This is a useless statistic. What proportion of startups are founded by women? Only with this statistic can we draw a fair conclusion - and it's notably missing from the entire article..
There is certainly systematic inequality between particular sports for sure.
There is a difference though of course, being excluded from a sport can on an individual level be sad it certainly doesnt have the same impact as an entire gender being exluded from wealth and power.
Actually, I do. Not necessarily from the people doing synchronised swimming...
Just imagine, if you yourself actually would like to do synchronised swimming, what would happen? How would the people around you react? How would that make you feel about it?
A parallel experience I’ve had biases me towards expecting that people would most likely be supportive. I was the only guy in a hip hop dance class a friend invited me to - the instructor called out when I did moves right and generally made me feel like I was progressing.
We should try things that interest us and be understanding that we won’t have the same status in those activities as the ones we’re good at.
This isn’t to say that startup disparities are caused by personal anxiety (I personally believe the structural narrative more in that case). It is to say, though, that we sometimes build up personal barriers where none truly exist - especially for simple things like sports
> This isn’t to say that startup disparities are caused by personal anxiety (I personally believe the structural narrative more in that case).
I would say, it is not one or the other. If almost everyone of the same gender has the same fear, is it then a personal one? Isn't it reasonable to assume it to be the result of structural/cultural causes? Isn't that a problem by itself which is worthwhile to address regardless if the fear is founded or not.
Sure, we should try to overcome our fears if they limit us, but I would claim, as a society we would be better of, if there wouldn't be a need in the first place.
And yes, that applies to both genders, it just happens to be if we talk about career topics, it is usually one gender, that gets the short stick.
If we look at emotional problems (suicide, crimes) it is the other.
> What proportion of startups are founded by women? Only with this statistic can we draw a fair conclusion
The conclusion is pretty clear and damning for Nordic countries: for WHATEVER reasons women don't get funding.
You can complain that the cause is not fully explained by these statistics. But the conclusion is pretty clear.
Btw, the article does try to explain the numbers more:
> All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums.
> For all-female teams, the opposite was true. On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding.
I only skimmed the article. I'm not sure if these numbers show how many women founders got NO funding. I think it's common sense that women founders are very rare. But I don't see how you can take consolation in this explanation.
No, you can still not conclude that. There are still many many differences to take into account. What sort of businesses do these women start? Do they need less money for that? Are those industries less attractive to VCs (for example because they are not growth-markets)? Do women maybe prefer to raise less money so they get to keep more equity?
Doesn't mean anything though. I searched for picture of a "Basketball Team", and in the team in the first photo there are 7x as many black people as white. An infinite ratio of men to women too.
That isn't evidence of any sort of discrimination or prejudice. It is due to the rather difficult to dispute fact that for reasons uncertain black men seem to play better basketball. I don't even know anything about basketball I just picked a stereotype.
I'm all for investigations; but report back when there is evidence of a problem not evidence of a difference. Differences are routine.
> "6% get 1.3% => 5x too little. I think we can cry a little."
Surely there's more to it than just percentages and genders?
First, how many companies are we actually talking about here? The Nordics are a smaller market - I don't expect it to be in the orders of thousands of companies - maybe several tens or several hundreds, at most. We shouldn't extrapolate if the sampling group is small.
Then, what about the other factors associated with investments? How are the investments spread across different sectors and industries? Locations? Growth prospects? Revenue/Operating Costs?
It's a very shallow comparison otherwise, without this data.
At the point where people are trying to argue that the venture capital industry is working class to try and prove that sexism doesn't exist might be a time to reevaluate what you are arguing for and why.
If you need to resort to such a response as "people are trying to argue that the venture capital industry is working class", which your parent commenter very clearly did not do, you're not arguing from a position of strength, nor signalling an interest in debating in good faith.
The parent comment (and the various other "but startup founders dont get paid!") clearly were arguing that the VC industry (and its startup founder participants) are not within a prestigious and well paid sector.
Failed tech entrepreneurs get highly paid tech jobs, they also had the resources (savings, safety nets via family etc) to be able to take on the risk in the first place. Pointing out the gotcha that startup founders go without pay for a while is akin arguing that cleaner's have a more prestigious job than being the CEO of Oracle while he had a 1¢ salary, its ludicrous.
You're responding to stereotypes not whole reality, and you're mistaking best case scenarios for average expected outcomes - i.e., "go without pay for a while" and "Failed tech entrepreneurs get highly paid tech jobs".
Many walk away financially/mentally/physically ruined, without a well-paid job to fail into, and thus ending up substantially worse off than they would be if they'd just taken a regular job.
If you have any data to demonstrate (a) that the risk-adjusted expected return of a VC-funded male startup founder is significantly better than the expected career outcome for the many women who do very well from highly paid jobs in large tech companies, and (b) this outcome is higher only because they were granted VC funding, then we'd have something to talk about.
It's clearly simplistic to paint startup founder life as "prestigious", when in fact many founders are mocked if they fail and despised (and/or still mocked) if they succeed.
And it's a non sequitur to invoke "savings, safety nets via family etc", when this has nothing to do with gender, as it is to assert out that "failed tech entrepreneurs get highly paid tech jobs", when it's clear that people who are eligible for highly paid tech jobs can get them just as easily without starting a VC-funded company first.
That women generally prefer to take the more direct path just suggests that they make smarter life choices.
You are responding to easily observed demographics with hypothetical anecdotes.
The startup tech industry, that involves high salaries and the transfer of hundreds of million pounds is a prestigious one. The overlap between YC alumni and FAANG employees makes that abundantly obvious. If you would like to say otherwise could you provide more meaningful data than your repeated comments about how mean everyone is so mean to VC's and founders.
In a very roundabout way you are right though, women are less likely start companies and raise capital because they are less likely to be in the privileged position of being able to take that risk - https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene...
I am very used to "girls just dont like computers" on Hacker News, I do have to say "People are mean to founders and there is no money in tech + VC" is a new one. I think the interesting question would be why you and several other commentators are so keen to try and dismiss what is such an emperically obvious fact.
Notice that when I quote you in my comments, I copy and paste quotes you actually wrote, rather than making them up. That's one way of adhering to good-faith argumentation.
To your points:
"everyone is so mean to VC's and founders"
I obviously made no mention - complaint or otherwise - of people being mean to VCs. For what it's worth I don't care what people say about VCs. I have little regard for most of them, and generally recommend people avoid dealing with them.
As for founders, obviously the "tall poppy syndrome" is a widely accepted concept. And obviously founders both successful and novice are frequently the topic of derision, from the earliest stages in Show HN or Launch HN threads, through the vitriol and/or ridicule routinely heaped on the founders/execs of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Google, to the schadenfreude frenzies that swept up around the collapses of Theranos, WeWork and now Quibi. Please note I'm not decrying all this criticism as manifestly unjust; just pointing out that it exists in great volume, and whether it's justified or not, it's awful to experience, and a turnoff to most normal people.
"The startup tech industry, that involves high salaries and the transfer of hundreds of million pounds is a prestigious one. The overlap between YC alumni and FAANG employees makes that abundantly obvious."
- By focusing on FAANG companies and YC, you're taking the tip of the iceberg and extrapolating that to every startup founder in the world. Even then, you overlook that many YC founders don't make it into FAANG or other highly-paid jobs. But vastly more founders don't even get into YC, and don't get a shot at highly-paid FAANG jobs. And the mere fact that the acronym "FAANG" has just 5 letters demonstrates just how unusual it is to achieve huge success in startups.
- The most prestigious jobs continue to be in law, medicine, government, banking, stockbroking, realty/construction, arts/media, and parts of academia and science. Startup founders tend to be misfits, and often people who lack the human skills to make it in the traditional prestige industries I mentioned, as seen in media/pop culture portrayals of people like Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey and Elizabeth Holmes.
- I don't dispute that there is prestige for people who make it big with startups, but this discussion is specifically about the risk-adjusted expected outcome across the board, and in those terms, the other sectors offer a much more reliable path to prestige.
"women are less likely start companies and raise capital because they are less likely to be in the privileged position of being able to take that risk"
The article you linked to doesn't mention women at all, and only mentions gender once in passing. Gender obviously has nothing to do with inherited wealth or safety net.
"I am very used to "girls just dont like computers" on Hacker News, I do have to say "People are mean to founders and there is no money in tech + VC" is a new one. I think the interesting question would be why you and several other commentators are so keen to try and dismiss what is such an emperically obvious fact."
I've never prosecuted the "girls just don't like computers" line.
"People are mean to founders and there is no money in tech + VC" is obviously not what I said.
"I think the interesting question..."
Yes indeed.
For whatever it's worth, my interest in this topic comes from having studied startup success and failure in myself and others over at least 10-15 years, including mentoring and advising startup founders, including women and other people of various minority classes on a purely voluntary basis.
The obvious pattern is that the (mostly) white (mostly) males who tend to go for the big win via VC funding are highly egotistical, and usually quite dysfunctional by conventional standards. Sometimes it...
It is not very well paid. Most people don't get rich of even completely fail. Starting a startup is a risky venture. Women are on average more risk-averse than men.
The risk-adjusted expected return for being a startup founder doesn't seem high.
Or rather, it's a bimodal distribution, with a tiny number of incredibly rich (and also widely despised) people at one end, and the vast majority at the other end, making effectively nothing.
It's not surprising that fewer women would take those odds.
That said, two of Australia's leading startup founders are women, one of whom IPO'd her company today. (Incidentally, she never raised VC.)
This is a great thing that should be celebrated.
I can accept that there are things about the startup/VC world that make it more hostile for women. But the skew of VC funding isn't the smoking gun.
The article reads "On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding.".
I understand it as 6% of female-founded startups managed to raise money and they received 1.3% of total founding, rather than 6% of startups were all-female.
Yeah it's a terrible article. I mapped the few sentences there were to the pie chart at the top...
"all men 93%" = "All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding".
"all women 1%" = "On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding"
"mixed 6%" = the remainder, which maps nicely to 5.7% rounded.
Is it because VC were willing to give less to them because they were women? That there were less well connected? That their negotiation skills didn't match up? That the nature of the projects they choose were perceived as less attractive?
Lots of possible reasons here, and the solutions to choose can be very different depending of the causes.
Would be interesting to see this data by sector. Female founders are much more prevalent in some sectors (eCommerce, Health) than others (Infrastructure, Blockchain)
> Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding.
Your "they" betrays you. The women in the population are not the women founders the article focuses on. The 1.3% relates to the absolute share of money raised for woman-founded companies.
Women are not 50% of the founders, nor are female-founded companies valued at 50% of the market total (using this as a proxy for how much they raise, but agree this is not 1:1), nor are all companies asking for funding at the same time, nor are investors meeting with all companies, nor, nor, nor...
I come back to the original point: sex does not predicate founding, nor should it.
You say "sex does not predicate founding". That's exactly what I'm saying too. Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? If sex does not matter, then the distribution stays the same.
No. You focus on sex, instead of focusing on the process of assigning funding. The process cannot be wrong just because the outcome is not 50/50 man/woman. Look into the process first, instead of dismissing it and pointing out only the imbalance.
> Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right?
Wrong. Unless you think founder selection is a random process.
> Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right?
Your intention is in the right place but that's just not how biology works.
Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work.
The real problem would be if the ones that do aren't being able to because they're women. This would then indeed be sexism.
You can find the mirrored argument when it comes to male kindergarten teachers, for example. Ideally every male that wants to become one should be able to, but there won't ever be 50% of the distribution because males (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work.
My wife is a STEM scientist / data-scientist with a background in economics. Much more of a numbers person than I am, better at calculation and numerical visualisation than I am. I'm a male who would much rather be a homemaker and take care of our kid and households. People like us exist, but we don't represent the population.
> Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work.
That's actually also sexist. What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view?
I understand how this can be read as sexist within a context that's not informed in the psychometric measurements that have been performed over many cultures, for many decades.
> What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view?
First of all I want to clarify this is not my view. I'm not a psychologist. I'm simply reproducing information that I consumed. This is pretty much the current scientific consensus within a framework of psychometry.
Let me try to give you some more context: Over the course of a long time, through questionnaires, self-reporting, observations, etc, psychologists and other scientists have worked on grading individuals within populations on a series of personality traits. How likely a given person may be to become violent, for example. Or to want to work in a team. Or to take specific risks. These are just examples.
Often, these personality traits are graded among a framework of the "Big Five"[0]: Openness, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Conscientiousness. These words are domain terms, that is, they don't mean their normal meaning in English. In this context, they mean specifically defined meanings within psychometry that you can read more about on your own.
What's been observed is that, among other differences, there are clear distinctions, on average, of where given individuals lie on these spectrums, which are associated with sex.
You will find specific individual women and specific individual men who want to perform, and do well, and do badly, at all sorts of activities and work. So this is not about specific individuals. I'm not saying "women can't maths" or "men can't be caring". This is not what is being said.
What's being said is basically two things: On the extremes, there are certain groups that are overrepresented. For example, while there will be men and women distributed along the whole spectrum for, let's say, Agreeableness, the individuals scoring the highest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be women, and the individuals scoring the lowest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be men.
The second thing that's being said is: Even though most people as individuals fall roughly along the broad middle in these groups, if you cluster by sex, you can see clear distinction between populations. You would be able to see women being, on average, more agreeable than men.
In general, one can broadly summarise these into saying that, on average (again, we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about populations), men will prefer to work with things while women will prefer to work with people.
So it's not that being a founder is "not appealing to women". I'm sure there are literally millions of women to whom being a founder would be much more appealing than to literally millions of men. It's just that, when clustering by data, most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to want to become founders would be men. Most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to become, let's say, nurses, would be women.
Are there no great women founders? Of course there are. Can women be founders? Women be whatever they want! Are there no great men nurses? Of course there are. Can men be nurses? Men can be whatever they want!
However when analysing as a population, trying to reach the equivalent outcome of 50% men and 50% women is bound, for most things, to fail. Because of the psychometric differences between men and women.
This is what the Gender-equality Paradox[1] shows: In countries where women have less freedom (let's say, Pakistan), you will find a higher relative rate of women being, let's say, engineers. In countries where women have more freedom (let's say, Sweden), you will find a lower relativ...
All these studies like big 5 and gender paradox suffer from "correlation is not causation" syndrome.
I can agree that the studies correctly show what the state is now. But that doesn't mean this is how it SHOULD be.
It can very well be that society is causing these differences. For example, I can claim that women are more agreeable because that's how they are raised by their parents, influenced by their teachers and tv shows, etc. It's a cycle.
These studies didn't uncover some ancient rule of nature. People treat these studies as justification instead of treating them as a wake up call to improve the situation.
You say Sweden has more opportunity yet not many women go in STEM. I see that as a contradiction. Yes, legally, women are free to do any job in Sweden (more or less) but the society doesn't encourage it. Society was built over many years and it developed certain roles for men and women. Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences.
I see what you are saying with extremes, but trying to explain this by sports analogies doesn't work because clearly different sports require different physical traits. The fact that there are physical differences between men and women is not under question but does not explain the lack of women in STEM, I would think. The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap.
> One last time stressing the point: this has nothing to do with individual men and women. This is simply what we observe when crunching the numbers for human populations.
I'll just repeat at the end: observations are just that, observations. They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now.
Behind an immature comment like that, which is likely used to try to shame the OP by pretending their argument doesn't warrant a humane response, can only lie an immature man. Am I close? I've seen this type of gaslighting abuse, to intimidate women, happen only too often in real life. It needs to stop.
Did OP's commment touch something vulnerable in you? Did you feel scared? Is that why you resorted to a vague, grandiose, belittling response? Was it too far out of your bubble?
Easier to shame others with vague non-word responses than to meaningfully engage.
> It can very well be that society is causing these differences. For example, I can claim that women are more agreeable because that's how they are raised by their parents, influenced by their teachers and tv shows, etc. It's a cycle.
That is true. Though I think that's less likely. While I agree that this may not be the case for most people, I had my (relatively privileged) formative years in a background where boys and girls had equal access to all sort of different activities and a varied curriculum. From my own observations and information I've been presented I choose to believe (after all, this is simply a point of view among many in my life, and not what I preoccupy myself with most of the time) that it's more likely that evolution has a larger part of influence than culture, simply because it seems to also be the case for other aspects of life.
A sibling comment referenced a book by Cordelia Fine (which I haven't read yet), which mentions on its abstract "Instead, sex, hormones, culture and evolution work together in ways that make past and present gender dynamics only a serving suggestion for the future – not a recipe".
I think this is definitely true – these factors certainly intertwined – but a factor being a biological "serving suggestion" carries to me more weight than culture, which is malleable, fluid and man-made.
> But that doesn't mean this is how it SHOULD be.
> The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap.
> They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now.
To be fair I don't think it should be one way or another. I don't hold opinions on how these things should or shouldn't be. I'm also curious to know why you feel strongly that things should be a given way, and that that objective warrants large-scale social reform. I feel more often than not, large-scale social reform, even with positive intents, ends up having unintended consequences. The Chinese cultural revolution, as an example close to my background, certainly comes to mind.
> Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences.
I do think most toys I see are crap, whether "girl" toys or "boy" toys. I think they're all geared towards consumerism rather than child development. I do believe however that these toys evolved into boy/girl toys because of the reasons I mentioned, associated with market selective pressure and getting kids to want to acquire things.
All in all I think a few good wooden spinning tops with strings and a group of kids playing around with them among themselves as a group will be healthier for development than anything I might see on a billboard.
Mostly I give my kid Legos, wooden blocks/gears/shapes/tools, lots of books, abstract things/widgets that seem to encourage reasoning, along with plenty of time in the woods and nature, observing animals, plants, mosses, things like that. Socialising with other kids/cousins of different but similar ages and genders is also very important. Which is also why I think raising kids in multigenerational households and with a large extended family around is so important, as seldom happens in the Western world it seems, but that's a different conversation.
Sounds like you've read a lot of Jordan Peterson? Aren't you going to directly quote Simon Baron-Cohen?
Please read some Cordelia Fine and Gina Rippon to get the another perspective, instead of just repeating the misogynist lens and false research you've mentioned here
I did skim some Jordan Peterson a few years ago, though I find him a to be a bit too much of a rambler. I don't know who any of these other people are, though I'm happy to inform myself better.
My ideas on that are mostly shaped... Well if I think about it, probably significantly by reading Hacker News, over the years. As well as matching them with with the way I perceived reality around me and different cultures. I was fortunate enough to grow up in between three massively different cultural landscapes divided in two continents (my parents had a strong migration background on both sides), eventually move to a fourth cultural area in a third country where I met my wife and had a child, and I now live in yet another country, in a third continent (where she's from) in a country where the culture is completely unlike any of these four other cultural landscapes.
From your links it seems like Testosterone Rex and The Gendered Brain are the books I could use to approach another perspective on this subject? Along with I guess The Essencial Difference as well, in order to contextualize better what they're refuting? I'll add these three to my reading list.
I'm happy to get other recommendations.
> instead of just repeating the misogynist lens and false research you've mentioned here
Please refrain from accusations of misogyny without substantiating evidence. You're better than that. We're all adults here and free to disagree. Describing research as "false", in the way you did, ascribes to either it or me ill intent; within the scientific process, ideas can and will turn out to be wrong sometimes and that's ok. A core tenet of Hacker News is that we assume positive intent when engaging our interlocutor and their ideas.
> Please refrain from accusations of misogyny without substantiating evidence.
I wrote them from my perspective. They are my opinions/conclusions. If you have other views, that's fine for me. I am claiming my truth, not a universal truth.
> From your links it seems like Testosterone Rex and The Gendered Brain are the books I could use to approach another perspective on this subject? Along with I guess The Essencial Difference as well, in order to contextualize better what they're refuting?
Yes, that's the ones.
You wrote in a comment above mine:
> In general, one can broadly summarise these into saying that, on average (again, we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about populations), men will prefer to work with things while women will prefer to work with people.
I say, no, we can not summarize that at all.
You mentioned that you read a lot of stuff from Hackernews. Have you had a chance to look at the actual sources? Wikipedia has a great summary, with many sources to back up it's claims:
"Baron-Cohen has faced criticism by some for his "empathizing-systemizing theory", which states that humans may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions (empathizing and systemizing); and that females tend to score higher on the empathizing dimension and males tend to score higher on the systemizing dimension. Feminist scientists, including Cordelia Fine, neuroscientist, Gina Rippon, and Lise Eliot have opposed his extreme male brain theory of autism, calling it "neurotrash" and neurosexism.[35][36][37][38] Rippon also argues against using "male" and "female" for describing different types of brains, and that brain types do not correspond to genders.[36][39]
A 2009 study led by Baron-Cohen which reported that autistic individuals possessed superior visual acuity has been subject to heavy criticism. The developers of the software he used said that his results were impossible based on the technology used in the study. Additionally, the results of the study could not be replicated in a follow-up study.[40][41][42]"
Basically the author you quote, Simon Baron-Cohen, is widely known for his many misrepresentations and un-replicable studies.
I guess his success is in spreading sexist psuedoscience, which supports the continuation of a patriarchal status quo, gaining widespread popularity for his unscientific science before it was challenged/discovered to be so.
The article manages to use "just receive 1.3% of VC funding" without stating what amount would warrant no usage of "just". It would help if these kind of equity driven articles made the effort of not counting on the naive heart of the reader to understand what is being said.
Sure, a value is less than another value and a sex difference is mentioned, so the reader is put on the spot to immediately understand that the values should be different. But how different?
Might as well count if there's an imbalance on north-south vs east-west crossings by sex on a city center, and then hope someone feels the need to conclude "but of course, they should be the same!".
You assume the sex lens is how VC funds should be measured.
> What do you think the value would be that wouldn't warrant putting just?
If there were sex quotas for amount of funding and female founders got less than the law dictates, I'd understand a "just". If some known process we agree is fair and is expected to yield X but yields <X, I'd also not react at a "just". No such process exists for VC funding. Readers are being coerced into expecting a value to exist.
> How much do you think is the "fair" amount women should receive?
I did not realize VC funding was meant to be fair. Investors will have their reasons, startups will have their way of marketing themselves and people will have their network of contacts, to state 3 constraints. Have we reached the technocratic utopia where society is procedurally generated to be fair? No.
- There is no disparity when it comes to number of rounds
- The trend is decrease in funding from all men teams (-10 points compared to 2019) and increase mostly for mixed teams (+10 points) and women (+2 points) (their numbers don't add up to 100...)
The article seems to imply gender inequality is a major issue in Nordic countries. The truth is they are light years ahead of their European neighbours in the matter.
Apart from the number games already commented on by others: I think the example of Theranos has shown that given the right subject, female founders have no issue collecting large sums of funding money.
Those "poor female founders" articles always fail to mention that many startups (or businesses) by women tend to be in specific industry sectors, like fashion or childcare. So unfair that they can't get a unicorn evaluation for their "exclusive handbags" idea.
so sad that people nitpick on this article, trying to brush it off.
for WHATEVER reasons, women got only 1% of total funding. is that not bad by itself? does it matter that the reason is that there were few women to begin with? that makes it even worse. at least if VC bias was the only cause then this bias would be confined to one domain and easier to fix.
If you believe that being a startup founder is an inherently good thing, then it's bad. But the former is not self-evident. Some pointed out that risk-weighted income of a startup founder might lower than that of someone on a conventional full-time job.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] thread> All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums.
"make an effort"
There is a difference though of course, being excluded from a sport can on an individual level be sad it certainly doesnt have the same impact as an entire gender being exluded from wealth and power.
Just imagine, if you yourself actually would like to do synchronised swimming, what would happen? How would the people around you react? How would that make you feel about it?
We should try things that interest us and be understanding that we won’t have the same status in those activities as the ones we’re good at.
This isn’t to say that startup disparities are caused by personal anxiety (I personally believe the structural narrative more in that case). It is to say, though, that we sometimes build up personal barriers where none truly exist - especially for simple things like sports
I would say, it is not one or the other. If almost everyone of the same gender has the same fear, is it then a personal one? Isn't it reasonable to assume it to be the result of structural/cultural causes? Isn't that a problem by itself which is worthwhile to address regardless if the fear is founded or not.
Sure, we should try to overcome our fears if they limit us, but I would claim, as a society we would be better of, if there wouldn't be a need in the first place.
And yes, that applies to both genders, it just happens to be if we talk about career topics, it is usually one gender, that gets the short stick.
If we look at emotional problems (suicide, crimes) it is the other.
The conclusion is pretty clear and damning for Nordic countries: for WHATEVER reasons women don't get funding. You can complain that the cause is not fully explained by these statistics. But the conclusion is pretty clear.
Btw, the article does try to explain the numbers more:
> All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums.
> For all-female teams, the opposite was true. On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding.
I only skimmed the article. I'm not sure if these numbers show how many women founders got NO funding. I think it's common sense that women founders are very rare. But I don't see how you can take consolation in this explanation.
Here's the actual stats pulled from the article:
* 83% of startups were all-male and got 93% of funding.
* 6% of startups were all-female and got 1.3% of funding.
* 11% of startups were mixed and got 5.7% of funding.
Still an imbalance but paints a very different picture. Clearly the industry needs to attract more women generally before you start crying inequity.
That isn't evidence of any sort of discrimination or prejudice. It is due to the rather difficult to dispute fact that for reasons uncertain black men seem to play better basketball. I don't even know anything about basketball I just picked a stereotype.
I'm all for investigations; but report back when there is evidence of a problem not evidence of a difference. Differences are routine.
Surely there's more to it than just percentages and genders?
First, how many companies are we actually talking about here? The Nordics are a smaller market - I don't expect it to be in the orders of thousands of companies - maybe several tens or several hundreds, at most. We shouldn't extrapolate if the sampling group is small.
Then, what about the other factors associated with investments? How are the investments spread across different sectors and industries? Locations? Growth prospects? Revenue/Operating Costs?
It's a very shallow comparison otherwise, without this data.
Failed tech entrepreneurs get highly paid tech jobs, they also had the resources (savings, safety nets via family etc) to be able to take on the risk in the first place. Pointing out the gotcha that startup founders go without pay for a while is akin arguing that cleaner's have a more prestigious job than being the CEO of Oracle while he had a 1¢ salary, its ludicrous.
Many walk away financially/mentally/physically ruined, without a well-paid job to fail into, and thus ending up substantially worse off than they would be if they'd just taken a regular job.
If you have any data to demonstrate (a) that the risk-adjusted expected return of a VC-funded male startup founder is significantly better than the expected career outcome for the many women who do very well from highly paid jobs in large tech companies, and (b) this outcome is higher only because they were granted VC funding, then we'd have something to talk about.
It's clearly simplistic to paint startup founder life as "prestigious", when in fact many founders are mocked if they fail and despised (and/or still mocked) if they succeed.
And it's a non sequitur to invoke "savings, safety nets via family etc", when this has nothing to do with gender, as it is to assert out that "failed tech entrepreneurs get highly paid tech jobs", when it's clear that people who are eligible for highly paid tech jobs can get them just as easily without starting a VC-funded company first.
That women generally prefer to take the more direct path just suggests that they make smarter life choices.
The startup tech industry, that involves high salaries and the transfer of hundreds of million pounds is a prestigious one. The overlap between YC alumni and FAANG employees makes that abundantly obvious. If you would like to say otherwise could you provide more meaningful data than your repeated comments about how mean everyone is so mean to VC's and founders.
In a very roundabout way you are right though, women are less likely start companies and raise capital because they are less likely to be in the privileged position of being able to take that risk - https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene...
I am very used to "girls just dont like computers" on Hacker News, I do have to say "People are mean to founders and there is no money in tech + VC" is a new one. I think the interesting question would be why you and several other commentators are so keen to try and dismiss what is such an emperically obvious fact.
To your points:
"everyone is so mean to VC's and founders"
I obviously made no mention - complaint or otherwise - of people being mean to VCs. For what it's worth I don't care what people say about VCs. I have little regard for most of them, and generally recommend people avoid dealing with them.
As for founders, obviously the "tall poppy syndrome" is a widely accepted concept. And obviously founders both successful and novice are frequently the topic of derision, from the earliest stages in Show HN or Launch HN threads, through the vitriol and/or ridicule routinely heaped on the founders/execs of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Google, to the schadenfreude frenzies that swept up around the collapses of Theranos, WeWork and now Quibi. Please note I'm not decrying all this criticism as manifestly unjust; just pointing out that it exists in great volume, and whether it's justified or not, it's awful to experience, and a turnoff to most normal people.
"The startup tech industry, that involves high salaries and the transfer of hundreds of million pounds is a prestigious one. The overlap between YC alumni and FAANG employees makes that abundantly obvious."
- By focusing on FAANG companies and YC, you're taking the tip of the iceberg and extrapolating that to every startup founder in the world. Even then, you overlook that many YC founders don't make it into FAANG or other highly-paid jobs. But vastly more founders don't even get into YC, and don't get a shot at highly-paid FAANG jobs. And the mere fact that the acronym "FAANG" has just 5 letters demonstrates just how unusual it is to achieve huge success in startups.
- The most prestigious jobs continue to be in law, medicine, government, banking, stockbroking, realty/construction, arts/media, and parts of academia and science. Startup founders tend to be misfits, and often people who lack the human skills to make it in the traditional prestige industries I mentioned, as seen in media/pop culture portrayals of people like Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey and Elizabeth Holmes.
- I don't dispute that there is prestige for people who make it big with startups, but this discussion is specifically about the risk-adjusted expected outcome across the board, and in those terms, the other sectors offer a much more reliable path to prestige.
"women are less likely start companies and raise capital because they are less likely to be in the privileged position of being able to take that risk"
The article you linked to doesn't mention women at all, and only mentions gender once in passing. Gender obviously has nothing to do with inherited wealth or safety net.
"I am very used to "girls just dont like computers" on Hacker News, I do have to say "People are mean to founders and there is no money in tech + VC" is a new one. I think the interesting question would be why you and several other commentators are so keen to try and dismiss what is such an emperically obvious fact."
I've never prosecuted the "girls just don't like computers" line.
"People are mean to founders and there is no money in tech + VC" is obviously not what I said.
"I think the interesting question..."
Yes indeed.
For whatever it's worth, my interest in this topic comes from having studied startup success and failure in myself and others over at least 10-15 years, including mentoring and advising startup founders, including women and other people of various minority classes on a purely voluntary basis.
The obvious pattern is that the (mostly) white (mostly) males who tend to go for the big win via VC funding are highly egotistical, and usually quite dysfunctional by conventional standards. Sometimes it...
Startups are hard and poorly compensated for the majority of people who attempt them.
The risk-adjusted expected return for being a startup founder doesn't seem high.
Or rather, it's a bimodal distribution, with a tiny number of incredibly rich (and also widely despised) people at one end, and the vast majority at the other end, making effectively nothing.
It's not surprising that fewer women would take those odds.
That said, two of Australia's leading startup founders are women, one of whom IPO'd her company today. (Incidentally, she never raised VC.)
This is a great thing that should be celebrated.
I can accept that there are things about the startup/VC world that make it more hostile for women. But the skew of VC funding isn't the smoking gun.
I understand it as 6% of female-founded startups managed to raise money and they received 1.3% of total founding, rather than 6% of startups were all-female.
"all men 93%" = "All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding".
"all women 1%" = "On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding"
"mixed 6%" = the remainder, which maps nicely to 5.7% rounded.
The linked report doesn't even conform to the posted article lol: https://my.visme.co/view/01070kx3-unconventional-ventures-no...
In the report:
"all men = 85.00%"
"all women = 6.35%"
"mix = 8.66%"
Is it because VC were willing to give less to them because they were women? That there were less well connected? That their negotiation skills didn't match up? That the nature of the projects they choose were perceived as less attractive?
Lots of possible reasons here, and the solutions to choose can be very different depending of the causes.
If you do, then something is wrong already. Why should sex be the measure of how much some founder gets?
If you don't know, then you also don't know what is wrong with the statistic. Do you also think women should not get funding?
Take a step back and think of the real purpose of the article: outrage and appeal to feelings.
I think I know. Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding.
Your "they" betrays you. The women in the population are not the women founders the article focuses on. The 1.3% relates to the absolute share of money raised for woman-founded companies.
Women are not 50% of the founders, nor are female-founded companies valued at 50% of the market total (using this as a proxy for how much they raise, but agree this is not 1:1), nor are all companies asking for funding at the same time, nor are investors meeting with all companies, nor, nor, nor...
I come back to the original point: sex does not predicate founding, nor should it.
You say "sex does not predicate founding". That's exactly what I'm saying too. Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? If sex does not matter, then the distribution stays the same.
No. You focus on sex, instead of focusing on the process of assigning funding. The process cannot be wrong just because the outcome is not 50/50 man/woman. Look into the process first, instead of dismissing it and pointing out only the imbalance.
> Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right?
Wrong. Unless you think founder selection is a random process.
Your intention is in the right place but that's just not how biology works.
Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work.
The real problem would be if the ones that do aren't being able to because they're women. This would then indeed be sexism.
You can find the mirrored argument when it comes to male kindergarten teachers, for example. Ideally every male that wants to become one should be able to, but there won't ever be 50% of the distribution because males (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work.
My wife is a STEM scientist / data-scientist with a background in economics. Much more of a numbers person than I am, better at calculation and numerical visualisation than I am. I'm a male who would much rather be a homemaker and take care of our kid and households. People like us exist, but we don't represent the population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
That's actually also sexist. What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view?
I understand how this can be read as sexist within a context that's not informed in the psychometric measurements that have been performed over many cultures, for many decades.
> What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view?
First of all I want to clarify this is not my view. I'm not a psychologist. I'm simply reproducing information that I consumed. This is pretty much the current scientific consensus within a framework of psychometry.
Let me try to give you some more context: Over the course of a long time, through questionnaires, self-reporting, observations, etc, psychologists and other scientists have worked on grading individuals within populations on a series of personality traits. How likely a given person may be to become violent, for example. Or to want to work in a team. Or to take specific risks. These are just examples.
Often, these personality traits are graded among a framework of the "Big Five"[0]: Openness, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Conscientiousness. These words are domain terms, that is, they don't mean their normal meaning in English. In this context, they mean specifically defined meanings within psychometry that you can read more about on your own.
What's been observed is that, among other differences, there are clear distinctions, on average, of where given individuals lie on these spectrums, which are associated with sex.
You will find specific individual women and specific individual men who want to perform, and do well, and do badly, at all sorts of activities and work. So this is not about specific individuals. I'm not saying "women can't maths" or "men can't be caring". This is not what is being said.
What's being said is basically two things: On the extremes, there are certain groups that are overrepresented. For example, while there will be men and women distributed along the whole spectrum for, let's say, Agreeableness, the individuals scoring the highest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be women, and the individuals scoring the lowest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be men.
The second thing that's being said is: Even though most people as individuals fall roughly along the broad middle in these groups, if you cluster by sex, you can see clear distinction between populations. You would be able to see women being, on average, more agreeable than men.
In general, one can broadly summarise these into saying that, on average (again, we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about populations), men will prefer to work with things while women will prefer to work with people.
So it's not that being a founder is "not appealing to women". I'm sure there are literally millions of women to whom being a founder would be much more appealing than to literally millions of men. It's just that, when clustering by data, most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to want to become founders would be men. Most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to become, let's say, nurses, would be women.
Are there no great women founders? Of course there are. Can women be founders? Women be whatever they want! Are there no great men nurses? Of course there are. Can men be nurses? Men can be whatever they want!
However when analysing as a population, trying to reach the equivalent outcome of 50% men and 50% women is bound, for most things, to fail. Because of the psychometric differences between men and women.
This is what the Gender-equality Paradox[1] shows: In countries where women have less freedom (let's say, Pakistan), you will find a higher relative rate of women being, let's say, engineers. In countries where women have more freedom (let's say, Sweden), you will find a lower relativ...
It can very well be that society is causing these differences. For example, I can claim that women are more agreeable because that's how they are raised by their parents, influenced by their teachers and tv shows, etc. It's a cycle.
These studies didn't uncover some ancient rule of nature. People treat these studies as justification instead of treating them as a wake up call to improve the situation.
You say Sweden has more opportunity yet not many women go in STEM. I see that as a contradiction. Yes, legally, women are free to do any job in Sweden (more or less) but the society doesn't encourage it. Society was built over many years and it developed certain roles for men and women. Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences.
I see what you are saying with extremes, but trying to explain this by sports analogies doesn't work because clearly different sports require different physical traits. The fact that there are physical differences between men and women is not under question but does not explain the lack of women in STEM, I would think. The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap.
> One last time stressing the point: this has nothing to do with individual men and women. This is simply what we observe when crunching the numbers for human populations.
I'll just repeat at the end: observations are just that, observations. They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now.
Behind an immature comment like that, which is likely used to try to shame the OP by pretending their argument doesn't warrant a humane response, can only lie an immature man. Am I close? I've seen this type of gaslighting abuse, to intimidate women, happen only too often in real life. It needs to stop.
Did OP's commment touch something vulnerable in you? Did you feel scared? Is that why you resorted to a vague, grandiose, belittling response? Was it too far out of your bubble?
Easier to shame others with vague non-word responses than to meaningfully engage.
That is true. Though I think that's less likely. While I agree that this may not be the case for most people, I had my (relatively privileged) formative years in a background where boys and girls had equal access to all sort of different activities and a varied curriculum. From my own observations and information I've been presented I choose to believe (after all, this is simply a point of view among many in my life, and not what I preoccupy myself with most of the time) that it's more likely that evolution has a larger part of influence than culture, simply because it seems to also be the case for other aspects of life.
A sibling comment referenced a book by Cordelia Fine (which I haven't read yet), which mentions on its abstract "Instead, sex, hormones, culture and evolution work together in ways that make past and present gender dynamics only a serving suggestion for the future – not a recipe".
I think this is definitely true – these factors certainly intertwined – but a factor being a biological "serving suggestion" carries to me more weight than culture, which is malleable, fluid and man-made.
> But that doesn't mean this is how it SHOULD be. > The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap. > They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now.
To be fair I don't think it should be one way or another. I don't hold opinions on how these things should or shouldn't be. I'm also curious to know why you feel strongly that things should be a given way, and that that objective warrants large-scale social reform. I feel more often than not, large-scale social reform, even with positive intents, ends up having unintended consequences. The Chinese cultural revolution, as an example close to my background, certainly comes to mind.
> Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences.
I do think most toys I see are crap, whether "girl" toys or "boy" toys. I think they're all geared towards consumerism rather than child development. I do believe however that these toys evolved into boy/girl toys because of the reasons I mentioned, associated with market selective pressure and getting kids to want to acquire things.
All in all I think a few good wooden spinning tops with strings and a group of kids playing around with them among themselves as a group will be healthier for development than anything I might see on a billboard.
Mostly I give my kid Legos, wooden blocks/gears/shapes/tools, lots of books, abstract things/widgets that seem to encourage reasoning, along with plenty of time in the woods and nature, observing animals, plants, mosses, things like that. Socialising with other kids/cousins of different but similar ages and genders is also very important. Which is also why I think raising kids in multigenerational households and with a large extended family around is so important, as seldom happens in the Western world it seems, but that's a different conversation.
Please read some Cordelia Fine and Gina Rippon to get the another perspective, instead of just repeating the misogynist lens and false research you've mentioned here
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/02/the-gendered-b...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/18/testosterone-r...
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/sep/10/gender-gap-m...
My ideas on that are mostly shaped... Well if I think about it, probably significantly by reading Hacker News, over the years. As well as matching them with with the way I perceived reality around me and different cultures. I was fortunate enough to grow up in between three massively different cultural landscapes divided in two continents (my parents had a strong migration background on both sides), eventually move to a fourth cultural area in a third country where I met my wife and had a child, and I now live in yet another country, in a third continent (where she's from) in a country where the culture is completely unlike any of these four other cultural landscapes.
From your links it seems like Testosterone Rex and The Gendered Brain are the books I could use to approach another perspective on this subject? Along with I guess The Essencial Difference as well, in order to contextualize better what they're refuting? I'll add these three to my reading list.
I'm happy to get other recommendations.
> instead of just repeating the misogynist lens and false research you've mentioned here
Please refrain from accusations of misogyny without substantiating evidence. You're better than that. We're all adults here and free to disagree. Describing research as "false", in the way you did, ascribes to either it or me ill intent; within the scientific process, ideas can and will turn out to be wrong sometimes and that's ok. A core tenet of Hacker News is that we assume positive intent when engaging our interlocutor and their ideas.
I wrote them from my perspective. They are my opinions/conclusions. If you have other views, that's fine for me. I am claiming my truth, not a universal truth.
> From your links it seems like Testosterone Rex and The Gendered Brain are the books I could use to approach another perspective on this subject? Along with I guess The Essencial Difference as well, in order to contextualize better what they're refuting?
Yes, that's the ones.
You wrote in a comment above mine:
> In general, one can broadly summarise these into saying that, on average (again, we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about populations), men will prefer to work with things while women will prefer to work with people.
I say, no, we can not summarize that at all.
You mentioned that you read a lot of stuff from Hackernews. Have you had a chance to look at the actual sources? Wikipedia has a great summary, with many sources to back up it's claims:
"Baron-Cohen has faced criticism by some for his "empathizing-systemizing theory", which states that humans may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions (empathizing and systemizing); and that females tend to score higher on the empathizing dimension and males tend to score higher on the systemizing dimension. Feminist scientists, including Cordelia Fine, neuroscientist, Gina Rippon, and Lise Eliot have opposed his extreme male brain theory of autism, calling it "neurotrash" and neurosexism.[35][36][37][38] Rippon also argues against using "male" and "female" for describing different types of brains, and that brain types do not correspond to genders.[36][39]
A 2009 study led by Baron-Cohen which reported that autistic individuals possessed superior visual acuity has been subject to heavy criticism. The developers of the software he used said that his results were impossible based on the technology used in the study. Additionally, the results of the study could not be replicated in a follow-up study.[40][41][42]"
Basically the author you quote, Simon Baron-Cohen, is widely known for his many misrepresentations and un-replicable studies.
I guess his success is in spreading sexist psuedoscience, which supports the continuation of a patriarchal status quo, gaining widespread popularity for his unscientific science before it was challenged/discovered to be so.
Sure, a value is less than another value and a sex difference is mentioned, so the reader is put on the spot to immediately understand that the values should be different. But how different?
Might as well count if there's an imbalance on north-south vs east-west crossings by sex on a city center, and then hope someone feels the need to conclude "but of course, they should be the same!".
> What do you think the value would be that wouldn't warrant putting just?
If there were sex quotas for amount of funding and female founders got less than the law dictates, I'd understand a "just". If some known process we agree is fair and is expected to yield X but yields <X, I'd also not react at a "just". No such process exists for VC funding. Readers are being coerced into expecting a value to exist.
> How much do you think is the "fair" amount women should receive?
I did not realize VC funding was meant to be fair. Investors will have their reasons, startups will have their way of marketing themselves and people will have their network of contacts, to state 3 constraints. Have we reached the technocratic utopia where society is procedurally generated to be fair? No.
Gender | % Companies (#) | % Funding
All men | 85 (1473) | 88.81
All women| 6.35 (110) | 2.21
Mixed | 8.66 (150) | 8.98
Notes:
- There is no disparity when it comes to number of rounds
- The trend is decrease in funding from all men teams (-10 points compared to 2019) and increase mostly for mixed teams (+10 points) and women (+2 points) (their numbers don't add up to 100...)
Those "poor female founders" articles always fail to mention that many startups (or businesses) by women tend to be in specific industry sectors, like fashion or childcare. So unfair that they can't get a unicorn evaluation for their "exclusive handbags" idea.
for WHATEVER reasons, women got only 1% of total funding. is that not bad by itself? does it matter that the reason is that there were few women to begin with? that makes it even worse. at least if VC bias was the only cause then this bias would be confined to one domain and easier to fix.
No
Anyone know if that study has been done?