diagnosed, so it is clear to me that the right kind of support from an early age can drastically reduce the issues this disorder causes (at least in most cases -- in some cases, the CFTR is completely missing and I assume that would be different). Most medical intervention is focused on drugs and surgeries and vaccines. There is very little nutritional information available. Most research seems to be drug studies and the standard wisdom doled out by CF doctors is to eat great quantities of junk food because it is high calorie, high fat, and high salt. A "high calorie, high fat, and high salt" diet is the current state of the art advice for people with this disorder and I think it does a lot of harm. Instead, I went for aggressive nutrition to reverse a lifetime of nutritional deficiencies and began getting healthier and getting off all the drugs.
It's complicated and playing around with these ideas when you have no idea what you are doing can cause problems, so I understand why it goes over so badly with other people. A more information dense means to safely convey how this works looks to me like the only means to get more people to adopt this approach.
Interestingly, Woz got kicked out of the CS school at CU for hacking side projects on the timeshare system as an undergrad - something other schools might have encouraged, and which CU today I am guessing would also not frown on the same way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak (search for Colorado)
Oh, interesting. Do you know if she did any research into the use of Twitter etc for communication after the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand?
I have not applied, and I'm not going to, because my husband would never let me spend 3 months in SF by myself (and he has a job where he couldn't come with me.) And this is not a hypothetical, we've discussed it and he put his foot down.
You're all so anti-sexist it sickens me. Whenever a female posts, you put away the boxing gloves and take out the kid skin gloves. The only people that actually say negative things are the unapologetic sexists, and no, I don't like that either. But it doesn't bother me as much.
So it might just be my imagination, but just to be safe I prefer to be one of the guys for my recreational forum activities.
Also, I see that happen a lot more not because of gender, but because we're discussing gender issues. Anytime someone brings up a sensitive issue people are going to tip-toe more, regardless of the attributes of anyone actually bringing it up.
I support your right to portray yourself in whatever light you can muster, but there's no shortage of critical thinkers on Hacker News.
The phenomena that you're describing is often called "othering" and it generally sums up nicely as "a room full of dudes bending over backwards to be so accepting to a woman that it's creepy". It is a real problem.
However, I know I'm not the only person on here who couldn't care less what your gender is. I want to respect you for what you produce, and I'm not going to mince words if I think something is goofy.
Being a radical is tiring and it's not cool to put the onus for change on women, who I suspect get worn down demanding equality. I know that I would.
Yet, there are times and places where major gains come only from sticking your neck out once in a while. Being a woman on HN might be one of those places.
As a case in point, it wouldn't have occurred to me that the OP (limedaring) was female if I saw her posting in another thread, even though I recognize her name from elsewhere and could tell you she was female if I thought about it.
Given the likely upside of going through YC if accepted, 12 weeks of separation seems insignificant.
(On topic: I applied this year and one of my two co-founders is female.)
I would cheat on him. I was dating two other guys when we met, and we agreed when we became serious that our relationship would be exclusive. It was worth it to me. However, I'm not terribly good at resisting temptation.
Add to the fire that my type (surprise!) is geeky males, and there's no way I could resist. A Y combinator class for me would be like tempting an Ethiopian to a buffet.
He's absolutely right; it would destroy our marriage. Some things are more important than funding.
This is just like using StayFocusd or maxvisit; you know you don't have the willpower, so you use other means to keep yourself productive (or faithful, in this case.)
Even moreso, it's a very strong indication of your commitment to the other person when, after admitting your lack of self-control, you consciously choose not to put yourself in those situations because you know how much it would hurt your S.O.
tl;dr; - A relationship where both parties are honest with each other and ok with the situation after being fully informed is the strongest possible relationship.
What do you call this, if not flirting with the idea?
But it really has nothing to do with settling; some people are just not monogamous by nature. I'm sure you can understand, since people sometimes make that generalization about the entire male sex :).
Whatever suits you guys though, if you guys are happy then more power to you. I'd would just find it incredibly difficult.
After a bad first experience I put off marrying again for a long time. When I did marry again, it was we were past those kind of trust questions. It's neither perfect nor predictable, but nor does it feel like a trade-off.
Please just knock off the amateur psychiatry. Human beings aren't naturally wired to be monogamous[1]; that's why cultures have to exert tons of social pressure on people to be monogamous. Wanting to have sex with people who aren't your partner doesn't mean something's wrong; it's the natural state of the human being. A lot of people repress this with tons of social pressure and denial, but it's still there for probably a lot of people.
If you're one of those people, I think acknowledging it and choosing to avoid temptation for the sake of accommodating a partner is, if anything, even more loving than living in denial.
[1] If you doubt me, you can start with all the literature about sperm competition in humans, or about the high incidence of adultery.
The belief that others' cognitive processes are essentially similar to one's own is called projection bias, BTW.
Well, this suggestion is now completely infeasible due to the existence of this thread, but couldn't the two of you hire a chaperone? There are a lot of cultures where there are many people who are used to the chaperone role. I think (albeit, with a bit of effort) you'd be able to find someone willing to spend 3 or 4 months hanging out in San Francisco on an unconventional but free vacation. Just offer them a sizable reward if they catch you. (There is even a fetishist scene from which you can acquire working chastity belts!)
Alternatively, just hire a "virtual personal assistant" to video chat with you once per hour and also go over a once per minute time-lapse film of you sleeping every day. IR sensitive webcams and IR LED lamps are pretty cheap. Even better, you can trade a favor with someone who handles the tech for the house arrest ankle bracelets.
Granted, none of this is foolproof. You're probably smart enough to circumvent any of these measures, but you'd have to make an active effort to do so. This takes an affair well out of the realm of circumstantial "temptation." (Though in your case, given your unusually poor impulse control, the temptation might increase because of the measures.)
EDIT: This gives me an idea for a product. Maybe call this something like "Watchdroid." It would be a battery operated remotely aimable webcam the size of a cell phone, connected over 3G.
She's been co organizing the Hackers and Founders SV, SF and Berkeley meetups with me for the past 9 months. And, she's the primary reason that our membership has tripled in the last 9 months. She works quietly in the background and makes everything run like clockwork.
I've recruited her as my co founder for several years. And, she just signed on three months ago. We're building a financial news search engine at http://Newsley.com/search.
Oh well.
Silicon Valley needs more people like you. I'm more than happy to help in whatever little way I can.
I haven't had any trouble launching and getting traction on my own, so don't get discouraged, no matter what happens with YC :)
That said, WeddingType looks like a terrific idea, and I hope you do get accepted!
Thank you!
No updates from YC, but I could have been a millionaire in Hong Kong, Nigeria, and Costa Rica :)
I just opened up the beta last week, and have enough people using it that I can be confident I'm not wasting my time. The trickiest part has been having to juggle the biz dev and the coding. And finding time to sleep :)
Summer 2010 was the first time we accepted late applications, so we were still figuring out the procedure. We'll probably email all the late applicants from now on, in case they miss an announcement. Sorry if we kept you hanging.
Thanks for checking!
I intend to apply again in future if the startup I'm working on turns out to be the right sort of thing for it, and especially if I can team up with other hackers, especially a couple of people I've known a long time (last time my cofounder was non-technical and I had met him while looking for a cofounder). Gender balance or anything like that has never, ever been an issue for me with things like YC. Currently doing Women 2.0 Labs where it is a tacit issue, which would be interesting to contrast when I do go through YC.
I know of another woman who is applying this round and has not posted in the comments yet.
I against it. That whole "dropping out of high school and college" thing pretty much proved how much I chafe against what I consider hoop-jumping and YC was too much hoop-jumping for me.
Didn't stop me though: http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/
(Different product than the one I pitched.)
Can you expand on the hoop jumping and YC with some specific examples? I'm sincerely curious.
I thought your comment was talking about YC as a whole and your opinions on them. I thought I was correcting a mistake on your part about YC today, and then giving a counterpoint. I believe discussions usually consist of two people talking and giving opinions.
I just checked out your Freckle app. That's a pretty cool time tracking system, better than anything I've seen elsewhere. I signed up. ;)
Grats on a cool product!
While people seem to be (understandably?) reluctant to talk publicly about profit rather than revenue what's your thoughts on focussing on revenue rather than profit when talking about success?
Otherwise, most of our endeavors are almost pure profit. What overhead does a two-person business have? Tech goodies, fonts, clip art, software, internet access, hosting, occasional travel... almost all things we could skip if we chose to. We have a home office - before, we were paying about $900/month. We'll have an office again but not right away. My husband's business (Austrian, not counted in my reckoning) has a part-time office manager. We pay for a cleaner to come twice a week, and about half of that is considered a business expense.
The biggest profit suck that we can't avoid is transaction fees. But I'm not a cost-cutter, I'm a revenue-grower. It works better in the end.
FYI, if you haven’t read it, Illuminate Ventures’ whitepaper on the performance of female founders in tech relative to male founders, it is an interesting read: http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/. You’ll have to request the whitepaper via email, but they respond quickly.
We're actually about to launch a public beta soon.
Go female founders! :)
We're older than the average YC applicants by a couple of decades and we have partners, kids, dogs and mortgages that complicate things slightly. My co-founder has primary custody of her school-aged son and absolutely cannot relocate to SF for three months. I can go though, and would be delighted to; my husband would be equally delighted to hold down the fort here. Unfortunately, I have an immoveable commitment in February, so the winter schedule just wasn't going to fly. We're going to apply for the spring instead, and we're looking forward to the process.
Since the videos don't have to be that polished, what do you mean?
In my opinion, women possess a unique perspective of what people may want. With 99% of founders being male, it sounds that women founders are likely to introduce unimaginable ideas.
I may have pushed her a bit to apply, and she may have needed the push, but she had no trouble filling a well thought-out application.
(I am dying to see the response)