Damn, Girl: New York Has Almost Double The Female Founders

http://www.betabeat.com/2012/04/11/damn-girl-new-york-has-almost-double-the-female-founders/

by rmah • 14 years ago

88 79 14 years ago

sycr• 14 years ago

I'd be curious to know the kinds of industries female founders in NYC gravitate towards - or if there isn't a clear cluster at all, and it's a fairly even distribution. If it's the latter, what does New York have that other cities don't?

rmah• 14 years ago

One of the biggest that I know of is Gilt Groupe, founded by Michael Bryzek and Alexandria Wilkis Wilson. Many of the execs are also female. They're doing quite well, with revenues of apx $500mil in 2011. They do flash sales of apparel and the like.

dpritchett• 14 years ago

Ms. Wilson's pedigree includes Phillips Exeter, Harvard (twice!), Merrill Lynch, and Louis Vuitton. That list says a lot about the NYC ecosystem. How many people with her background are going to make their way to SV to try a pure-tech play?

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alexandra-wilkis-wilson/0/17b/84...

nirvana• 14 years ago

I think NY and SV differ culturally and thus differ in the mix of startups that take root there (hence the %400 higher likelihood of listing "content", for instance.)

This may mean that women are more likely to pick areas for doing a startup that are consistent with the NY startup culture than the SV startup culture.

On the other hand, I can imagine that many startups in NY are funded by well heeled individuals (many of whom are women) in a sort of friends-and-family fashion that is more casual than the VC & Angel style of SV. This is purely speculation, but given my interactions with venture capitalists, I think their thinking and focus is more... conservative and traditional.... and that this may well mean women led companies are less likely to find funding in SV than the same company in NY.

If this perspective is correct, then we may find that with startup crowdsourcing, an even higher percentage of women will get funded than in SV.

Radzell• 14 years ago

I agree silicon valley from what I have seen since trying to get into startups NY seems to be the more professional of the two more suit and button ups. Silicon valley is more technical geek and their startups seem to be more based technical performance. I personally being technical don't really like the NY mode but I can see why people like it.

Drbble5• 14 years ago

Please don't confuse "professional" with fancy taste or cold-weather clothing,

kristianc4• 14 years ago

I wonder how much of tech's "gender divide" has to do with the way women in tech are reported?

Take this article for example - it references the Akon song "Sexy Bitch" in the title (yeah, real female empowerment there!), it doesn't mention a single female startup or founder, and the picture is a generic Flickr grab of a woman walking past a coffee shop in a short skirt.

All of it, even the fact that the section is called "Ladybeat" serves to further this principle that there is a "Women's" tech ecosystem and it is somehow different from the male one. I mean "female-friendly fashion and beauty startups?" Come on.

granfalloon2• 14 years ago

i agree with your main point, but saying that the title is a reference to Akon is a bit silly

unreal374• 14 years ago

I think you're trying to find a conspiracy where there is none.

The lack of women in tech (and lack of women in science and math in general) starts at a very young age - while boys are immersed in video games and girls are having afternoon tea with their dolls. I doubt those 5-year-olds are influenced by the way women in tech are reported.

Maybe society in general assigns gender roles that we all feel forced to comply with. Or maybe we're just different. Can't men and women just be a bit different?

kristianc4• 14 years ago

Although boys have outperformed girls in exams in maths at 16 here in the UK for the last three years, girls had outperformed boys at maths for the decade before that.

You're not arguing that men and women are "just a bit different" so much as you're arguing that people should conform to gender roles which don't necessarily apply.

What about gay people in tech - Peter Thiel, Tim Cook, Ben Ling? Shouldn't they have been playing with Barbie dolls, or My Little Pony or whatever at a young age too?

iamgilesbowkett5• 14 years ago

"The lack of women in tech (and lack of women in science and math in general) starts at a very young age - while boys are immersed in video games and girls are having afternoon tea with their dolls. I doubt those 5-year-olds are influenced by the way women in tech are reported."

I don't quite understand this. First, girls play video games. Everyone plays video games. Second, are you saying that portraying female founders in sexist terms is immaterial because whatever explains women being rare in tech has already taken effect after the age of 5?

That would imply that sexism in media only merits attention at all if children 5 or under can see that media. I think that's pretty unlikely.

And what about being a decent human being to the women who are already here? I mean say for the sake of argument that we go along with this theory that something utterly irrevocable happens at the magical age of 5. Doesn't a perfunctory nod to public decency still require that, if a woman in technology says "this article about women in technology does not portray people like me in the way I would prefer," anyone who is not in that category should acquiesce, or at least show a baseline level of respect for the request?

When I was a raver, and I saw stories in the media about ravers, and I told my non-raver friends "yeah that doesn't quite correspond to reality," they were curious to hear what the reality was. When, as a first-generation American with British parents, I spot some unrealistic British character on an American TV show doing something no British person would ever do, if I point this out to Americans, they tend to listen.

I think you have to just show respect for the fact that somebody in the category that the article was about disagrees with the depiction of the category. I think that's (no pun intended) categorical, and the larger issues of sexism are irrelevant here. I think that's just common courtesy, even leaving aside your argument that media only has an effect on the mental attitudes of children, and/or that the whole thing is a done deal by age 5 anyway so why bother -- OK honestly I have no idea what your argument was there. But I made a good-faith effort to tackle it and I think any discussion of women in tech should show a token level of courtesy, just on the offchance that they turn out to be human beings after all.

untog2• 14 years ago

A quick google returns songs called "Damn Girl" by Justin Timberlake, All American Rejects... I think it's safe to say that it's just a well known phrase, not a reference to a song called "Sexy Bitch".

kristianc4• 14 years ago

Actually, both those songs have misogynistic lyrics too. The JT song includes the line "Don't need no L'Oreal 'cause bitch you're bad as hell." Maybe referring to women as "girl" is just a bad jump-off point.

Tossrock• 14 years ago

Completely unimportant quibble: That song is actually by David Guetta, and /features/ Akon.

granfalloon2• 14 years ago

ah, but is it actually "by" david guetta, or is he just more business savvy than most pop producers?

kami8845• 14 years ago

>it references the Akon song "Sexy Bitch"

No, it doesn't. Stop making up conspiracy theories where there are none.

discolemonade3• 14 years ago

The answer to why there are more female founders in New York than the Valley is easy: Valley startups tend to be a lot more tech-heavy than NYC startups as a whole. And women in general aren't drawn to deep technology. I find it interesting how whenever issues of women and technology come up, everyone gets all pc and pretends not to know what the root of the gender gap is. But then if you ask them to count the number of women they know who are fascinated by technology, mathematics and deep, impersonal abstraction, they can't. Human nature doesn't change just because we pump a few billion dollars into figuring out how to get girls to love STEM. It'll never change. Tech heavy centers like Silicon Valley will always have a preponderence of male entrepreneurs and less tech heavy centers like NYC will always be more appealing to female entrepreneurs. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls.

nicholasjbs• 14 years ago

Human nature doesn't change just because we pump a few billion dollars into figuring out how to get girls to love STEM. It'll never change.

If women's interest in CS is purely fixed by human nature, how do you account for the precipitous drop over the past decades? Women got 37% of the CS degrees in 1984 but get way fewer now.[1]

[1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~women/resources/aroundTheWeb/hostedPa...

discolemonade3• 14 years ago

To understand what really motivates people, it's much better to look at what they do in the real world. Sure, there have always been women getting CS degrees, but how many of them go out and become programmers or tinker with technology, electronics and hardware late at night because they want to? The people who do that have been the engines behind technological advancement and growth throughout human history. And they've been mostly males. Saying that men tend to be more interested in technology than women doesn't mean that women's interest in CS is purely fixed. It just means that there will always be statistically more males tinkering with technology than females. And those statistical disparities will always ensure that the majority of tech-heavy, companies, and inventions will be led by men.

Drbble5• 14 years ago

Comparing 1984 to 2002 in CS is ridiculous. Nothing dropped precipitously. CS grew astronomically, and it attracted more new males than females, but still there are far more women doing CS now than then.

marquis• 14 years ago

As a woman in a technical field who is fascinated by 'deep' technology, and mentors other girls to foster their own interests towards a technical career, your comment serves to isolate and offend. Please keep divisive gender-based comments out of this forum unless you have some very hard data to back this up.

parsnips• 14 years ago

So any explanation besides "Oh my they're being oppressed" is deeply offensive?

yummyfajitas• 14 years ago

Do non-divisive comments not require "very hard data"?

You realize that we create bias if we adopt stricter scrutiny of some hypothesis over others.

hack_edu• 14 years ago

All these statements about human nature, the gender gap, and the motivation for 'tinkering late at night' are quite baseless.

Go on, you have a lot of ground to cover before you're going to convince anyone that this is more than just another angry pre-coffee rant.

lolilives• 14 years ago

I can't figure out if this guy is trolling or not.

woodall2• 14 years ago

Bio-truths on HN. Why is this not suprising in the least?

Duff4• 14 years ago

Other highly technical areas, such as medicine, don't seem to have this problem. The average doctor has a better handle on science and mathematics that the most computer professionals ever had.

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

I don't think that statement is supported by the facts; for example, only 6 of more than 100 Nobel Prize winners in Medicine are women[0].

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Phys...

geebee2• 14 years ago

"Computer professionals" are not regulated or licensed, so the term may be too ambiguous to have a meaningful discussion.

But your average engineering or computer science major at a reputable program has to take far more difficult math than your typical premed.

Look through the requirements for medical school admission, and you'll see many do not require more than a single year of calculus.

UCSD, for instance, even provides an easier track of calculus and physics for biology majors, perfectly acceptable for medical school, but unacceptable for math, physics, or most computer science or engineering majors.

http://ucsd.edu/catalog/curric/BIOL-ug.html#major

Yes, I know that anyone is allowed to read a book on PHP and hang out a shingle as a "computer professional", so if you're including them, then sure, I guess the average doctor has a better handle on math. And honestly, I'm glad that this kind of freedom exists in the world of software. But I hope you realize that the math background of a typical CS major from a good university greatly exceeds what is required to go to med school.

vectorpush2• 14 years ago

count the number of women they know who are fascinated by technology, mathematics and deep, impersonal abstraction

Classic nature vs nurture debate. You have no evidence to support the claim that women are inherently less inclined towards tech (instead of say, conditioned by society to be tech averse).

discolemonade3• 14 years ago

These social conditioning arguments are always non-sequiters. At some point you have to ask yourself, what conditions society? Something has to create the condition where people begin to notice that engineering and tech is kind of a male thing and, say, nursing, is kind of a female thing on average. Something must have created that original pattern for people to notice it. It doesn't just come out of the ether. Once the pattern exists, it's probably reinforced, but you can't tell me that with all the effort that goes into getting girls into STEM, the tide wouldn't have been turned by now had the phenomenon been based purely on nurture. Plus, you see this pattern all over the world. And it's always evident that there's bias in this argument because nobody gets upset when somebody points out that most elementary school teachers are women. And that leads me to think that there's a lot of people (of the female variety) who deep down believe that what men do is superior to what women do. And that's sad, because it's entirely untrue.

m_ke2• 14 years ago

It has everything to do with NYC being more than a tech hub. It's arguably the fashion and business capital of the world and the startups that we get here tend to reflect that. Having people from all backgrounds building businesses around real problems in their industries sets it apart from SV, where you get people doing startups for the sake of startups.

peterb• 14 years ago

I agree with your general argument about NYC. SV isn't only where you get "people doing startups for the sake of startups" (although it has that). It is more technology focused and less "all business" like NYC.

m_ke2• 14 years ago

Of course not, but it's Disneyland for engineers and you don't get people from other professions flocking to work there. My girlfriend is a med student and she wasn't a fan of a suggested move to the Valley. My friends in finance dream of Wall Street, those in arts wouldn't trade Broadway for anything and all the fashionistas only hold Paris above 5th ave and SOHO.

jgrahamc• 14 years ago

There's also a demographic difference between New York and Silicon Valley. Some figures from the 2010 census:

   New York City, Female persons: 52.5%

   San Francisco County, Female persons: 49.3%
   San Mateo County, Female persons: 50.8%	
   Santa Clara County, Female persons: 49.8%

Jun8• 14 years ago

Exactly. I remember reading dating scene analyses that report the ratio of 2:1 for men and women around SF whereas in NYC it is just the reverse. This neatly explains the x2 factor.

T-hawk• 14 years ago

A female population of 52.5% explains the effect for dating, but not for founding companies. The difference is because it's the surplus that matters for dating but the entire population for founding.

Suppose that 42.5% of the population are women in a marriage or committed relationship, and then by definition 42.5% are also committed men. That leaves 10% of the population as single females and 5% as single males, and there's your 2:1 ratio for dating, created by just the small female surplus.

Would that hold for founding companies? I don't think so. Any of the 52.5% females could start a business, as could any of the 47.5% males. The small excess of women doesn't create a 2:1 ratio here. (There may be some correlation, that married and settled women are less likely to start a business, but the population ratio can't explain the entire outcome.)

woohoo• 14 years ago

The data above doesn't support that - there's only about a 2% difference.

drawkbox• 14 years ago

Here's the proof, all the single ladies, all the single ladies, are on the East Coast: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/...

CoffeeAndCoffee• 14 years ago

New York City is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, and I'll bet that the diversity in New York is evident in New York's tech scene.

todsul• 14 years ago

Many cities like to claim this, but NY barely makes the top 10. For example, Dubai has way over 75% foreign residents. And cities like Toronto and Sydney are both statistically and anecdotally more culturally diverse.

I'd be more interested in the number of fashion/wedding startups in NY and the percentage of females who run said startups. Huge stereotype and completely unfounded, but it wouldn't surprise me either.

Groxx• 14 years ago

I wonder if even a small imbalance could almost completely explain it.

If a gender is less likely to be able to find a Significant Other (we'll assume that homosexuality exists in equal proportions in both genders), would they be more likely to take risks than the other gender? It wouldn't take much of a difference to make a large change in founder figures, since such a small amount of people try to start a company.

aristidb• 14 years ago

New York never ceases to amaze! Almost half of founders are women... I'm sure that can only be a good thing for the diversity of problems solved, and those startups' availability to address wider audiences. Obviously Silicon Valley needs to learn from NYC.

iamgilesbowkett5• 14 years ago

I'm glad to hear this. The sexism in SF/SV is one of the major reasons I moved away.

hugs• 14 years ago

I noticed this last Fall at the Open Hardware Summit in NYC. That event has become the must-attend event for those involved in open source hardware. (Arduino team members, et al.) The event was founded and chaired by Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir. And the speaker list was way more gender-balanced than your typical SF/SV event. No one was asking "where are the women?" at OHSummit. (But if they did ask, the answer was: "Everywhere! And they're leading the charge!")

Cushman• 14 years ago

I wonder what this might have to do with it:

  > Local entrepreneurs are 4.3 times as likely to list 
  > “content” as their competitive advantage.

The Valley is very focused on tech; if we grant that tech as a subculture is overwhelmingly male, it would make sense to see a higher ratio of women in startups (and thus in areas) which are less tech-centric.

kscaldef• 14 years ago

I figured this was likely to explain almost all of it:

    Founding Team Composition: Silicon Valley founding teams are 34% more likely to be technical heavy than founding teams from NYC. Whereas NYC founding teams are almost 2x as likely to be business heavy than Silicon Valley founding teams.

vishaldpatel• 14 years ago

New York also has a little more than double the females.

Damn, Girl: New York Has Almost Double The Female Founders

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