'The Female Factor' And Other Proven Tricks To Get Into Y Combinator

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/02/the-female-factor-and-other-proven-tricks-to-get-into-y-combinator/

by miguelrey • 14 years ago

5 2 14 years ago

forbes.com

geebee• 14 years ago

Interesting article. However, I'm a little surprised that an article about women at ycombinator didn't include Paul Graham's own rumination on the issue...

http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html

"This is one reason Y Combinator has a rule against investing in startups with only one founder. Practically every successful company has at least two. And because startup founders work under great pressure, it's critical they be friends.

I didn't realize it till I was writing this, but that may help explain why there are so few female startup founders. I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that only 1.7% of VC-backed startups are founded by women. The percentage of female hackers is small, but not that small. So why the discrepancy?

When you realize that successful startups tend to have multiple founders who were already friends, a possible explanation emerges. People's best friends are likely to be of the same sex, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared."

annableker• 14 years ago

When I applied, I didn't even think about the fact that I'm female. This article has me super-excited.

I'm surprised it's so low. My guess is that:

1) As geebee said, groups of coding girlfriends are rare (I'm the only one of my girlfriends who's into tech stuff)

2) Women don't like peacocking as much as men, so they suppress a lot of great ideas

3) If women have babies in their twenties, that becomes their first priority

Otherwise, I'm psyched to be a female applicant at this moment of opportunity.

'The Female Factor' And Other Proven Tricks To Get Into Y Combinator

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