Hi! Leap is spinning out of YC today as an independent company called Elpha. I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of Elpha and am here to answer questions. Thanks!!
Hi Cadran, congrats on Elpha and this new birth! I'm Marie and I also created a place to support women in this industry, Women Make. I was wondering, why did you change the name?
We landed on Elpha by riffing on the word alpha and the notion that we want to create a place where women come first. We combined alpha with the French word for she (“Elle”) to create ellepha and then shortened it to elpha from there.
Did you have any concerns over brand confusion with Elfa, the shelving system owned by the Container Store, which markets itself heavily to women (and yes, I see the rich irony in that :) ).
Ha, we chose the name Elpha by riffing on the word alpha and the idea that we wanted to create a place where women come first. We combined alpha with the French word for she (“Elle”) to create ellepha. We shortened it to elpha from there. Plus, the .com was available. :)
Thank you! And yes, many of our members are based outside of the US, and we'd love to have more international members to broaden the perspective and discussion topics.
This looks to be a really great resource. I'm curious to know what your business plan is; I'm very interested in how to make a community platform like this sustainable without compromising user privacy. This is especially important when the community is focused on disadvantaged or minority groups, and I'm always on the lookout for the Right Answer. Have you written on this topic before?
Really good point and question! We don't have all the answers and it's something we're actively thinking about. Our goal is to focus on providing access and opportunities and use that as our guiding light. I think especially as members of those underrepresented groups, it makes it a bit easier to reason about what kind of products members will feel comfortable with. We are building for ourselves after all!
Congratulations! Do you have a policy regarding non-binary or genderqueer people? And are there any steps you're planning to take to keep your community free of TERF transphobia? I'm curious about building a gender-based community in 2019.
Woah! Even after so long on HN, I'm surprised by multiple downvotes for even a question that merely implies an interest in inclusivity for non-cis people.
Agree to disagree in this case, wherein I believe two or more people's gestures do communicate something real regardless of the eventual balancing out. Thanks for the reminder.
> It's just plain noisy and you don't know what someone is objecting to.
Then why does it rate limit the poster who might have spurred a discussion and wants to find out? They can't even post anymore until hours after the discussion died down even though little can be gleaned from the reason anyone downvoted them? There is some conflicting logic going around
I've used leap for a while and have seen multiple posts from people wanting to learn how to be more inclusive towards trans people, but absolutely nothing that appears to push any sort of transphobia. Remember this is a forum for professionals. Every professional knows that preaching homophobia, racism, transphobia or whatever is wildly inappropriate and uncivil behavior.
I suppose it's something that would get addressed if a problem arises. But for now, why bother creating a whole plan to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist?
It's not transphobic to question whether a women-only organization should include transwomen. It's a legitimately hard question with no 100% correct answer. You have to deal with the possibility of people who identify as female according to their own standards, which you might consider dishonest or confused.
> Do you have a policy regarding non-binary or genderqueer people?
According to the sign-up pitch that appears shortly after you start reading an AMA there: "Elpha is for anyone who identifies as a woman and/or non-binary."
I attempted to sign up a long time ago, when the only authentication was through FB, which I don't have. So, the email address is in your system but I'm not a member. I cannot sign in or up. Is this something you can fix? I would contact you directly for support.
The literary typeface for a UGC site is a bold design choice. On its own it suggests static content and lack of community, but then that's balanced by all the social flair on the AMA cards so I think it works. But very tricky to pull off. :-)
It's interesting in general that the design language for signaling "for women" (and "exclusive") is so incongruous with the design language of UGC.
Hi, designer/cofounder of Elpha here. Thank you for the comment! It is tricky to design a UGC site for women, and we aim for friendliness/neutral than feminine. Glad you like Chiswick!
Yeah I think neutral has gotten a lot easier to pull off in the last five years just because of all the design resources put out by Google, Apple, and MS. Even though I don't like Material as a strict design language, just the fact that it's clearly explained and all the resources behind it are free is a much better starting point than being more limited to reverse engineering existing sites and picking up their biases along the way.
You can definitely join - you can put in your website, or anything other link that we can verify your identity. Let us know if you run into any trouble hi@elpha.com
Its always good to see more communities like this spin up. I am actually the CTO of https://fairygodboss.com a company that is also a community, content resource, and job search platform but targeted at all professional women. I am a guy (the founders are female) but join this company because I saw the lack of women in this space...especially in the leadership/management level and wanted to help in this mission. If you're ever interested in speaking with me or one of our founders we always try to keep in close contact with those in this space.
On the elpha.com FAQ I see the reason for enforcing real-identities: "Real identities allow us to build lasting, trustworthy connections".
Reminds me of corporate mission statement fluff. A more honest reason would be "we need to verify your gender". Just say that. We all know that's the reason.
Also note the irony of the "Diversity & Inclusion Strategist" on front page of a community where men are not welcome. I'm all for supporting women in tech, but feel creating communities where you must be a woman 'else break' is not progressive or modern. The alternative? Make communities where women are at the top and stay there, but all are welcome to contribute.
My comment is one bit of opinion in a terabyte stack. You don't need (and won't get) 100% support from every bit on every forum.
If by "us" you mean women in general, you're assuming women in general want such a place where only women are allowed. If you are successful, then a pattern may emerge where more places are set up that exclude groups based on gender or other differences.
If it were bathing facilities or medical clinics and so on, where the needs of women-only services are based on practical reasons and obvious differences, nobody would question it. When the service is "technology", there is nothing inherent to that medium that warrants gender isolated services.
I'm male, but I don't comment or code from that point of view. I wouldn't want to frequent a place mainly intended for women coders. But I wouldn't want to be stopped at the door either. It's wrong to do that, which is why we have laws protecting against such discrimination. I believe a good-faith model and honesty system would serve you better in the long run rather than official gender verification, which is quite a hard-lined approach. Good luck with it anyway.
55 comments
[ 0.13 ms ] story [ 1789 ms ] threadWe landed on Elpha by riffing on the word alpha and the notion that we want to create a place where women come first. We combined alpha with the French word for she (“Elle”) to create ellepha and then shortened it to elpha from there.
Just fixed it.
Two questions:
Would it be helpful for women in tech in Brazil? (wondering if I should refer it to my colleagues here)
Is it for profit or non-profit organization now?
And we're a for-profit company. :)
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Then why does it rate limit the poster who might have spurred a discussion and wants to find out? They can't even post anymore until hours after the discussion died down even though little can be gleaned from the reason anyone downvoted them? There is some conflicting logic going around
I suppose it's something that would get addressed if a problem arises. But for now, why bother creating a whole plan to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist?
There is a correct answer: People who call themselves women are women. Simple as that.
You're not the arbiter of Gender.
I don't go around misgendering people I don't like because I don't like them. That's shit.
According to the sign-up pitch that appears shortly after you start reading an AMA there: "Elpha is for anyone who identifies as a woman and/or non-binary."
It's interesting in general that the design language for signaling "for women" (and "exclusive") is so incongruous with the design language of UGC.
It‘s Chiswick Sans, by the way: https://commercialtype.com/catalog/chiswick_sans
Maybe it can get mentioned in the FAQ too?
Reminds me of corporate mission statement fluff. A more honest reason would be "we need to verify your gender". Just say that. We all know that's the reason.
Also note the irony of the "Diversity & Inclusion Strategist" on front page of a community where men are not welcome. I'm all for supporting women in tech, but feel creating communities where you must be a woman 'else break' is not progressive or modern. The alternative? Make communities where women are at the top and stay there, but all are welcome to contribute.
Let us have just this one, please?
If by "us" you mean women in general, you're assuming women in general want such a place where only women are allowed. If you are successful, then a pattern may emerge where more places are set up that exclude groups based on gender or other differences.
If it were bathing facilities or medical clinics and so on, where the needs of women-only services are based on practical reasons and obvious differences, nobody would question it. When the service is "technology", there is nothing inherent to that medium that warrants gender isolated services.
I'm male, but I don't comment or code from that point of view. I wouldn't want to frequent a place mainly intended for women coders. But I wouldn't want to be stopped at the door either. It's wrong to do that, which is why we have laws protecting against such discrimination. I believe a good-faith model and honesty system would serve you better in the long run rather than official gender verification, which is quite a hard-lined approach. Good luck with it anyway.