For the same reason guys don't apply to "America's next top model". There just aren't enough female geeks. Which is a pity, since they are mathematically better tuned.
"America's next top model" has only asked for women participants. The criteria for judging male models and female models is different, and the places for them to model (ads, runway shows) is different, so it wouldn't be a fair comparison to have them competing on the same show. Given the opportunity, I think you would find plenty of men wanting to apply for a similar show.
As for the "mathematically better tuned" comment, I've always disliked the arguments that one sex is better suited for anything, especially when talking about the brain. I think socialization has a lot more to do with brain development then sex, and since we've got hundreds of years of gender roles to overcome before we find out for sure, I think we're better off judging individuals, rather then genders.
As for why there aren't more women in startups, or women geeks for that matter, I return to socialization. Bill Gates made it cool to be a nerd for guys, we still don't have a female in that category. A largely successful role model that makes it ok for women to not be entirerly obsessed with their appearence. Maybe when I get my own start up...
I think 4 out of 39 startups have had a female cofounder. This reflects fairly accurately the proportion of women among the applicants.
I think the reasons there are so few women are that (a) fewer women are fanatical about technical stuff, and you have to be kind of a fanatic to start a startup, and (b) fewer women are willing to have their lives consumed by work, which is what happens to most founders of successful startups.
Y Combinator itself has a female co-founder:
http://foundersatwork.com/jessicalivingston.html
We've talked about the question a fair amount, and I think she would agree with the explanation above.
Would it not help to have a cofounder who is fanatical about the service itself rather than its implementation? Such a cofounder could take on something like a program manager role.
Whether or not a startup succeeds has probably more to do with understanding what users want rather than anything to do with the tech side. Tech is important later when you need to scale the service to support millions of users.
with "the beggining" i was reffering at the "later" you are talking about. the scale and the success of the web start-up is its beggining. And you need the people that will do that. Expect if you are the investor and paying them to do so...
To my mind and my experience unfortunately, if you have a co-founder who is doing only business without any other contribution (e.g. money) and he has same equity of your company as you then he is ripping you off. Better go to YC and give them 5-10% and access their network if you need a what u call program manager...
the reason you decide to start-up, is that although you don't know everything, it means you already know or u are willing to use other skills too and/or learn the rest (including those you are reffering to) , in order to encompass more characteristics --enough to take the risk to become a founder. Otherwise using one skill (e.g. programmer) should get you a job somewhere.
an non-YC example with female co-founder I am aware of is Emily Boyd of www.rememberthemilk.com
volida, can you qualify what yu mean by "only doing business". A good product is nothing without distribution, good product management and a keen sense of copy, branding, and the ability to sell. Building the product is only part of the battle.
If you mean, the business guy can't read code, doesn't know how interfaces should look and can't visualise the direction of the product i guess you are right. But, strangely business guys are needed to get users and thats pretty hard - even if you are myspace or bebo. Bottom line - doesn't matter how great your tech is - someone who gets business makes or breaks your product.
yeah, basically i mean someone who is not willing to be part during the development cycle and is interested only in pushing the product or finding the users.
The problem is that in the beggining there is not a product to push! And if there is and is launched even with some minor features showcasing the idea, then you'll receive feedback from the users, so you get this help from your users. This means, that having more features to produce you do need someone who is technically capable while the product/service is maturing.
Now if there is a product/service and that product needs someone to find clients that will pay for, and not relying in word of mouth, like most low budjet web start-ups do, then ok, you need someone who will help you with this, but does it really worth it giving up equity equal to yours?
For me, no because I believe that if its your idea (refering to 1 or more people), then you know it better. So, being the soul you can pursue becoming capable to talk about it and make others even invest in it.
Why do you think users will be interested in trying out your service and giving you feedback in the first place? You need someone to help you understand what users want.
This is an interesting question, and as a girl geek who is applying to y combinator and has worked for many startups, I can mention a few things.
1) Startup culture appears to be a boys' club.
a) Have you ever noticed that when you hire the first woman in any company, the dynamic changes? There's resistance to that change, whether it's for better or worse. (pun intended) There's a big sign on your clubhouse that says [GIRLZ KEEP OUT!] Sometimes it's very subtle. Sometimes overt. How many of you actually had women on the short list of people you were choosing to partner with? Some geeky guys still have a hard time talking with girls. It may be an issue with whom you're comfortable sharing your great idea. From what I've read in these posts, you have some assumptions that you're making about girls. Truth is, when you get to a certain level of skill or creativity, assumptions need to fly out the window - for both men and women.
b) With that being said, I love it when work consumes me with a passion and takes all of my time to the exclusion of all else. I have mad skills in a bunch of different areas and startups seem to want me. . . but they don't think of me as a co-founder. I code, design, do market research, marketing strategy, media buys, infrastructure, pitches. . . basically I've worked for many startups doing everything necessary to get started. Still thought of as an accessory - never fully included. My solution to this has been to position myself differently - and I can do that now. I need to market my skills differently from the way guys do. This has been successful.
2) We're not as sensitive to hierarchies and heirarchies' flip side, competition, as guys are.
a) We often just want to get it done. We don't care as much if it strokes our ego or your ego. It needs to be done. If, every time we have a conversation, it becomes a zero sum game of who wins the dominance, it's stupid.
If there's a list of things that need to get done on the table, and some tasks are seen as too onerous for guys' job descriptions (egos), we wind up doing it because it needs to get done. Because we did it, somehow our status falls. We wind up getting stuck with _all_ the crappy jobs, and it winds up sucking for us as our status continually sinks.
b) We assess ourselves and our skills differently. Here's an illustrative example. A female engineer once told me why she gave up working in industry. She was the only woman working with a team of guys. The team lead would throw out a task for discussion on the table. Everyone but she would say they could do it easily. She would say that no, this has these challenges and would take much longer. One of the guys who said that it was easy would get the project and then go to her for help doing the problematic tasks. Who got promoted? The guy. Who was doing all the hard work? She was. Female examiners at the patent office tell the same story. There are a lot of women engineers who leave industry because they can assess themselves and the problems accurately and this isn't valued. Managers want their problems solved. They value gung-ho over truth.
c) This is often linguistic. Men and women use different syntax to express the same thoughts. I need to remap what makes sense to me onto another linguistic pattern and that seems to be a waste of energy. In fact, this has a lot of benefit because it makes us better communicators all around. It's a learning curve - and it's often hard to recognize that it's there or needed. (I was a linguistics geek in college, where I found out that 85% of all conversational interruptions occur men on women, so it's a challenge for us to get a complete paragraph size thought into a conversation - much less complete a sentence without being completely stepped on.)
But even in the more egalitarian parts of the States, there are different linguistic patterns for men and women. If you go to the South, it's much more amplified. If a woman makes a statement with the same intonation and wording as a guy, the conversation just stops for a hot minute w...
20 comments
[ 202 ms ] story [ 1230 ms ] threadAs for the "mathematically better tuned" comment, I've always disliked the arguments that one sex is better suited for anything, especially when talking about the brain. I think socialization has a lot more to do with brain development then sex, and since we've got hundreds of years of gender roles to overcome before we find out for sure, I think we're better off judging individuals, rather then genders.
As for why there aren't more women in startups, or women geeks for that matter, I return to socialization. Bill Gates made it cool to be a nerd for guys, we still don't have a female in that category. A largely successful role model that makes it ok for women to not be entirerly obsessed with their appearence. Maybe when I get my own start up...
I think the reasons there are so few women are that (a) fewer women are fanatical about technical stuff, and you have to be kind of a fanatic to start a startup, and (b) fewer women are willing to have their lives consumed by work, which is what happens to most founders of successful startups.
Y Combinator itself has a female co-founder:
http://foundersatwork.com/jessicalivingston.html
We've talked about the question a fair amount, and I think she would agree with the explanation above.
[edit: changed 3 to 4]
Your co-founder should be able to provide more in tech side of the start-up because thats what is important in the beggining.
To my mind and my experience unfortunately, if you have a co-founder who is doing only business without any other contribution (e.g. money) and he has same equity of your company as you then he is ripping you off. Better go to YC and give them 5-10% and access their network if you need a what u call program manager...
the reason you decide to start-up, is that although you don't know everything, it means you already know or u are willing to use other skills too and/or learn the rest (including those you are reffering to) , in order to encompass more characteristics --enough to take the risk to become a founder. Otherwise using one skill (e.g. programmer) should get you a job somewhere.
an non-YC example with female co-founder I am aware of is Emily Boyd of www.rememberthemilk.com
If you mean, the business guy can't read code, doesn't know how interfaces should look and can't visualise the direction of the product i guess you are right. But, strangely business guys are needed to get users and thats pretty hard - even if you are myspace or bebo. Bottom line - doesn't matter how great your tech is - someone who gets business makes or breaks your product.
The problem is that in the beggining there is not a product to push! And if there is and is launched even with some minor features showcasing the idea, then you'll receive feedback from the users, so you get this help from your users. This means, that having more features to produce you do need someone who is technically capable while the product/service is maturing.
Now if there is a product/service and that product needs someone to find clients that will pay for, and not relying in word of mouth, like most low budjet web start-ups do, then ok, you need someone who will help you with this, but does it really worth it giving up equity equal to yours?
For me, no because I believe that if its your idea (refering to 1 or more people), then you know it better. So, being the soul you can pursue becoming capable to talk about it and make others even invest in it.
1) Startup culture appears to be a boys' club.
a) Have you ever noticed that when you hire the first woman in any company, the dynamic changes? There's resistance to that change, whether it's for better or worse. (pun intended) There's a big sign on your clubhouse that says [GIRLZ KEEP OUT!] Sometimes it's very subtle. Sometimes overt. How many of you actually had women on the short list of people you were choosing to partner with? Some geeky guys still have a hard time talking with girls. It may be an issue with whom you're comfortable sharing your great idea. From what I've read in these posts, you have some assumptions that you're making about girls. Truth is, when you get to a certain level of skill or creativity, assumptions need to fly out the window - for both men and women.
b) With that being said, I love it when work consumes me with a passion and takes all of my time to the exclusion of all else. I have mad skills in a bunch of different areas and startups seem to want me. . . but they don't think of me as a co-founder. I code, design, do market research, marketing strategy, media buys, infrastructure, pitches. . . basically I've worked for many startups doing everything necessary to get started. Still thought of as an accessory - never fully included. My solution to this has been to position myself differently - and I can do that now. I need to market my skills differently from the way guys do. This has been successful.
2) We're not as sensitive to hierarchies and heirarchies' flip side, competition, as guys are.
a) We often just want to get it done. We don't care as much if it strokes our ego or your ego. It needs to be done. If, every time we have a conversation, it becomes a zero sum game of who wins the dominance, it's stupid.
If there's a list of things that need to get done on the table, and some tasks are seen as too onerous for guys' job descriptions (egos), we wind up doing it because it needs to get done. Because we did it, somehow our status falls. We wind up getting stuck with _all_ the crappy jobs, and it winds up sucking for us as our status continually sinks.
b) We assess ourselves and our skills differently. Here's an illustrative example. A female engineer once told me why she gave up working in industry. She was the only woman working with a team of guys. The team lead would throw out a task for discussion on the table. Everyone but she would say they could do it easily. She would say that no, this has these challenges and would take much longer. One of the guys who said that it was easy would get the project and then go to her for help doing the problematic tasks. Who got promoted? The guy. Who was doing all the hard work? She was. Female examiners at the patent office tell the same story. There are a lot of women engineers who leave industry because they can assess themselves and the problems accurately and this isn't valued. Managers want their problems solved. They value gung-ho over truth.
c) This is often linguistic. Men and women use different syntax to express the same thoughts. I need to remap what makes sense to me onto another linguistic pattern and that seems to be a waste of energy. In fact, this has a lot of benefit because it makes us better communicators all around. It's a learning curve - and it's often hard to recognize that it's there or needed. (I was a linguistics geek in college, where I found out that 85% of all conversational interruptions occur men on women, so it's a challenge for us to get a complete paragraph size thought into a conversation - much less complete a sentence without being completely stepped on.)
But even in the more egalitarian parts of the States, there are different linguistic patterns for men and women. If you go to the South, it's much more amplified. If a woman makes a statement with the same intonation and wording as a guy, the conversation just stops for a hot minute w...