Women In Tech and Women Entrepreneurs Discussion
There was a piece in the WSJ on Friday about the dearth of women in tech and women entrepreneurs. We've been talking about this issue here on AVC and I was quoted in the WSJ piece:
“From successes come role models and from the role models come change,” said Union Square Ventures’ Mr. Wilson, who recently called for more diversity in the start-up world.
In the article, Rachel Sklar took a bit of a swipe at TechCrunch and Mike Arrington did not like that one bit.
He just posted a long rant on the issue on the TechCrunch blog. And guess what? He is using Disqus to host the comments to that post.
I would love to see this community join that conversation. I find the comment threads at TechCrunch to be a very different experience to what we have here at AVC. Maybe we can inflitrate and influence those discussions a bit. Maybe we can start with this issue.
I just did my part. I love commenting via Disqus. And I am so excited to see it on TechCrunch.
Comments (Archived):
Any idea (that you can reveal) why they moved from Intense Debate?
Disqus is better. That’s why.
For sure and it always was and Techcrunch would have known that when they implemented Intense Debate.
i suspect that the fact that they are hosted by WP had something to do with giving ID a shot
Turns out product matters. Disqus is elegantly executed.
I didn’t get Disqus at first, but now I think it’s the best comment system out there. It does a nice job.
Noticed disqus being there too. Surprised it took them so long to switch over. I think though they tried it before once and then went back to intense debate – which i found terrible in terms of functionality and UIWill be interesting to see if the calibre of comments increases and the number of trolls decrease now they’re on disqus. If they do, which I think they will, it’s a great facet of the disqus service – use disqus, elevate the debate. They are one of the unsung heroes of the social media revolution. Would love for them to do well. They definitely create more value than they capture.
It would be really nice if Disqus would be able to identify communities of interest. e.g. surface other commenters from other Disqus communities I frequent.I agree that most TC comments are inane/self promotional/spam.
“It would be really nice if Disqus would be able to identify communities of interest. e.g. surface other commenters from other Disqus communities I frequent.” – I’d love this feature as well, it’s on my wish list for the service.
coming soon
OT: For the record, I just tweeted a problem to @disqushelp — Gianni responded in minutes — problem fixed quickly, easily. Am in love. Eager to hear more on this upcoming Disqus development — a few of us were commenting just recently about this on another AVC post. As a web consumer, I must say that knowing the company is backed by USV immediately raises my confidence level.More on this current post later. Enjoying seeing so many new commenters! Thanks for keeping the discussion going. Appreciate you.
I actually have an extension install in my browser (Chrome) that removes the comments from TechCrunch. They are just too banal and mean.
Crike, Fred! techcrunch? You want me to go to techcrunch?i left those guys long ago, mostly BeCause of their comments.But seein’ as how it’s you askin’…I’ll go.(later that same day…)Okay, I went. I really wanted to join in the conversation, but rather than talk about the subject (more women entrepreneurs) the conversation immediately devolves into a “who is better?” argument. I withheld that view as I’m certain if I expressed it there I would immediately be attacked by both sides.Which brings the question to my mind: Is there anything inherently wrong with a community behaving that way within itself? I’ve had discussions with folks who were about as non-aggressive as you can imagine, as well as with those whose most friendly comments seemed intent on starting a brawl.I’m very interested in the ways Form and Function are used to achieve a given result. Here at AVC the Function might be loosely referred to as something like “entrepreneurial/VC success” (yeah, I know that’s a really small pigeonhole, but this only an example-on-the-fly and is prone to simplistic inaccuracies). Over at Techcrunch, the Function is very dissimilar. So the Forms applied by the participants will be different.I didn’t really enjoy those few minutes spent at Techcrunch, but then again, I research many things I don’t enjoy.On the other hand, it was easier to follow the argument with Disqus!
okay I did my part as well.Those aren’t comments BTW.They are the cat calls of construction workers on break.You would hope that people with the intelligence to read techcrunch and get through the blogging system would have something more to add.If AVC is a bar or dinner party – then teccrunch is like the old Blue Section of Madison Square Garden during a Rangers – Islanders game.
I’ll go farther. If this is a bar or dinner party, the TechCrunch comments (and for that particular post in particuar) are like a Juggalo tailgate at an ICP concert.
I’d say they are more akin to the lunch room at a state prison than anything else I’ve ever witnessed.
Except state prisons are full of big dangerous guys and the trolls in TechCrunch are weenie guys who probably hate their mothers. They don’t scare me.
I liken AVC to a very good dinner party.So since you mentioned it, I was picturing, in my own mind, TC as a basement of a freshman-year frat party with beer spilled and smeared on the dirty floor. It stinks, it’s dark, and if you’re not careful you’ll probably slip going down the stairs and land on your ass in front of a room of people, who will laugh loudly at you and not bother helping you up.But hey, maybe that’s just me!
Disqus is the core community connector for me…but something that is hard for folks to get their heads around.Always good, especially in my connections in the wine world to have someone enter my site through Disqus…but it is a rarity.
I have no data or facts on whether an equal number of women can do well at quantitative disciplines or not. Time will eventually answer that. But I’m fairly confident that if we change the underlying reasons for the gender imbalance in tech, we will know the answer pretty soon: and medicine, law, business have now found out what the answer is. Remember that it wasn’t too long ago that all of those fields also thought that women would suck at it and were proven wrong.So here are what I see as the problems:1) Parents unintentionally plant the seeds that boys should build things, while girls should make homes or whatever, by CHOOSING different toys right from infancy.2) Parents reward kids for different things: boys for DOING something, girls for being NICE to visitors, helping out mom etc.3) relatives and neighbors reinforce the same every day.4) Peer pressure is huge. So you do what your peers do. girls who are interested in building stuff (playing with legos or any so called male toys) are quickly dumped from groups. So what do a majority of girls do, give in to peer pressure. you are a kid what more do you do at that point.5) So you build interests as a kid. And girls by the time they are in high school haven’t developed an interest in engineering.Up to this point US and India are the same.6) In the US you are told to go to school and study what you are interested in. 🙂 And there lies half the problem. In India they tell you to study something that will eventually be useful, so will result in a good paycheck. So what happens, in the US girls make up 7% of the computer science class, in India they make up 33% of the computer science class. Girls start studying computer science whether they like it or not and by the time they are done, a majority of they will become decent at it and maybe get deeply interested in it.Of course this is sckewed by the fact that India has 33% affirmative action for women. But what about the next generation of India kids, whose MOMS will be engineers. I’m sure they will answer our question about whether women can do just as well as men at engineering.We need to start encouraging kids in the US to pursue careers that 1) are useful to other people, so that they will pay for your services and 2) that they have interest in and 3) make sure that we are not pushing girls out of engg through societal pressures as kids.If me make those changes, the next generation wil answer our questions whether there will be more women in tech and in turn more women entrepreneurs.
In the eternal words of Oblio’s dad, “He’s got a point there!”
One of the smartest things said to me later in life: You can change behavior and its reinforcements later in life.
Can you elaborate on your point as i did not get it. 🙂
I think there are parts of us that are a bit Pavlovian at any age. If you go to someone at age 22 and say “build a company” and give positive responses, despite previously held beliefs, you can cause a switchover in behavior. It will probably be more difficult, but it will happen.It is definitely easier to do with little kids, you are using different parts of the mind- however I think the mind is plastic enough to adapt.
I agree with you about that. But the problem is that to become truly good at anything, it takes a few years of work. Starting to code at say 27 is super hard because you need to worry about paying rent, buying groceries, scared that your career is going to stall, kids etc. There is way more perceived risk to change careers later in life, so a lot of people don’t do it. Also the dip (as Seth Godin calls it) is so long that most people quit. And that is why the early years in life when you don’t have any responsibilities are super important.No numbers here but I feel that for every one person like you who might take the risks and reinvent their career, there a thousands that are scared and don’t do it. 🙂 It’s less about whether they CAN do it and more about they WON’T do it as they perceive the risk and effort required to be too much.
Maybe because I am going through a dip myself (it is not the most pleasant thing in the world always, trust me)- I see it largely as developing a cultrual milieu where we develop the reinforcements for those behaviors to shift and change,Meanwhile- how do I find my technical cofounder and do that shift, how do I present my first fundraising documents while looking for a job because I am going to have to support myself while doing this. Busy busy busy. It just hit me in this post, now is the time, and I think I have enough of a community to surround me that I will make it out ok. (B2B)
The best way to do it is to find a job that flanks engineering: Sales engineering, technical marketing, product support, product management, program management etc. And build solid relationships with engineers. Identify good engineers (technically competent and still patient to explain details to a non-technical person). Work with them, learn from them, learn to learn from them, do stuff, get their feedback. Earn their respect, and one day they will take the dive with you as a technical co-founder. 🙂 You can’t just find a technical co-founder, you need to earn a technical co-founder. 🙂 Similarly they are earning a business co-founder by being the good engineer that I talked about. 🙂
I am taking a ruby class- does that count?More seriously though. Job applying is depressing. 🙁 Very dip-ish. I mean I recognize the summer problem, and the new person looking problem, it still doesn’t make me happier.
Will send am email. 🙂
got my email.?
Yes, I was at a bridal shower of someone I’ve known from preschool. It deserves a long response- not something you do at bridal showers
Diqus is very very good, but no commenting system is good enough to prevent what is going to happen there. 🙂
As a woman in tech who has been in it for almost all of my adult working life, I find these articles offensive. I wonder why these women who do the interviews and the media that does these stories can’t see the hundreds of thousands of us in the business, or why they won’t acknowledge any of us. We broker deals, have the same VC connections as the guys in tech, build, sell and buy companies, innovate, own categories, etc. There are literally more women in the business than ever before. Instead of celebrating this and using the rare sliver of media coverage in a major paper like the journal to give all of us much needed exposure, it goes to this silly and relatively untrue topic instead. It’s a waste.I don’t know why some of the women in tech can’t see all the women in tech, but they should try. They might find some really inspiring people to talk about instead.
Hi Patricia,I admire your success as an entrepreneurr. I agree with you that successful women in technology should be given more coverage. But have to disagree with you about ” Instead of celebrating this and using the rare sliver of media coverage in a major paper like the journal to give all of us much needed exposure, it goes to this silly and relatively untrue topic instead. It’s a waste.”Below is the first paragraph on your website about page:”I’m a serial media and internet entrepreneur. I build and sell media and internet projects. What this means is that I take a lot of meetings, lunches, speaking engagements and that kind of stuff. I’m usually the only woman in the room and definitely the only person wearing the color pink or strappy Jimmy Choo heels 98% of the time. It’s a cool job.”There is a problem that there aren’t enough women in technology even though a lot of progress has been made in the last 15 years. The reasons that main stream media points to about VC bias etc is where the problem is. The real problem is our social culture and not pushing kids into studying useful things. Please read my comment somewhere on this post.
I do a unique part of the business (serial entrepreneurship, business development/strategy) that a lot of men as well as women don’t choose as careers — I don’t think it’s because people don’t have the option to but because they pick other things. Every year it grows a little more and a little more people (male and female) join this area of the business.But to say there are no women in tech in general is untrue. Women have only been in business in general since the mid-80s which I also think is a factor, but as somebody who has been in the business for a long time I see more women in tech now than ever. I advise a lot of women and men in the business. I also have a lot of VC relationships including lots at the top firms in the industry. The biggest issue I find in people not receiving funding is not in gender but in a lot of people (male or female) dont really understand how VC investment works and also what kind of things VC invest in. So you have people expecting a firm in the Silicon Valley to invest in things without a model that is popular there. That would be a totally different type of investor. You also have a lot of people that don’t understand the scale that a lot of VC firms like to see, so they pitch things that again don’t fit. There are more ways to fund a startup than just VC capital, and sometimes better forms of capital investment for what you want to do. 98% of the most successful entrepreneurs I know prefer not to raise VC money and even some of the VC i know say don’t do it unless you have to, etc. I think this plays into as much of a factor as anything else. As a woman in tech, not one of my projects has ever neglected to get VC attention so I can’t agree it’s about bias. I’m no different than anybody else. But I understand how that part of the business works, and that’s the ticket to your project getting that attention regardless of gender.
Another problem, Patricia, is my phone number is on the Internet. +1-425-205-1921. I do videos of tech startups (generally) at http://youtube.com/scobleizer and http://building43.com (I’ve interviewed thousands of people over the years, including 600 when I worked at Microsoft alone). Most of the engineers/innovators/risk takers, etc, are men that I run into.Who calls me and pitches me? Either mostly-men CEOs, or geeks who build something cool, or women who work for PR or marketing departments who are pitching me interviews with their male engineers or CEOs.This is an open invitation to please change these ratios or bring me places that show the stereotypes are wrong.
I’m remembering that for when I am slightly older.
Robert – some of the reasons women aren’t calling and pitching you can be found here :)http://www.shirky.com/weblo…
i agree that there are way more women in tech than most thinkbut why are women less than 5% of all entrepreneurs who come in and pitch us?that’s not right. we do have to change that ratio
Fred: unlike most journalists, I actually visit tech companies around the world and walk through them. In almost every tech company the engineering teams are 90% male. Around the world. Israel. UK. Germany. Japan. China.When we held conferences for Visual Basic programmers in 1993 425 men showed up and two women did.When I held a dinner in the early days of the blogging world which was open to the public only a couple of women showed up. Mostly men did. Most of the people in that room have gone on to big careers in social media (Winer, Biz, Ev, Ben and Mena Trott, etc).In college, my first year of Calculus had about 40% women (at West Valley Community College, in Silicon Valley). Second year? 15%. Why the drop? THAT is where we need to fix this problem.
Robert, I feel that the wrong people are being blamed for gender imbalance in tech. The real problem is that cultural and social issues provide incentive for girls to stay away from tech. Parent play a huge role in that unintentionally.Second, all the countries you point out are in the so called developed world. Look at India, ~ 30% of engineers are women. And the reason is that engineering pays. We need to encourage kids to follow a career that is useful.The education system for computer science was screwed up in the 80s and 90s. The courses were taught by brilliant people who designed the courses for themselves rather than to get more people into the field. The introductory class in computer science at MIT is the scheme course. most people want to have nothing to do with computer science after that.i have a longer comment below. 🙂
My mom is a programmer to this day, she remembers programming when you dialed in and had tape. Doing conferences was very hard on her: She missed one of my birthdays growing up (supposedly, I don’t remember this)You need more women mentoring women on the local level and meeting with each other, rather than the big conference in some foreign location- it’s really difficult when you are a parent to get away- even large multinationals are starting to adapt to this reality that you can’t move families of women and men constantly, you can’t move them constantly, you end up killing the productivity of the next generation of workers.
I am ashamed to say I used to be very good at math and science, to the point where I used to grade my peer’s work at the teacher’s request. I think the notion of wanting to feel like a normal teenage girl quelled this interest. I can’t imagine a 14 year old version of myself taking up an interest in programming.
Robert, we need to fix the problem at all levels. When we were both at Microsoft, you saw the techniques that I used to boost participation by women from 5-10% to 25-30% (which is roughly the percentage of women in technical discussions). When you had a dinner and only a couple of women showed up, who did you ask and what did you change for your next dinner and the one after that? Who have you asked for suggestions about how to increase the percentage of women and minorities you interview, and what changes have you made as a result?Yes, it’s hard. That’s no excuse not to try and learn from the things that haven’t worked.More at http://www.talesfromthe.net…jon
With off-the-shelf technology where it is we’re going to see more that are demographic-driven and not as deep technically, although still categorized as “tech”.Agree we need to increase the number of gals in STEM. I’m working on this with my own daughters. I’m the daughter of a world-class engineer and was good in math but didn’t bother continuing.However in the meanwhile, there is deep knowledge of markets that are currently underserved by today’s tech. There are things that it takes being a woman, a mother, or being very close to women or parenting to understand and turn them into incredibly profitable businesses.These are the ones I have my eye on.And yes, if you want another woman to interview, gimme a call. Because I promise you, my phone ain’t ringing.
i don’t think this is about programmingthe special sauce in most startups is product, not engineeringand i think woman are awesome product people
Women are generally better communicators, and they get social interaction better than men.It’s odd that there’s so few women leading in the social web space.I can see it in how my girlfriend interacts and manages her online presence, the difference is obvious for anyone who has seen a woman work onlineFortunately for me, I can learn from her experience. And so should do other men in the industry, if not from their partners, from their female employees.
Honestly, we don’t really know how. Our friends aren’t doing the same thing so we don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of. The idea of hanging out exclusively in the tech community as is often required a diligent startup strikes me as very lonely. Yes, we should all follow our passions. Simple friendships are cornerstones of mental health and frankly, my life experience is different than that of the average coder at a startup.It’s one of the reasons why I stopped playing tennis. After 25, most of the people who play at a certain level are men. It gets old.
I’ve read a lot of your comments on here and at TC as well as many others’ comments, and I don’t get this:If you like tennis at age 25, play it. Pursue that passion. Why do you need the support or validation of other women? Okay, so it gets lonely, so you quit the sport overall? I don’t get this if you truly love tennis, or in this case, technology and startups.A couple different women on TC wrote that their CS departments back in college were predominantly male, signified loneliness and the lack of social lives, etc. But again, if you have a passion, pursue it. If you like engineering, math, science, or programming, do it? Sure the road gets bumpy, but it’s no excuse to quit. As a female programmer (majored in a science, self-taught programming), I just have the mindset that if I like something enough, I’ll pursue it despite extraneous variables and their respective circumstances. We should stop making excuses.
Speaking only for myself, I don’t really give a rat’s ass if I’m alone or the only woman.I’ve always done my own thing. And I’ve frequently called things out sooner than other people. I am very comfortable with that, in fact thrive in it.My issue is, I’m a mother and this provides some restrictions on a location and a few specific hours in the day. And this fact knocks out a number of paths for me, vis-a-vis building my company.And this means that certain people, who see a certain set of opportunities, is not effectively served by the mainstream.
Maybe the solution is to get wealthy people who have nannies to sponsor nannies for talented mothers who are aspiring entrepreneurs. Let the nannies be American women and this will create jobs for Americans while facilitating entrepreneurship by mother/entrepreneurs whose companies may create more jobs.
If there were such a program, I’d sign up for it.
Tereza,You should create such a program. Make it a complement to your XX combinator. This reminds me of a Peter Drucker quote that I read in a book about small businesses, the title of which escapes me at the moment. The author wrote about going to see Drucker a few years before Drucker passed away and asking Drucker why there wasn’t a Drucker-like book written about small businesses. Drucker responded, “Because you haven’t written it yet.”
Dave, you are so funny. And a total mensch.You gave Arrington’s post a thumbs-up. And yet you give me encouragement.Like I said, a total mensch. Thank you!And you know, that’s such a good example. Real people may disagree on some things, but they still hope each other success.That can’t legitimately happen in an anonymous setting. Instead it too easily devolves into mud-slinging generalizations.
Tereza:This sub thread in which you replied here to Dave Pinsen continued with me jumping in with reply to Dave thinking that I had identified the “small businesses” Drucker like book that he had mentioned in his preceding reply to you.Turns out that I referenced the wrong Drucker related book in my reply but, being a firm believer in Drucker’s ideas and philosophies, I continued to search to see if I could identify the correct book.So far I have drawn a blank; however Dave also pointed out that by replying directly to your original message here, DISQUS would email to let you know about the rest of this sub-thread in case you might not have been aware of the rest of our comments here.With that said, I just wish that I could also now add the title of this mysterious book because I would also like to read it since it is not in my library. Perhaps one of us will come across it at some point when we are not thinking about it. Stranger things have happened!
Having met Drucker in college way back when, I’ve long been a fan of his work.The book to which you are referring Dave is “The Definitive Drucker” by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim published by McGraw-Hill in 2007.I have that book and enjoyed reading it; even included a recommendation of it in my LinkedIn profile. In my opinion, Peter Drucker is as relevant today as he ever was. “The Daily Drucker” by Joseph A. Maciariello (Harper Business) is also a great read. While many of his concepts and insights where developed based upon involvement in Big Business, much of it applies equally well and directly to SMB and can serve as a useful guide even to the tech businesses discussed here.That said, I agree with Dave Tereza: You should (plan ahead to) create such a program (once your current project and family commitments will allow). Make it a complement to your XX combinator: There clearly is a very great, even urgent, need which you are particularly well positioned to articulate and service.
Thanks for your response, Peter. That wasn’t the book I was referring to though; the book I was referring to actually applied Drucker-like analysis to SMBs, and was written by a man. I wish I remembered the title or the author’s name. I’ll share that here if I remember it.________________________________
You’re welcome Dave and you are correct: I realized my mistake only after I made the post. I grabbed the book I listed and quickly realized that while there was a similarity to the idea of “the book has not been written yet” this was not the particular book to which you had referred. My apologies for rushing in too quickly. Since most of my other books are in boxes currently, if I remember or come across the title before you do, I’ll post it.BTW: Nonetheless, for any one interested in Drucker’s ideas, both books mentioned above as well as the one you mentioned are all worth a read.
Peter,You ought to also reply directly to Tereza, so Disqus sends her an e-mail notifying her of your comment. She’d probably be interested in reading your thoughts as well.If you come across the title of the book I alluded to before I do, please do post it.Best,DP________________________________
Are you a parent?
Lanie, I love tennis, but women’s tennis is very different from men’s. On a court with a woman, I’ll get more aces and can end points shorter. I’m a good 70 pounds lighter and six inches shorter than the average decent male player, so I tend to play more defense. It destroys your body over time. Trust me.It’s hard to know you would even like programming when you look at the people who do it and say “Wow, none of those people are like me.” We often don’t run into that serendipitous moment or that friend that really kick starts us to do something we wouldn’t normally do.It’s no an excuse–merely an observation that might help others figure out why it is.
Lanie,I think that if given the choice between a career path I loved with no people I connected with or one with which I was happy and tons of people like me–I’d pick the second. It isn’t because I’m not touch enough or making excuses. It’s because I’m willing to put up with less than perfect in one regard in order to get a significantly better result in another.
Especially if you love and are interested in a LOT of things. For example, I actually enjoy pulling weeds. It’s meditative, the best way to get out of your head is to get into your body, nature gives off negative (which means good) ions, I like seeing clear signs of progress (nothing like a big pile of leaves, trimmings, and weeds to get rid of to feel strangely accomplished) – I love it. Would I love it if I had to do it while someone was talking incessantly? If it were 100 degrees outside? If I kept getting bitten by mosquitoes? Of course not. Environment and circumstances make a big difference, and people are a big part of that.
Why is this wrong? Two possible reasons:(1) Women bring different mindsets/backgrounds that will help them to solve problems largely ignored by the male population (much like your XX Combinator post discusses)OR(2) Women are in someway being treated unfairly, giving us a smaller population of women entrepreneurs.I think #1 deserves attention because of the value we’re leaving on the table by not building women-focused products and services. That being said, if men could build those same services I’d be just as satisfied.#2 I don’t know enough about to comment on. From my recent readings it appears that women may even get a boost, but that’s largely based on Arrington backlash commentary.
Perhaps they’re too busy building businesses that don’t need expensive venture money. Why is needing venture capital the holy grail of entrepreneurship?Stella and Dot–bootstrapped to ’08 revs of $3 million. ’09 they did 10x that. On pace to do 100 in ’10.I wouldn’t come pitch us VCs if I were her either.
that’s a possibilitybut i think the entrepreneurs who pitch us a relatively balanced samplei could be wrong
Fred, it’s great to see you take this on, both from the perspective of tackling deep systemic issues and also from the perspective of improving the quality of startups and the products and services they produce. Designing products for a diverse world/market is more difficult/riskier when the designers don’t reflect that diversity. Simple.And if you consider, as I do, that what entrepreneurs are producing is a core driver of how our society will work in the future this becomes even more important.Maybe opportunity for ‘hacking entrepreneurial diversity’ session?
I wrote two times to USV asking how I could submit my idea and did not even get a reply and I was clear stating my idea was related to women on the web. I understand you get many enquires but if you really want to change the ratio, may be just giving a look if ideas coming from women are worth could be a good start. You’ ve encouraged members to participate to the bog’ s discussion to get then to a further stage of a personal meeting, but not posting does not mean someone does not participate. I am great listener and not always great entrepeneurs with great ideas like to be under the light of an audience.
who did you write to and when?i will investigatewhat is the name of your company?
I am so far behind the ball on this post but hey… I’ll come in and pitch to you in about six months if that’s what you’d like. However I might be pitching something so very different than anything in your portfolio! 😉
I interview tons of women for my shows. If you have interesting tech, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].
I agree that the goal is stories where, randomly, we see lots of women cited, but it’s about the business and not about the novelty that they are women.But the minute you hear, “oh, sorry, we’ve already done a story on a woman entrepreneur this quarter” — then you know we’re not there yet.
Gold star for your general awesomeness.
Today’s Dilbert is an interesting footnote to this discussion:http://dilbert.com/strips/c…
Fred, it’s a very important topic and many women in high.-tech have given their views, Carol Bartz, Sandy Kurtzig for example (check Founders at Work, Betting it All or In the Company of Giants which give good interviews of women entrepreneurs,) I had done my contribution on my blog, extracting some of their views (http://www.startup-book.com…
I will take any day a business that doesn’t depend on controversy to drive revenue home.I will take any day a solid, innovative business no matter who founded it, who run it, or who funded it.Arrington’s argument for what I can glean, fails to meet at least one of these criteria.
I wonder if we’re not reading about women in tech because they are less likely to do the fund-raising thing which is overwhelmingly a macho male process. The business owners I know who female and in tech fields are all bootstrappers. There is also the service/product split. For some reason women business owners often start service businesses.Perhaps the changing face of investors with the super angel model will change this.And yes, Disqus on TechCrunch. Given that Disqus has a reputation management model it might discipline the comment trolls on TC and encourage better exchanges. I certainly hope so.
I know a bunch of ball-busting, successful women entrepreneurs who’ve whispered to me they didn’t do fundraising because the impression was they’d be treated like sh*t. They were afraid and were successful enough bootstrapping that they didn’t want the agida.
That’s a big score for Disqus. Congrats to Daniel and the Disqus team. I also noticed some improvements to Disqus’ login / comment process for mobile. Good stuff.
My tweets in response to @arrington’s #womenintech post:[in chronological order (earliest comment first)]@nakisnakis Every […] time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. –@arrington http://tcrn.ch/dxftBnStruck by @arrington’s defensive tone. <- “Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.” http://tcrn.ch/dxftBn cc @vwadhwa #genderskewed@vwadhwa’s response to my tweet -> RT @nakisnakis: Struck by @arrington’s defensive tone. > Natalia, Arrington is not the problem. He is a supporter. Hired a woman as his boss@vwadhwa Glad2know that @arrington’s a supporter. Lack of women in #STEM = systems-issue. Men&women are part of a system that needs2change.@arrington Initiatives like @rachelsklar & @emilygannett’s #changetheratio increase awareness&get more women to start companies. cc @vwadhwa
I hope this tack of pasting tweets together into Disqus comments doesn’t take off.
Hi Dave,Thanks for your feedback. I wanted to provide context. As I mentioned, I was struck by @arrington’s defensive tone. I also wanted to show @vwadhwa’s response. Gender disparity is a systems-issue that includes women and men, as well as race.Increasing awareness to get more women to start companies and consider a #STEM career is part of the solution. #womaninnovator, a media campaign that increases the visibility of women innovators is the other part. More stories about women innovators need to get into the mainstream and we need to show the many types of role models that exist so that women and people of color can relate and the entrepreneurship, as well as the VC community can expand their frame of reference.
Natalia,My comment wasn’t about the substance of your comment, but the form of it (recycled tweets). Honestly, I didn’t read your whole comment, because the form of it turned me off. It was as if you were saying, “I don’t care enough about AVC readers to write an original, regularly formatted comment here, so I’m just going to sweep together some tweets I fired off on this and paste them in a comment here”. That’s just my take on it, admittedly. Maybe others didn’t have the same reaction.As for the substance of your follow-up comment (which still, inexplicably, includes Twitter hash tags and @ symbols), I’m not sure there’s even a problem here. There are many fields where women are under-represented (and fields where women are over-represented and men are under-represented). I’m not sure why I should spend any effort thinking about how to encourage people (men or women) to enter fields they aren’t inclined to enter on their own.Particularly with the economy as a whole circling the drain and with unemployment at the highest its been since in decades (with higher unemployment among men than women, incidentally), I find it hard to worry about why so many women decide to do other things than roll the dice on a tech start-up.The “systems problem” we should be worrying about is our economy, whose growth is anemic despite massive, unprecedented, fiscal and monetary stimulus. We need to worry more about making the economic pie bigger than who should get a bigger slice of a shrinking pie based on what gender or other group they belong to.
Sorry been gone weeks. Been busy: http://democracyforum.blogs… What a day to come back to visit! I was getting ready to put out a post called Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig and I visit AVC and you are talking about the same. This mind meld of ours is scary! 😉 Has happened a few times before with yoga, and the NYC subway. We seem to share some kind of an internal clock. Btw, congrats on the Disqus/TechCrunch integration. Let’s welcome the latecomer. http://technbiz.blogspot.co… And now let me go put out my blog post: Arrington Is A Pig. Say PeeeeG!
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG! http://goo.gl/fb/YRu8r
Actually the CEO of TechCrunch is a woman. I don’t see how that makes sense.
Right — and Arrington notes that in his post. I read the post paramendra linked to (I’m not sure why, honestly) and the poster there accuses Arrington of being a sexist without providing any evidence of that (she says he “humiliated” a female tech executive at an event, but without a link to the video or transcript of the event, all I have is the blogger’s word to go on).
It’s the Carol Bartz event and it was staged. She told Arrington to F*ck off back in June and the media ran with it, what no one picked up on was that the whole thing was staged and she was in on it.http://techcrunch.com/2010/…http://techcrunch.com/2010/…
Thanks for filling in the blanks there.
If that is the case, that looks good on Arrington.
he is not a sexist pigi can assure you of that
Wondered what happened to you. Welcome back.
Been busy with political work.
I went over there.I will not post there. I will not subject myself to that level of derision.Why aren’t more women visible in tech? Read the reactions of the men that are posting there. That is the reason, plain and simple. For every man who has evaluated my skills as a human, there are the ones that walked up to me at the trade show and asked if they could please speak “to someone technical”. When I replied with my job title, they still looked around me and jumped on the first non-technical male salesperson that walked by.That was in 1996. It hasn’t changed much.
I had the reverse experience my first time at CES. I was at the booth of a large tech company and asked a woman a question about the product. Her only answer was “let me get someone for you.” She was a cocktail waitress hired by said company to bring people into the booth. Whom do you blame? The tech company for hiring cocktail waitresses to bring people into the booth? The women for taking the job and reinforcing potentially negative stereotypes? The men who go to CES for falling for this and rewarding companies who hire cocktail waitresses?
Uggg- just hire competent people.
Those people, loosely defined I assure you, are the very worst of the internet. I’m afraid they have no concept of civilized discourse, or civilization at all it seems. They are more intent on bashing women and spewing hate than ‘discussing’ anything whatsoever. You know it’s bad when the editors and authors routinely turn comments off on their own site.
maybe we can change the ratio at TC as well
Would be nice, although seriously the tone is a big turn-off.I just posted and am cringing in anticipation of the anonymous responses I’ll get. Hacker News were seriously malicious about me and other women, and they know nothing about me.I have thick skin and can handle it, but…..blech!
It would be nice, but I don’t hold out much hope…at least not in the shortterm. It will take serious moderation efforts from TC to make it work.That’s not to say that it can’t, Engadget recently switched to Disqus withpretty good results, but it was part of a larger initiative on commenting onthe site in general.
Once knew a young woman in San Francisco who worked in a very busy Car Parts store in the city. People lined up in several lines leading to different points at the counter in-line with different customer service reps of which she was one. She was the only woman servicing customers.A guy in one of the lines, been waiting a while, apparently suddenly realized that he was in her service line. He muttered to the person just behind him that “We’re wasting our time in this line. There’s a woman serving it” and he moved to the back of another line.I’ll bet by now you know where this is leading?So he finally reaches the head of the new line and says to the male customer rep “I have a VW Rabbit and I need such and such ‘I think’ but I’m not exactly sure what part to get. Can you help me?” The customer rep politely and pleasantly said “Oh! You need to be in that line over there. Christy is our resident expert on all things VW”.Thus he ended up going back to the back of the line in which he had started a good many minutes before.This actually happened: It was in 1985. It has not changed much.
Small quibble: we’ve put Disqus on all posts, not just the Women in Tech one. The timing for rolling it out couldn’t have been better, though. That post is definitely putting Disqus to the test immediately. Thanks to everyone who took the plunge and headed over to take a look. We are well aware that our comments section could use some improvement. I’m hoping Disqus can help to start that process.
Second everything Andy said. We still need to do a better job with moderation, but I think Disqus will help a lot.
Guys, put official people or unofficial people in charge of playing community moderation (aka policing) and welcoming new users. The smartest thing to do is to have someone around whose whole position is to say “hello” and ask questions politely. Make sure they have the authority to say “Person- you are wrong, behave or go, we are trying to develop a discussion here for the sake of this website)You may want to hide the comments at first as well- granted this will piss a lot of people off- it will also get them to behave if they want to comment party (it seemed to slowly help parts of endgadget)And as always, good luck.
Yeah, we’re working on a solution right now. Expect something soon.
Looking forward to it. 🙂
MG,If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really care what they said about me. None of those people would say that stuff to my face and it actually mobilized a lot of women around the topic. Haters are going to hate, but the best revenge is success. ;-)MG
I don’t mind haters if they’re on-topic.But if they’re asking for a “bj” that’s out of line and absolutely discourages me from commenting there.I like to have my name behind what I say, and frankly, in that environment I do not feel safe.
That’s good to hear.
Relevant to both the women in tech topic and techcrunch commenters: I was just reading a thread on TC about foursquare. One of the comments was by a woman. (Someone I’ve met in person and who I think is sharp.) A commenter replied asking for a “bj”.I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that here. Or Fred is much quicker in moderating than TC is.
It’s a combination of factors. It’s not just Fred (though he is extremely helpful) There use to be a polite lockerroom here. Definitely what killed it long term was having regularly appearing female commentators. I’ve personally yelled at KidMercury for what I thought was stepping over lines.If other people aren’t seen stepping up in a community, then nothing happens. It’s why I’ve seen a shift from last summer even where there was the occasional comment about how women look, to now very little.
I feel guilty (sort of – 😉 ) for not participating much anymore (still reading/ lurking, though), but life has taken some turns that take my energies elsewhere. Apologies for being so hit and miss.That said, as for TC: I’m also loathe to participate in some of these …um, conversations that reach below the belt. rakeshlobster’s reference to the (male) TC commenter who responds to a smart comment by a woman with a request for a “bj” just illustrates how crappy it gets. Like, a woman needs to engage in that “conversation” to prove that she can “take” it? Take it where? Up every orifice? Hey, whatever happened to online privacy? Who needs getting bloodied in that sort of discourse? That’s not even a “pissing match,” that’s just a nasty nasty low blow.I’ve read Vivek Wadhwa’s recent article about ageism (in TC: “Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age”), and coupled with that, articles about why measuring prosperity via GDP is misguided (see http://www.salon.com/books/… ) and commentary like Frank Rich’s in the NYT (“The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party” – sorry, I’m not html-ing links because I’ve found that Disqus considers comments with lots of links “spam”) – and, well, you can connect the dots.
It’s not much better for the young too right now. I’m ready to hurtsomeone- I have no idea why this is, but nearly every job requires 1-2years, never entry level. Crazy
*shrug* Fabricate it. 🙂 When I say fabricate it, I mean if you truly have the skills then you got them some way, right? Right. So, volunteer work for 2 years learning your skills is enough to qualify you for the position. Or, maybe you have a killer personality? Apply anyway and pitch the hell out of them.Recently I was in the position of hiring an ‘entry-level’ technician, which meant anything from forest green to someone with 5 years of experience. We had two candidates, one who had everything we wanted, another who had almost no formal experience. What the second did have was a resume that showed off his resourcefulness and independent capabilities. He knew his stuff and expressed it well in the interview, even though his resume was short on ‘formal corporate experience’. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn of the second guy until after we’d made the first one an offer but for the next week we attempted to get funding for both positions. He was that impressive.To make a long story short – you can interview outside of your resume and you can pad your resume while still making it truthful to get that interview to wow the guys making the decision.
I definitely fall into the second rather than the first category. I haveexperience, I tend to shape my own. I also realize that applying is anexperience in and of itself.
Yes that’s a real problem.
that would piss me off big time
i will be commenting at TC a lot more nowi always have commented at TC but landing on a comment thread recognized and ready to say something is a big deal
Good. Looking forward to it Fred.
Yes — with a feeling that there’s some sort of “bouncer” at TC would have me commenting there more.
that is great news Andy. i hope you will share your feedback with the disqus teami give them all kinds of feedback based on my usage of the system and i believe it has helped them make it bettergiven the volume of activity at TC, i think you can do the same, maybe even more
Fred,You mentioned in a post earlier this year that you have known Robert Rubin’s son (Gretchen Rubin’s husband) for ten years. Can you get an intro to Larry Summers through him? It would be interesting to hear Larry Summers weigh in on this debate.Summers’s comments (while he was president of Harvard) about the paucity of women in quantitative fields — and the vitriolic reaction to them — came to mind when reading the first few comments over at TechCrunch. Commenter “D.M.” noted that relatively fewer women major in quantitative disciplines in college, which might have something to do with their under-representation among tech entrepreneurs. For that he was variously told to “watch his tongue” by a female commenter who claimed to have had higher math SAT score than him; nitpicked on his improper use of “less” instead of “fewer”; and mocked for his alleged inability to “get laid” given his undergrad major.
I responded to D.M. — didn’t hang around much longer after that.The problem with D.M. was what he said after the comment about women getting quantitative degrees. He said that it had to do with brain function. That’s what raised the ire.BTW, I understand the emphasis on quantitative studies for tech in general, but, in your opinion, is this really necessary to run a tech company given the overall leadership and management skills required? If you care to respond to this, I respect your opinion and since you mentioned the notorious D.M., tag you’re it.
I didn’t see the part about brain function. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about whether there were differences in brain function between men and women, but I just typed “differences in brain function between men and women” in Bing, and this post by Amber Hensley was the first to come up, “”10 Big Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Brains”. Excerpt:Left brain vs. both hemispheres. Men tend to process better in the left hemisphere of the brain while women tend to process equally well between the two hemispheres. This difference explains why men are generally stronger with left-brain activities and approach problem-solving from a task-oriented perspective while women typically solve problems more creatively and are more aware of feelings while communicating.</li><li>Mathematical abilities. An area of the brain called the inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) is typically significantly larger in men, especially on the left side, than in women. This section of the brain is thought to control mental mathematical ability, and probably explains why men frequently perform higher in mathematical tasks than do women. Interestingly, this is the same area of Einstein’s brain that was discovered to be abnormally large. The IPL also processes sensory information, and the larger right side in women allows them to focus on, “specific stimuli, such as a baby crying in the night.”</li>Here’s an excerpt from the second link that comes in up in Bing, “Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?” by Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD (which I won’t hyperlink to here to prevent Disqus from nixing this comment automatically):Scientists working at Johns Hopkins University, recently reporting in the “Cerebral Cortex” scholarly journal (1), have discovered that there is a brain region in the cortex, called inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) which is significantly larger in men than in women. This area is bilateral and is located just above the level of the ears (parietal cortex).Furthermore, the left side IPL is larger in men than the right side. In women, this asymmetry is reversed, although the difference between left and right sides is not so large as in men, noted the JHU researchers. This is the same area which was shown to be larger in the brain of Albert Einstein, as well as in other physicists and mathematicians. So, it seems that IPL’s size correlates highly with mental mathematical abilities.Now, a question for you: If it is true that there are differences in brain function between men and women, why the “ire”? As to your other question, I don’t think having a degree in a quantitative field is necessary to run a tech company, but I can see how a group that is under-represented in a field such as computer science might also be under-represented among tech company founders.
Dave — thanks for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully — as usual. I was hasty in relaying the comment about D.M. and left out that he followed the brain function comment with “men and women are not equal” — I have a feeling that he meant they are different and just chose poor wording but in that ignited environment people run away with those types of comments. Interesting information about differences in brain function. Will have to ponder this. Not sure this bears out in my experience, but my samples may be skewed. Anyway, by no stretch knowledgeable about this.I sometimes wonder if there is a larger question of whether there is a need in the tech arena for more infusion of skills, abilities and sensibilities that are not generally represented in the computer science domain and by those who go that route — as a rule. Would much rather keep thinking about this than get back to my client report. Oh, well…Thanks again, Dave.
No problem, Donna. A pleasure as always corresponding with you. As for your anecdotal experiences being different, no surprise there — you are dealing with elite individuals, and there are elite women in all fields, even ones where most of the elite performers are men.________________________________
You know, I just want to take a moment to point out that here on AVC while regulars can ask each other really pointed, full frontal questions and big debate….for example there are things that Dave has said or Andy’s said in the past, Kid too…that ruffled my feathers (OK, they pissed me off).Yet each are people that are respectful, and whom, with the benefit of elapsed time and lots of interactive comments, I like very much.Even if they hated your last comment, there’s even a good chance they’ll Like your next one.We have a set of really good guys (that includes our women) and I’m very relieved to be back “home” at AVC.
Sometimes you have to venture out a bit to appreciate what you’ve got back at “home.”I think that what we experience here can create a foundation for us to venture onto those other sites, knowing we have someplace like AVC where we can return.
I think one issue Dave is that this type of study represents averages. And averages aren’t really relevant to the problem at hand here. The issue is about individual data points — exceptional individuals. Any women could certainly fall into the class of “exceptional”.The other thing that Donna discussed, which I agree with, is that while quantitative intelligence and analysis is certainly critical, it is not the only driver of managerial or entrepreneurial success.Qualitative analysis — what to judge when you’re in fact missing a lot of information — is another key factor in successful entrepreneurship. It’s also around how to develop and get the most out of relationships. In this discussion this has not valued as a sign of intelligence or merit that matters for tech startups.But it can make or break a company. It also happens to be something that many women are outstanding at.
what she said…
I took a look last night- nothing of substance being said.Let’s change the ratio the easier way. I’m going to look for a job now, in tech (just to be sure about life). While that is happening, I am going to go prepare my slides so I can say I am doing something to change that ratio. Beyond the rule of 10- any advice appreciated (hey I would need a technical cofounder who likes B2B….I have a different set of passions)
Just left my comments – they are far more basic that the rest, but have been my life experiences as a women entrepreneur. Although I haven’t had a start-up in tech -yet- I’m sure the struggles I’ve had are the same.
Thanks for weighing in, Fred.My response is in “Yes it’s hard. Stop whining. Take some responsibility.”, including this:If you really want to make progress, treat it the way you would any other business problem you take seriously. Set goals, put a plan together, hire good people to help you, and do some real outreach. Work with organizations like Change The Ratio, Women Who Tech, Anita Borg Institute, GeekFeminism, BlogHer, Fem2pt0, TechMavens, and so on and invite them to guest post regularly on TechCrunch. Pay a diversity consultant and invest in their recommendations. Oh and while you’re at it please work on race, age, and other biases in TechCrunch and your other enterprises…More at http://www.talesfromthe.net…It’s also a great sign of the momentum that the women-in-technology networks and their allies are making. The steady coverage in Fast Company, Mercury News, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other high profile sites overwhelming evidence increases the pressure on the “objective” defenders of the status quo. It’s getting harder and harder to deny there’s a problem, and that the advantages moving ahead will go to those who address it most quickly.
Re:”I find the comment threads at TechCrunch to be a very different experience to what we have here at AVC.” Lol…It’s like going from Switzerland to Afghanistan. I still can’t find your comment on TC, out of close to 500 there. A ‘Search Disqus’ feature? How about Show me Comments from my Friends and hide others, just so I can see through the fog a bit.
Switzerland to Afghanistan…LOL, William!!!
It’s a jungle of comments out there- like a shouting match. I’ll take 120 comments on AVC anytime over 500 on TC unless Disqus starts organizing long threads.
disqus really needs search in the threads themselvesgreat suggestion
search. search. search.I can’t even find my own posts across blogs…
It’s not search but there is always control F in Firefox find a name on the browser page 🙂
I just posted this on TechCrunch:I wrote the original article which Fred Wilson cited in his blog post (www.tereza.com), which kickstarted this debate.My original rant was as an entrepreneur who is a MOTHER. Y Combinator and other incubators are simply not set up, schedule-wise, to enable someone of my demographic, who live outside of Silicon Valley, to apply. I know several. This part is simply a logistical/scheduling issue. Male parents have similar conflicts.But when you effectively block out mothers, you are blocking out a large proportion of the female entrepreneur pool.For those of you who are not parents, I’ll explain: your kids want you to tuck them into bed at night. You run home, you tuck them in, and after they go to bed, you go back to work. You still work tons of hours. Just different hours. I go to sleep very, very late and wake up early. I work hard on my company and also work hard to be home 4 nights a week between 6pm-8pm. And then as I described, it’s back to work, conference calls, product design/devt, etc.Paul Graham has gone on record on the Y-Combinator website to say he is reluctant to invest in women who have young children:http://www.paulgraham.com/s… — see the extensive footnotes:”[2] One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon. But you’re not allowed to ask prospective employees if they plan to have kids soon. Believe it or not, under current US law, you’re not even allowed to discriminate on the basis of intelligence. Whereas when you’re starting a company, you can discriminate on any basis you want about who you start it with.”I appreciate Paul’s honesty; it’s very effective in encouraging us mothers to save time by not bothering to apply to Y Combinator.I have never, ever sought to be judged by lower standards than my male peers. In fact I want to outperform them. But I want events and opportunities that I could participate in, logistically, if I wanted to. The pushback I’ve received for this simple request has been shocking, to say the least.Regarding women speaking on panels. In all the discussion about “XX Combinator”, which I originated, I have been approached by many writers and bloggers on womens’ business topics. They have sought me out and thanked me profusely for being a “voice” on the subject.Not once have I been approached by a conference planner to speak on a panel, other than my alma mater. So I do not buy it that the planners are looking very hard to fill up with women. I am a very eager speaker, I have been at the center of this topic. But my phone ain’t ringing.Many women do shy away from speaking to the press and in public. This is a problem which we must fix, from our end. One thing I’d like to do as part of an “XX Combinator” is compile and publish a database of women entrepreneurs so that conference planners and press can find us easily. Another is that I would encourage every woman to participate in the Op Ed Project (www.theopedproject.org), to teach them to have a public voice.But to emphasize the above, I am highly sceptical of “heroic efforts” to locate female speakers. Even with all this hubbub on women’s entrepreneurship, I have not once been approached by conference planners or mainstream press to speak. If I were planning a panel on this topic, I definitely would’ve asked me. And incidentally, I have a hell of a lot to say about many important topics that have nothing to do with gender.Their loss — I’m a damn good speaker.
Yes, you are.
I can’t disagree with Paul on his suggestion about parents with small kids – I am a stay-at-home dad at the moment with a 6-month old son; and no matter how hard I work at my potential startup’s tech part I can’t stop wondering how much more productive I was a year ago.In the end it comes to a tough choice – either I’m not giving the startup my 100% or I’m a bad parent; and that applies to everyone. A startup where a founder works 40hours and stops thinking about the business at 5 o’clock is at a big disadvantage; but also I wouldn’t want to work with a close partner where this work is seriously harming his family – so the only remaining morally acceptable choices are to just say no to mixing startups with small kids, or treating it as a hobby – which is what I’m doing but that turns it unfundable and not destined for greatness.
You’re in the thick of it so it’s hard to see this right now, but the demand on you as a parent will evolve over time, as it has already. But it is absolutely not static. And I think that perception is really damaging to women and prevents them from on-ramping when they’re ready.Having a newborn takes many people out of the game….temporarily. Especially if they are the primary caregiver. But this changes a lot as the child grows (which is FAST!) and based on your personal circumstances. And the kids start sleeping on a good schedule. And breastfeeding does not last forever.So a few factors happening in the background, and there’s no way Paul Graham or anyone else could know the parent’s personal situation and why/how they make it work. It’s for me as the parent to make it work and not the outsider’s business how I do it. But since there is doubt, let’s open the kimono a little.Some examples.–A grandparent (or more) lives with or near the entrepreneur and play a large role as caregiver, or as the first backup caregiver if the nanny or day care (or school) has a glitch. Many people do this. When you hear about people who move to their hometown to raise their kids, this is frequently the motivation.–Some people are able to cover childcare expenses with the working spouse’s salary.–Some people have savings and use it to cover the childcare.So to break it down for how I specifically make it work for me: My kids are now 3.5 and 7. The older one is in school full-time. The younger is in preschool 5 days/wk 9-12. I have a full-time nanny who lives in. She runs my house, and frankly she does it better than I would if I were home full-time. I’m a great mom but not so hot on routine, so we have a nanny who is my total complement. The girls love her and we view her as a member of the family.While my entrepreneur’s plan had been to move to my hometown, and my mom was going to play primary backup, but she died suddenly a few years ago so I lost that option. (BTW ‘sandwich generation’ elder care issues are another meme I’ve not yet thrown into the XX debate because it would give people a nosebleed, but it is growing and is a big motivator for me to push the topic…demographically our society will soon be hit with a tidal wave of this and it will affect women AND men).How do I pay for the nanny? We can’t cover it with my husband’s salary but I’ve made it work with a blend of savings, a piece of my (small) inheritance, and part-time consulting projects. I work hard to make ends meet but this is totally within my powerbox. Part of my call for a Combinator is that I do need speed, and this would come from my not having to do part-time projects to pay for the nanny so that I can focus 100% on my company.How does it not drive us crazy to have a stranger living under our roof? We decided, when we were buying our house, that we’d buy one that was smaller so we’d have financial flex but it must have a “mother-in-law apartment” which could house a child caregiver and give her her own kitchen, and private entry and exit. It has worked very, very well. She has been with us for 7 years and there is no sign of stopping. Some people spend their money on the house; I find I extract the most personal value by spending on support, not physical space. I don’t need a lot of “stuff”. I need help. So that’s what I pay for and I don’t cut corners there.I try very hard to work locally, from home, 1-2 days/week, so I can do school drop-off and pickup to be visible to the girls — which is important to them. The other days I have packed morning to night meetings. I try hard to tuck them in. I’m on email til 1-2am almost every night. I read email in the bathroom.Both my grandfathers were amazing entrepreneurs. My mom was an entrepreneur. I am wired to do this.I am acutely aware that, being a woman age 40, this is probably, from a market perception point-of-view, my last at-bat to try to start my own web-type business. Wait much longer and I will be rejected from the system like a bad liver transplant.TMI? Perhaps. But without granularity, how can you know that this is not vapor?
So T you add this comment and now my response to your other comment has lost it’s place. So I am adding this one so that it doesn’t look like I am saying “Yes, you are. Vapor.”This was an educational comment because very few of the women around me work — some of them are stay-at-home-moms AND they have nannies! I am an anomaly.Okay, so it wasn’t a tech startup and I wasn’t seeking funding, but I started an entrepreneurial venture (independent search practice) when I was two months pregnant with my THIRD child and with two toddlers. Fortunately we had a guest house that served as an office. My husband was in a career transition and so was a stay-at-home-dad. We had a part-time nanny. My husband or nanny would would bring the baby over to the office for his feedings and I would send emails in the middle of the night with him lying across my lap. When I look back on it, I wonder how on earth I did that. That’s also why in the back of my mind I think I could do just about anything and very little scares me.So, now I am thinking of a counterpart to Jessica Livingston’s “Founders at Work”…this would be “Founders at Home.” That’s probably as much (if not more) a part of of the equation. Is it not?
You’re in the thick of it so it’s hard to see this right now, but the demand on you as a parent will evolve over time, as it has already. But it is absolutely not static. And I think that perception is really damaging to women and prevents them from on-ramping when they’re ready.Having a newborn takes many people out of the game….temporarily. Especially if they are the primary caregiver. But this changes a lot as the child grows (which is FAST!) and based on your personal circumstances. And the kids start sleeping on a good schedule. And breastfeeding does not last forever.So a few factors happening in the background, and there’s no way Paul Graham or anyone else could know the parent’s personal situation and why/how they make it work. It’s for me as the parent to make it work and not the outsider’s business how I do it. But since there is doubt, let’s open the kimono a little.Some examples.–A grandparent (or more) lives with or near the entrepreneur and play a large role as caregiver, or as the first backup caregiver if the nanny or day care (or school) has a glitch. Many people do this. When you hear about people who move to their hometown to raise their kids, this is frequently the motivation.–Some people are able to cover childcare expenses with the working spouse’s salary.–Some people have savings and use it to cover the childcare.So to break it down for how I specifically make it work for me: My kids are now 3.5 and 7. The older one is in school full-time. The younger is in preschool 5 days/wk 9-12. I have a full-time nanny who lives in. She runs my house, and frankly she does it better than I would if I were home full-time. I’m a great mom but not so hot on routine, so we have a nanny who is my total complement. The girls love her and we view her as a member of the family.While my entrepreneur’s plan had been to move to my hometown, and my mom was going to play primary backup, but she died suddenly a few years ago so I lost that option. (BTW ‘sandwich generation’ elder care issues are another meme I’ve not yet thrown into the XX debate because it would give people a nosebleed, but it is growing and is a big motivator for me to push the topic…demographically our society will soon be hit with a tidal wave of this and it will affect women AND men).How do I pay for the nanny? We can’t cover it with my husband’s salary but I’ve made it work with a blend of savings, a piece of my (small) inheritance, and part-time consulting projects. I work hard to make ends meet but this is totally within my powerbox. Part of my call for a Combinator is that I do need speed, and this would come from my not having to do part-time projects to pay for the nanny so that I can focus 100% on my company.How does it not drive us crazy to have a stranger living under our roof? We decided, when we were buying our house, that we’d buy one that was smaller so we’d have financial flex but it must have a “mother-in-law apartment” which could house a child caregiver and give her her own kitchen, and private entry and exit. It has worked very, very well. She has been with us for 7 years and there is no sign of stopping. Some people spend their money on the house; I find I extract the most personal value by spending on support, not physical space. I don’t need a lot of “stuff”. I need help. So that’s what I pay for and I don’t cut corners there.I try very hard to work locally, from home, 1-2 days/week, so I can do school drop-off and pickup to be visible to the girls — which is important to them. The other days I have packed morning to night meetings. I try hard to tuck them in. I’m on email til 1-2am almost every night. I read email in the bathroom.Both my grandfathers were amazing entrepreneurs. My mom was an entrepreneur. I am wired to do this.I am acutely aware that, being a woman age 40, this is probably, from a market perception point-of-view, my last at-bat to try to start my own web-type business. Wait much longer and I will be rejected from the system like a bad liver transplant.TMI? Perhaps. But without granularity, how can you know that this is not vapor?
You’re in the thick of it so it’s hard to see this right now, but the demand on you as a parent will evolve over time, as it has already. But it is absolutely not static. And I think that perception is really damaging to women and prevents them from on-ramping when they’re ready.Having a newborn takes many people out of the game….temporarily. Especially if they are the primary caregiver. But this changes a lot as the child grows (which is FAST!) and based on your personal circumstances. And the kids start sleeping on a good schedule. And breastfeeding does not last forever.So a few factors happening in the background, and there’s no way Paul Graham or anyone else could know the parent’s personal situation and why/how they make it work. It’s for me as the parent to make it work and not the outsider’s business how I do it. But since there is doubt, let’s open the kimono a little.Some examples.–A grandparent (or more) lives with or near the entrepreneur and play a large role as caregiver, or as the first backup caregiver if the nanny or day care (or school) has a glitch. Many people do this. When you hear about people who move to their hometown to raise their kids, this is frequently the motivation.–Some people are able to cover childcare expenses with the working spouse’s salary.–Some people have savings and use it to cover the childcare.So to break it down for how I specifically make it work for me: My kids are now 3.5 and 7. The older one is in school full-time. The younger is in preschool 5 days/wk 9-12. I have a full-time nanny who lives in. She runs my house, and frankly she does it better than I would if I were home full-time. I’m a great mom but not so hot on routine, so we have a nanny who is my total complement. The girls love her and we view her as a member of the family.While my entrepreneur’s plan had been to move to my hometown, and my mom was going to play primary backup, but she died suddenly a few years ago so I lost that option. (BTW ‘sandwich generation’ elder care issues are another meme I’ve not yet thrown into the XX debate because it would give people a nosebleed, but it is growing and is a big motivator for me to push the topic…demographically our society will soon be hit with a tidal wave of this and it will affect women AND men).How do I pay for the nanny? We can’t cover it with my husband’s salary but I’ve made it work with a blend of savings, a piece of my (small) inheritance, and part-time consulting projects. I work hard to make ends meet but this is totally within my powerbox. Part of my call for a Combinator is that I do need speed, and this would come from my not having to do part-time projects to pay for the nanny so that I can focus 100% on my company.How does it not drive us crazy to have a stranger living under our roof? We decided, when we were buying our house, that we’d buy one that was smaller so we’d have financial flex but it must have a “mother-in-law apartment” which could house a child caregiver and give her her own kitchen, and private entry and exit. It has worked very, very well. She has been with us for 7 years and there is no sign of stopping. Some people spend their money on the house; I find I extract the most personal value by spending on support, not physical space. I don’t need a lot of “stuff”. I need help. So that’s what I pay for and I don’t cut corners there.I try very hard to work locally, from home, 1-2 days/week, so I can do school drop-off and pickup to be visible to the girls — which is important to them. The other days I have packed morning to night meetings. I try hard to tuck them in. I’m on email til 1-2am almost every night. I read email in the bathroom.Both my grandfathers were amazing entrepreneurs. My mom was an entrepreneur. I am wired to do this.I am acutely aware that, being a woman age 40, this is probably, from a market perception point-of-view, my last at-bat to try to start my own web-type business. Wait much longer and I will be rejected from the system like a bad liver transplant.TMI? Perhaps. But without granularity, how can you know that this is not vapor?
Having been following this subject since you raised it Tereza, and having also looked at related posts not only here on AVC but also by Brad Feld, Vivek Wadhha, Eric Ries, etc., I have been thinking of what it would take to “compile and publish a database of women entrepreneurs” from the standpoint of adding to our web site the facility for women entrepreneurs – budding and established – to enter credentials into our database that could then be searched as a reference. Admittedly I was also thinking of including male entrepreneurs – creating an entrepreneur look-up resource. I.E. A definite Entrepreneur form of simplified LinkedIn.However, the primary reason that I have not yet done that is because a) someone probably already has done it but I just have not properly phrased my Bing/Google query to find that resource or b) having discussed it here, someone is probably already busily hitting the keys to produce such a resource.If neither a nor b is true, then if you and Donna and anyone else thinks this would be a good idea that would really be of value, I’ll take a look into what it would take to do that.
Fred:Posted this on Mr. Arrington’s site:————————————————————————–If one reads all the comments here and classifies the discourse in pros/cons, hatred/kumabaya, I think it might give an insight why women tech entrepreneurs do not want participate and indulge in this sheer show of ridiculousness started with the initial blog piece (not because they do not have the chutzpah nor do most have fear of taking it on) posted by Michael Arrington: “And what it is this: statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them.”Show me the data Mr. Arrington that led to your hand-waving sweeping remarks — not some anecdotal evidence. Another example, you state that the press is dying to write about this and then connect that statement on how VCs make decisions to fund a company — really you have statistical data to show this causality? If you do you have solved a real problem.Mr Arrington — you also state there is a lack of women entrepreneurs and that’s what leads to less funding. Can you run a statistically valid analysis for this?Mr. Arrington — as Bernard Baruch once said, every person has right to an opinion but does not have a right to his own facts.Dissing people like @fredwilson and others who are involved in solving this issue @bfeld and expressing your frustration though your blog just makes you just another one of those bloggers who think having easy access to a blog is a platform to emote opinions disguised as “facts”.~Rini DasCEO, PAKRA
I posted this on TechCrunch last night as well. It is great to see the insightful discussion in this community and I hope I can add value.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I was glad to read Mike’s article this evening in TechCrunch. As someone who hates whining, I too am tired of hearing the complaints about how there aren’t any (or enough) female CEO’s. My frustration with this comes from a different side. Talk about surreal – its weird reading about how you don’t exist.It’s midnight on Saturday night – just had a nice evening with the family, they are all off to bed so time for a little work on some business analysis I’ve been struggling with. Not your typical Saturday night fare unless you happen to be a (drumroll please)…female CEO – but wait – I don’t exist or if I did it is as such a rare breed as to be some sort of weird exception. Funny thing is I don’t feel like an exception. I don’t sit and ponder being a female CEO, I’m just like any entrepreneur trying to figure out how to grow my business, differentiate my product, build and develop my team so that we can take on the challenges we face. And guess what – those challenges are very real and best attacked with some old fashioned burn of midnight oil manipulating excel business models, analyzing customer usability testing and, the next morning, working with my team in the office. Exactly the same as for male CEO’s. Rather than focus on gender, the most important thing is that we need to all be working together as part of the startup industry to lead our struggling economy out of the gutter.It’s also weird to read about how there are no female CEO’s when, besides being one, I have interacted with them so frequently. Sure, I can name many situations where I’ve been the only one – a CEO summit one of my investors held, or my monthly Vistage CEO group meeting, but more present in my mind are the many wonderful conversations I’ve had with some incredible Female CEO’s. I had the pleasure of getting to know and learn from Donna Dubinsky during an organized trip to Israel, Meg Whitman through our experiences together parenting high-school teenagers and Diane Greene where we jointly cheered our children on in their artistic and sports endeavors. They were all generous with their business insights and advice. Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a great evening organized by Patricia Nakache, GP at Trinity with several female CEO’s – Anne Dwane, Donna Wells, Donna Novitsky, and Mari Baker. It was great to see these talented women running exciting businesses. Meeting and working with these women doesn’t surprise me because, guess what, I knew women like them in business school and college. A generation of us exists here in the valley, in leadership positions and, therefore, growing into CEO’s.Yes we’re here, we exist. And more than a few of us. We’re on the bumpy entrepreneurial road building our companies and, in many cases, our families. Perhaps that doesn’t leave as much time as would be ideal for self promotion and conference presentations but most of us are happy to share our learning and experiences in the hope of encouraging more women to follow an entrepreneurial path. For each article about how there are too few women CEO’s I would love to see an article or profile of the many that do exist. Those women deserve the recognition and I can think of no better way to inspire future women Tech CEO’s.
Laura, you’re absolutely right. There are many female CEOs – just as there are many female entrepreneurs and startup founders. But because there are still proportionately much fewer of us than men in the tech world, anyone genuinely interested in unearthing just how many there are and hiring us/funding us/inviting us to speak at conferences/interviewing us for media pieces, has to put some real effort into doing so, not simply ‘asking around’ – something highlighted by Jon Pincus in his blog post response to Michael Arrington:http://www.talesfromthe.net…and by @anildash in his tweet:Key sentence in @arrington’s post blaming women for women’s exclusion from tech events: “We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions.”
You are so right – they need to work a teensy bit harder in their “asking around” and/or ask different people!
you are the role models i talked aboutwe need to shine a light on you and others
Thanks – I appreciate the kind words!
Laura, I think that the value in pointing out the lack of women startup founders/CEOs is that it helps to get to the root of what could be a systemic issue — and helps those who have felt the barriers to realize that they are not crazy. However, pointing out women like you offers hope and perhaps motivation to overcome the barriers.It was good to see Donna Dubinsky’s name again. I once had the audacity to present a job opportunity to her to run a tech toy startup. She was gracious in declining, but then referred another woman to me — who also declined and now runs one of the largest companies in the world. The startup fizzled out so I guess the latter made the right decision. Reading your list, I found it interesting that three of these amazing women are named Donna. 😉
On a positive note, I have definitely noticed an increasing amount of activity recently in the number of groups & events aiming to create communities connecting women in technology.A few of the more visible ones are: Girls in Tech (http://girlsintech.net) Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (http://anitaborg.org) Ladies Who Launch (http://ladieswholaunch.com) Webgrrls (http://www.webgrrls.com) Women in Technology (http://www.witi.com) 85Broads (http://www.85broads.com) BlogHer (http://www.blogher.com) She’s Geeky (http://www.shesgeeky.org)Girl Geek Dinners (http://girlgeekdinners.com)etc.There are also firms like Golden Seeds (http://www.goldenseeds.com) which invest in women led startups and non-profit groups like Astia (http://www.astia.org) which help women entrepreneurs.Still early days but there definitely seems to be some momentum here and would be great to see more of these type of groups sprout up across the country.
Gary – thanks for highlighting these – I am a member of/participate in a number of them.I would just flag up that Goldenseeds invests at a very low level compared to the capital/funding that should theoretically be as available to women as men in the much more high-profile, much more sizeable tech sector VCs. It’s an unfortunate truth that the organizations and groups that are focused on helping women entrepreneurs tend to have access to less resources and money – and influence.When I set out to get my startup http://www.ifwerantheworld.com funded, various people said to me, there are organizations that focus on funding women, you should check them out. I am all about meritocracy and a level playing field, but I thought hey, I want to get funded, what the hell, I’ll play the woman card if I have to. The actual process of researching who was actually known to, and specifically promoted themselves as wanting to, fund women startup founders, was so goddam depressing – because there were so few; because the research just surfaced those appalling statistics on what a tiny number of women-founded ventures ever get funded relative to men’s, how VCs tend to fund in their own image, etc etc – that I stopped pursuing that route. There are so many things to battle when you are slogging your guts out to get a startup off the ground, I just didn’t need to feel any more discouraged about what I was setting out to do than I absolutely had to be on a daily basis anyway 🙂
Don’t be discouraged, Cindy. As you know, startups are a marathon. Focus on nailing the product use-case and get some traction going and I’m sure funding will follow.For your reference there is another early stage VC firm that focuses on women entrepreneurs. I don’t really have much details regarding funding amounts but feel free to check them out.http://www.illuminate.comAlso a few other women entrepreneur focused organizations that I forgot to mention:Young Women Social Entrepreneurs (http://www.ywse.org/)Women 2.0 (http://www.women2.org)Women’s High Tech Coalition (http://www.womenshightech.org)Hope this helps.
The problem with the “level playing field” idea is… it’s not. Silicon Valley claims (loudly) to be a meritocracy, but what that usually means is – who has the most effective marketing and self-promotional skills (very different from ability, output, how good the idea is, etc.)? Who do those with influence LIKE best? For employees, who’s willing to work around the clock so someone else can make a profit, in the off-chance that it might be properly appreciated one day? Who can afford to work for equity (even partial) for six months, a year, etc.? Who does lunch the most? Who’s the most similar to those who can actually help? Usually, who’s young, white, and male? If it were based on merit, there’s no way it would be THIS homogeneous. The visible evidence does not compute – at least from what I’ve seen, and believe me, I’m looking.So I wouldn’t feel the slightest bit bad about using anything you can to go get it. The best cure for discouragement I’ve found is: “Eyes on the prize” (and sometimes, “Don’t look down”). But what do I know? 🙂 Only that I haven’t been in your exact situation (I’m still in the find-role-models stage), but I do know how you feel.
Do you know why there has been such a shift?
A variety of reasons.There are more female entrepreneurs out there than we think. Many of them are emerging not just from the high tech industry but from food / fashion / publishing / media / arts / retail. I’ve probably come across at least a dozen food related startups in recent months. As the technology stack gets cheaper ‘n commoditized, expect to see more innovation happening at the industry domain level.The groups and events are basically acting as rallying points, serving a pent-up need for the community to come together to connect, support and network. There is also a multiplier effect of sorts as these groups get larger and more visible.Recent peer successes also seem to be playing a key role in raising awareness. The names of Caterina Fake (Flickr), Heidi Messer (LinkShare), Alexis Maybank / Alexandra Wilson (Gilt Groupe) come up frequently in conversation and are sources of inspiration. Hopefully there will be more such role models in the coming months and years.Btw enjoy reading ur comments both here and the NYTM list. Keep ’em coming.
Gary that’s a great description and totally consistent with what I’m seeing too.”As the technology stack gets cheaper ‘n commoditized, expect to see more innovation happening at the industry domain level.”I 100% agree with this and is why I think it’s so important for tech to be open to people from other domains. The winners in that next level of innovation absolutely require the industry domain knowledge.
I like the concept of an XX Combinator. Are you planning to go ahead with it? The devil is in the details of course but I think you may be onto something here. Go for it. Happy to help any way I can.
awesome gary
The good thing about that bloodbath over there is the number of names of women entrepreneurs I’ve come across just in the past few days – mostly in offshoot threads and related articles like this. Even the ones trying to prove that there isn’t a problem by listing some are helpful.I’ve been consciously and specifically asking for help in finding them since last year ( http://bit.ly/bQL3T4 ), and haven’t come across this many. My focus has shifted, and I realize what I’m actually looking for is strong women (especially women of color) in any industry who have forged their own paths, started their own companies, or otherwise made/are making a living outside of the environments in which MANY people don’t really have a chance – and even if we did have a chance, what kind of life would we be signing up for?Thank you to everyone who’s naming names.
I like doing what I do Gary. A part of me finds is extremely odd that Iknow others walk away feeling that they’ve gotten a good idea out of me. Mylarge question is what to do next with that fact.I’m not surprised about industry domain innovation. That’s usually wherethe buck stops and starts. Personally, I think like most startups, mostwill blow up and go away (that’s how businesses work). A number will makeit bigger.
Unfortunately, many of these organizations are ‘pay to play’, which I don’t think is the best model to adopt. Astia requires $5000 per admitted female entrepreneur, plus equity. AllThingsD’s Media startup program required $1000 as a program fee. I can see giving up a tiny percentage of equity in exchange for advisory board-like advice that had measurable impact on the business. However, paying cash for the services of an accelerator program or seed funding intros seems absurd. In my research on funding sources here in Southern California, I’ve encountered organizations like this (Maverick Angels’ $1000 fee to pitch them comes to mind) and they’ve always seemed sketchy and to be avoided.
Agreed. ‘Pay to play’ type organizations are typically sketchy and should definitely be avoided. Startups are cash strapped enough to begin with.You should check out Jason’s Open Angel Forum (http://openangelforum.com). He started it as a response to all these ‘pay to play’ outfits.
Thanks – hadn’t heard of Open Angel Forum. I’ll definitely apply to pitch there.
As posted on Too Few Women a moment ago:My interaction with this issue Women in Tech and Entrepreneurism (and the finding of my voice) was actually on Charlie O’Donnell’s blog. I met Charlie in person and he was quite gracious to talk with me about the tech sector in NY, and specifically, what I could do to find my place. I felt comfortable stating my opinion on his blog because he was respectful and gracious in person.Charlie and Mike kinda think the same thing. They don’t understand why women don’t “just show up”. I am not surprised that they don’t understand. In fact, there are some women, “showing up” just last week, who got funding. I am thrilled for them. I just hope, as Tereza points out, the money lasts until and through the years of child bearing and rearing, and actually past that, because if you run out of money, good luck finding the ramp back on to being a meaningful wage earner. You will have been marginalized.And despite what we might think, that is really not a woman only issue…well, the baby thing is…but not being marginalized. Many men are finding themselves marginalized as well. I guess it is darwinism…survival of the fittest. Hmmm, that doesn’t line up with my experience though. In my experience, it is “he who has the most money, wins”. And men make the most money, still. There are a few outliers to be sure, but in general, men hold most of the wealth, and thus the power, in our society. And no gender is always the “fittest”.I will not go into the long of it, Eric Riess (http://bit.ly/abCvha) did a great job in his piece long ago. It really speaks to diversity…and that would include the value of people with experience. My thoughts are long on this topic, but the short of it is this:As it relates specifically to women, it is helpful to understand the depth of the challenge to gain insight into their dearth of in tech, or at the top of any industry. Unless you are over well over 40, it is difficult to understand the dynamics of pre-title IX living and business and how the opportunity landscape for women is still impacted. I have had conversations with men and women in the last few weeks and I make it a point to ask about Title IX. Not one of the persons I spoke with under the age of 30 knew what I was talking about, and up to 40 could hardly tell me anything about why it may have been important for them. I think that says that there has been great progress.To understand why 35-49 year old class of women are not available you would have to get those two impact points. Child bearing and Title IX. Unless you have ever been told to stop raising your hand in math class or been told “face it, women are oppressed, the sooner you get used to it the better off you are going to be” it would be hard to understand how incidents like these inform a persons belief system. And then to refuse to accept that place and go forward using all your talents, those that are uniquely female, and inherent ambition, drive, intelligence…in a female body was just pretty tough for men to understand. And many were scared. And many women were crushed. A couple of books that are relevant to this discussion are “Games Mother Never Taught You” and “Hardball for Women”.I could go on about the genesis and sociological touch points that frame this conversation, at least from my perch, over 40, but I won’t do it here. I do it on my own blog. It is a long conversation, and it is just getting started. (http://bit.ly/msksboydblog).I have, however, been inspired by the conversation to “just show up”. I am currently crafting a business model to address the distinct needs of a marginalized sector of talent. Not because I want to “help” so much as I think they are, ahhemmm, WE are a freaking “gold mine” of talent = revenue. There is a lot that can be done differently to augment the ratios. But I am not all pissed off at Arrington OR Sklar. They get to have their opinion. I am just going to show up.
i think it helps to live in a home surrounded by women, some of them your children, to really “get” this issue
I don’t know about that. There are lots of men surrounded by women that don’t get the unique challenges of “lady business”. I have had the pleasure of knowing men throughout my life, and career, that have made gestures to impact my efforts in a positive way. There was a time that those men may have experienced significant backlash, so it was only those with a meaningful amount of power that could affect change. I think that those that get it are particularly enlightened. I am glad, and it matters, that you continue to spark the conversation in an intelligent and meaningful way. Thanks!
Anecdotally I’m experiencing that, consistently, married men “get” my particular business, which is focused on women, immediately.If they have daughters, or have been married multiple times, even better.If for no other reason than the fact that they’ve been paying years and years of credit card bills, they understand intimately how freaking huge and evergreen the market is, and that it takes insider knowledge to crack it.
+1
I’m only 30, and while I haven’t experienced pre-Title IX living, I think I understand… Especially since Title IX mainly makes it just a little more difficult to discriminate directly and obviously. Compare the language of ours (1960s, and when’s the last time it was updated? I don’t know.) http://bit.ly/chm0FZ with Norway’s (2005) http://bit.ly/crbISf (not specific to gender, but bear with me here…)Lawyers are able to defeat claims partly because of the language, and the fact that the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff. I’ve never even been to Norway, and I don’t claim to understand the politics, but look at that! They even list skin color and ethnicity separately. They specify and define “indirect” – “any apparently neutral provision, condition, practice, act or omission”, “in all areas of society…” …”Specific measures that contribute to promote the purpose of the Act shall not be regarded as discrimination pursuant to this Act. Such measures shall cease when the purpose of it has been achieved.””A job applicant who believes himself or herself to have been discriminated against in breach of section 4, first paragraph, may demand that the employer provide information in writing concerning the education, practice and other clearly ascertainable qualifications of the appointee for the post in question.””The court may refuse to approve an authority to conduct legal proceedings for another person if, in the judgment of the court, there is a risk that the legal representative is not sufficiently qualified to satisfactorily defend the interests of the party concerned.”Amazing.
Good thoughts, Kelley. Stirring. Thank you.I’ve been showing up in some way or another all my life.
You may want to read this fantastic talk that suggests the difference between men and women is that the distributions are different – there are more men of very high IQ AND very low IQ (also more men at the top of society AND in prison / homeless). Plus, men are genetically more likely to be risk takers, because (evolutionarily speaking) men are who succeeded when taking huge risks were rewarded by producing many offspring from many partners, whereas with women there is a limit to the number of offspring they can reasonably have. Hence we are all the descendants of men who drew huge reward from huge risk and women who attracted those men.Talk is here: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~bau…
We seem to be harping on the VC & seed stage startups but high schools and universities also have a role to play in the formation of more women in tech which then leads to more women entrepreneurs.
You are quite right. The fostering and development of women tech entrepreneurs starts much further back – but there are some pretty fundamental sociocultural dynamics that need to be tackled there. Attracting more girls into computer science/math/engineering classes requires not only more effort on the part of high schools and universities; it requires parents and the girls themselves not to perceive these subjects as ‘male’/’unfeminine’ (self-perpetuating cycle again), and it requires boys to find hardworking, studious, geeky/nerdy girls hot and dateable. Unfortunately.
Oh boy… here we go again. I’d so love to participate in this, but I’m pitching tomorrow and don’t have time. I used to not get my way with a lot of things being a woman (can elaborate more on that later), but I’m not finding that is the case with my start-up. I haven’t heard “no” once.I’ve never experienced it from the male perspective so I don’t know if it’s easier. Entrepreneurship is hard work period. Starting a company from scratch is tough. When I talk to my friends, both male and female, I really find that most of them just aren’t willing to do the work. They also think I’m crazy and unemployed.I actually kind of like being one of the few female entrepreneurs. My market is not saturated. I will not be a “me-too” company. I have the awesome opportunity to be one of the firsts, with the best products, and an intimate knowledge of my market. I hope to become a role model one day to women and men that need one, to those that did not grow up with privilege and connections. When I look for role models I’m not looking for ones that can wear skirts (not just talking a/b kilts). I want ones that have been successful.
All the best with your pitch, Kelly.
Go kick some ass tomorrow, Kelly.
Thanks Tereza :). Planning on it . I hope you had a nice time w/ the fam!
LOL been double-shifting it for a while now — kids during day, working at night — and I’ll let you guess which shift is tougher!Love my kids…and totally can’t wait to have ’em back in school!
Thank you Donna!!
Well, I don’t want to pry…
Hey Kelly (no extra “e”)….So how did it go?
I suspect that the solution to this problem lies in the propagation of social norms.Social norms are behaviors that members of a given society deem appropriate.So, for example, holding the door for a person walking behind you, pausing your vehicle to let someone pass before entering your driveway, standing in a line, throwing garbage in a receptacle rather than on the floor, etc.The good thing about social norms is that they are not static and can be engineered.So, for example, drinking and driving used to be acceptable behavior or even “cool”.Gradually, through public service announcements and other efforts, however, this tacit acceptance ended, and drinking and driving became a ‘malum prohibitum’.Another example would be the, “Loose lips, sink ships” campaign initiated during the Second World War to encourage dock workers to remain silent on the nature of their work, thus reducing the risk of the ships falling victim to German U-Boats tipped off by Nazi spies.Segway inventor, Dean Kamen’s program, FIRST, designed to inspire children to embrace science, technology, and engineering by exposing them to robotics might be considered another example.Though on an infinitesimally smaller scale, there is a presentation that I give on “The Ten Things That Venture Capitalists Look For In A Startup” where I cite Princess Leia from Star Wars as the personification of the qualities that I look for in a founder, i.e. in an effort to help inspire women founders.Hopefully, the aggregate weight of hundreds of small efforts like those undertaken by Fred, Michael Arrington, and others will help propagate new social norms, bringing about change.
Love the Princess Leia example.Have you ever blogged it? Would love to read it
Thanks Tereza!It is on my to-do list.I’ll let you know when I get around to it.Take care,Simon 🙂
As a father of an 8 year old girl, 6 year old girl, and 2 year old boy, I’m curious for advice from others on how to help teach entrepreneurial instincts to them in the hopes that they grow up being entrepreneurs. Or at least I hope they can think like entrepreneurs in whatever they choose as their paths.At this point, I’m just starting to educate them on how businesses work. I figure that teaching them about what I’m doing and how other businesses are owned and operated is laying the groundwork for them to at least understand it and start to think about the benefits and drawbacks of owning and operating your own business.What I’m more curious about is what types of next steps any parents might have to suggest. What sorts of jobs as teenagers might help the most? What books are there for ‘tweens or young kids might help them think about these things?In the long run, I want them to be happy doing whatever they’re doing, but I’d at least like to expose them to the world of entrepreneurship.
great questioni’ve noticed that children of entrepreneurs tend to be entrepreneursso role models are criticalif you and your spouse are not entrepreneurs, get them in front of some people who areand i also think conversations at the dinner table are important”we opened a new store today””we got a big new customer today””we had to shut down or business today, we are starting a new one tomorrow”
I used to babysit summers for a family where the dad left EF Hutton and started a financial info and analytics co, in the late 80’s right around Black Monday.His kids were too young and his wife had heard it all so I got to listen to all his stories. He was a true mentor and toured me around the company a number of times (he wanted to hire me for sales).You could tell the moment you stepped in there it was a very special place; he knew every employee by name, they had relationships with him and his employee retention rate was second to none. Brilliant man, an excellent mentor.Otherwise I would never have known it was possible to think bigger than Mary Kay or residential real estate…..or law school.And that’s when I drew the conclusion that true entrepreneurs are the thoroughbreds of the business world.
“…true entrepreneurs are the thoroughbreds of the business world.”Love that.
I don’t know others, but in my case, it’s exactly for the opposite reason.I saw my father as a bank employee and I realised early on I didn’t want to ever be anything remotely like that.On the flipside, I got to use and program a very expensive, brand new IBM PC in 1981, when other kids were playing Pong.Parents can be influential in more than just one way.
So right! Helping kids understand business early on is critically important.From my first job alphabetizing invoices at age 4 in my grandparents’ factory to avidly following my dad’s tales of traveling the world and closing sales deals in the data com business, the lessons I learned as a child are a big reason why I’m a 4th generation woman entrepreneur today.
Interesting observation Fred: My father was an entrepreneur as was my grandfather and both grandmothers. And then my daughter spent 13 yrs with a Princeton VC business before switching to nursing when she turned 40 (ironic age?).
Hey Pat, I love that question and it’s something, as a mother, that I think a lot about too.I was brought up in my mother’s business and a number of my most successful girlfriends grew up helping in their family’s businesses. There are ages when it’s cool and fun, and they soak it up like a sponge. Help with the books, interact with clients/customers. I suspect it’s old-fashioned apprenticeship…start by observing and then evolve into doing. Personally I would take the cue of what turns them on, and then expand in different directions from there.Maybe it’s as simple as bringing them along to work to hang out and have them ask people if they need help.I would love to have online groups that share tactics on an ongoing basis.My 7-yr-old is expressing strong interest and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to nurture it.
“I would love to have online groups that share tactics on an ongoing basis.”Me too, Tereza. Kids Combinator.
Pat, I also grew up in my mother’s business. There are SO many lessons learned. She started us young. Lemonade stand style. However not your typical corner lemonade stand. For example, when she read that there was a governor’s convention coming to our small town in Mississippi, that is where she had us set up our lemonade shop. LOL. Publicity, deep pockets, and fun. I’d say those things are great exposure to entrepreneurship. As they age, you can make it more sophisticated.
Pat — This is a haunting question for me and one that I will continue to ponder in my own life. I am committed to helping my own kids have the option of being entrepreneurs. I think for starters it is important for them to see me at work (and my husband as well — even though he is not in a business-oriented career). As much as possible, I don’t want my work to be something foreign to them. Because I work from home most of the time, this is easier to do even though much of the work itself must be done in private for sake of quiet (for phone calls, focus and concentration — I am an executive recruiter and have been self employed for most of their lives).I constantly talk about my work with them and about business in general. I even talk about this blog with them.I am closely observing my children to identify their talents and abilities and to find ways to cultivate these — and to help them develop skills in the areas where they need bolstering. So, one goal for me is that each of my kids will have some sort of business by the time they graduate from high school. For my two eldest (13 and 15) I’m thinking it may be eBay for starters. For my son, it could be reselling his friends’ items and textbooks (we live in an affluent area where kids go through a lot of stuff) and for my daughter, a simple online boutique through eBay that can eventually be spun off into a standalone online store if she wants. These are just some ideas. As I wrap up this comment, I see that Tereza has responded in a similar vein and Fred too. When I get some space, I’d like to revisit this, especially hearing how others might be doing it. Maybe ask this question through Twitter and my blog. Or perhaps someone with a more trafficked blog than mine could do this. It’s a great question. I definitely want to hear from others on this.Feel free to join me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email — dwhiteATbwasearchDOTcom
Okay, you asked, so I went. I have thick skin but I am also prone to nausea. Didn’t stay long but it was the first time in 9 years that I have felt an acute sense of morning sickness and I can assure you I am not pregnant. But I do think it was important for some to show up who have been thinking about this issue and who could respond articulately and without malice. Seeing some AVC regulars and your characteristic sanity interspersed throughout the comments helped me stay longer than I ordinarily would have and to actually respond. I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed by the defensive tone of Arrington’s post and just how poorly executed it was. I was expecting a really good argument that would cause me to think. It’s important to hear different perspectives on this. This was more of a rant. I’m generally pretty gracious, Fred, so it takes a lot for me to say that the post almost wasn’t worthy of a response based on the content itself — and while I know the TC comments can be vitriolic — this time I believe Michael spurred on the more caustic comments from the outset.However, the subject matter itself is important. And some people I respect are leading the charge on this one. I want to do my small part.
thanks Donna
Made me feel physically sick too.I also felt that way when I read Hacker News comments on the original XX post.I have tough skin too but some of it borders on hate speech.I think we (I?) need ongoing reassurance to keep fighting the fight. Because my personal inclination is to ignore assholes and pretend they don’t exist. But alas, they do.
Just think of it as going into battle.Now we get to rest up before we have to go back in. I say “we” but know that people like you are bearing more the brunt of this.It’s a good fight, T. And you’re a good fighter.(Did you ever see my hokey, corny comment in response to Fred’s post of your Op Ed?)
You know, it’s all cool. Has to be done.I am not sure if I remember which hokey, corny one. 😉 Been in motion and they’re all blending. But I always love your comments.And OMG these longer ones have so many comments — I agree with others here — searchability of comments in Disqus is a top priority, as it would really make a difference. It’s really impossible to find stuff from the past. Even the links to specific comments from emails aren’t working for me anymore. Is this a glitch? Or a change in functionality?A bunch of us are trying hard to take discussions and building on what was said in the past, and take them to the next level. Searchability will be a key tool in that and I look forward to it.
Tereza, you are not alone: I found a number of comments on Arrington’s blog that had similar effect upon me so I quit reading. Some even subsequently popped up on Michellle Greer’s follow-up blog. Totally asinine!It is sad that we live in a time when there are still those who feel so weak, insecure and inadequate in themselves that the only way they have of feeling any kind of satiation is by attacking others mindlessly.My own feelings about abuse – beyond the fact that there is never an excuse for any form of abuse – is that, unless it is physical, it is best ignored so that the abuser is not encouraged to pursue his bile driven urges by having them acknowledged: You can never win a verbal argument by responding to them; that only encourages them like a red rag to a bull. However, what you can constructively do, thanks to a feature of DISQUS, is Flag their comments for moderator review.
Wow. Even the dippy comments get 20+ likes on TC (which I think is close to the record for an AVC comment).’Likes’ should be like currencies, with exchange rates.So , like changing $ to Yen, I could cash in my AVC likes for, say, 10 million TC likes.
i noticed that too
Funny! And true.I found it disheartening how many Likes some of the more malicious comments get. To me, that’s the biggest signal of all that there is a problem.Also at TC so many of those malicious comments are anonymous. It really wrecks any kind of respectful, symmetrical dialog. It’s a cowardly act.Makes me wonder if there should be a feedback loop where a reader can flag an anonymous comment for being offensive and the writer gets pinged that if they put their real name behind it, it can stay but if not, then it will go.I don’t know, I vacillate because I like open forums best of all. But it feels like something that’s anonymous AND malicious deserves a discount.
I think that’s a brilliant idea!!
Correct: They who are anonymous are typically cowards: Abusers are always cowardly people.And note that any blog using DISQUS has the facility for you to Flag an objectionable comment for Moderator Review. If you hover your mouse in the line area of the Like and Reply buttons you will see a red Flag button pop up to the left side. This give you the option of not flagging or flagging.
Just getting caught up on my blog reading, and wow! I would go to TC, but at this point, the comments are a mess. But, will definitely plan on contributing over there more.For me, as a woman entrepreneur and CEO, my goal is to surround myself with great people. Men and women. In fact, I’m surrounded by more men than women right now (as I have been most of my career). I do have a few women who are role models/mentors who I think are great, not because they are female, but because they are amazing people who are successful and have a lot of good advice to give.I definitely think that more women need to have good mentors and role models. I also think that we all need to be open to the possibility that these great mentors and role models will be women *and* men. The reality is, the industry is still predominantly male. Why not learn from these amazing men, who, by the way, also want to see more of their amazing female colleagues join them in the start-up world.My $0.02.
In the spirit of the discussion here — suggest listening to this podcast from HBR about mentoring v. sponsoring in promotions. http://blogs.hbr.org/ideaca…Same thought process needs to be applied to women tech entrepreneurs and funding. When VCs give more money to start-ups that have at least more than 50% of the management team are women, i.e. sponsor those companies, then the rest will emerge. The role models, the alumni effect of women entrepreneurs financing other women — all will start to emerge.~Rini DasCEO, PAKRA
Having done a few of my own startups or been part of a founding team and love being a woman in this business. People have been wonderful from the hedge fund or venture investors . I guess when I do a startup it is based on a project that will create revenue and have multiple exit strategies. I have never thought about being a woman in this process and feel sorry for the women who feel that the industry is against them. It always has to be about the team, the business sector and the vision and being a Barbie in this process doesn’t hurt. I always feel a great deal is ” blood in the water” and the sharks are circling ; you just feel the undercurrent.Warmest Regards, Cheray Unman
This is such a breath of fresh, clean air. Thank you.
I find this subject so frustrating. For the industry not to acknowledge that there are serious barriers for women in technology totally ticks me off. It’s actually a researched fact. And as Fred points out (through his own experience) it’s often a statistical one as well. It’s a complicated issue and I find most of the analysis particularly in the blogosphere are simplistic and dismissive.Differences in self esteem, how young girls are nurtured regarding maths and sciences in early school age years, differences in how men and women are perceived (oh don’t get me started on the word “abrasive” as a descriptor 9 times out of 10 for most strong minded women), how many companies are funded bc the founder reminds them of ‘them’ when they were a young buck (vs. a young doe).I seriously don’t give a crap if all of Mark Arrington’s coworkers are women, his boss is a woman, or if he wants to get a freakin’ sex change one day bc he loves his feminine side so much. I fail to see what that has to do with the general start up ecosystem and the funding structures that support them.I’m ranting now. So I’ll stop. (or not) I have an entire section on my blog called women. I write about it and more importantly I consistently argue with all the progressively minded men in my life. Some food for thought for all those who think this whole subject is a a load of hooey and are ‘exausted’ and ‘tired’ of the discussion –Just bc YOU aren’t like that doesn’t mean the THEY aren’tJust bc there are EXCEPTIONS doesn’t mean it isn’t the MAJORITY of the casesJust bc it is CHANGING doesn’t mean it’s CHANGEDAnd finally think about way that you can be part of the solution vs. part of the problem. Post like that on Techcrunch are simply not.
I think it’s awesome that you’re advocating for more gender diversity. I’m a young woman who is an aspiring social media entrepeneur and I can only speak from this perspective, but I can tell you that it is very intimidating when you’re developing your own startup, doing all the research, and it’s all guys all the time, being patronizing towards women.Every time I’ve seen a woman pitch to a panel of male tech geeks, at TC or elsewhere, they are inherently biased, esp. if the woman is feminine. Just saying. I am going to keep on keeping on and making my dreams happen, but I’m cynical about what my reception will be with male VCs once I’m ready to pitch. I just know i’ll get grilled even more than a dude would, so I’m going to be xtra careful & prepared, and i’m planning to bootstrap as long as possible, so that I can be profitable before I even pitch.
Excelerate Chicago’s Demo Day was Tuesday and there were 4 women CEO’s out of the 10 companies. I find it ironic that TechCrunch did not even write about the event even though there were over 250 investors there…http://techcocktail.com/10-…
As serial tech entrepreneur, I have participated in a heated discussion for decades on this topic. I propose four practical actions. But first let’s explore the why, where, and why — why bother getting more women leaders, where do leaders of tech start-ups come from, and why don’t girls pursue tech degress and careers? I share my thoughts on this hot topic at http://www.typepad.radishsprouts.com in my latest blog post. I would love your comments.
Yesterday, I posted research on on why, where, why — why bother to attract more female technology leaders, where do tech leaders come from, and why aren’t girls pursuing degrees and careers in technology? This is the correct link to it: http://www.radishsprouts.typepad.com Next week, I will post 4 proposed actions to take to solve this problem.
Interesting post — and comments. Let me add a thought, although, as a former journalist, I know the danger of generalizing. Yet, I also know the power of my intuition, so here goes.Women tend to downplay accomplishments and expectations. Many men do, again generally speaking, just the opposite. As one who has built business plans for companies like Lucent New Ventures — I know first hand the amount of “padding” that goes on when describing the size of the market. “That’s not a big enough upside,” “we have to do that in two years.”When I put a plan together for my own start-up — a vc consultant pressured me to increase the numbers.VCs like to see HUGE upsides — and in a short period of time. Whether it be lack of confidence, supreme pragmatism or plain old modesty, women’s plans don’t reflect what most VCs want. Perhaps, it has to do with, as some of the commenters noted, not feeling they can commit infintesimal hours a week– if they have children. Perhaps, it has something to do with pragmatism, and knowing that you can’t build a global brand without millions and millions of dollars, and if that is missing, the numbers are a pipedream.Or, perhaps it has something to do with integrity — not being able to lie, exaggerate or otherwise bend the truth — especially when there is so much unknown. It’s been proven on Wall Street that women financiers do better over time because they tend to be more cautious than men.By the way, women do not have the corner on integrity, pragmatism and modesty. I know men that can’t create attractive plans for all of the same reasons — and not because they don’t have good ideas. But I do believe that a higher propensity of men can take inordinate risks with other people’s money — without having a second thought.