Female Founders of Y Combinator’s Winter 2013 Class

http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/meet-the-9-female-founders-of-y-combinators-winter-2013-class/

by dmor • 13 years ago

44 56 13 years ago

daniellemorrill.com

loganfrederick• 13 years ago

Typo in: "Grace Garey – Wasti". Should be Watsi.

benatkin2• 13 years ago

It appears to have been fixed.

jpdoctor5• 13 years ago

> As is the team’s “Food Wench”

:facepalm:

don’t get all up in arms

Excellent. It's just marketing by using words that would otherwise be pejorative.

dmor8• 13 years ago

They've got a pirate theme going, get a sense of humor!

jpdoctor5• 13 years ago

Perhaps you've missed the sexist issue postings.

Wench = OK, get funded.

Dongle = Problem, lose job.

parfe• 13 years ago

I'm not sure Food Wench (servant) is in the same category as Marco Polo (worldwide trader), Dos Equis Guy(most interesting man in the world), and Jesse Pinkman (master cook).

groby_b3• 13 years ago

It's actually not pejorative. (The term "wenching", however, is. Go English language! :)

It's not the most fortunate choice of title, but given that they're trying to create a pirate context - I'm not sure it's worth getting too upset about.

(And please, before somebody wants to throw sexism accusations my way, do check my posting history :)

Edit: I stand corrected. If urbandictionary is your source of what language means, it is pejorative. Interesting. I wonder if Vanessa was even aware of that.

jpdoctor5• 13 years ago

It's actually not pejorative. (The term "wenching", however, is. Go English language! :)

I've linked elsewhere: First defn from first hit on google: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wench

ch4ch4• 13 years ago

Why are there no female engineers?

benatkin2• 13 years ago

There is at least one, if I'm reading it correctly: Cindy Wu.

beambot• 13 years ago

Fei Deyle (CEO of Lollipuff & my wife) is an EE by training. Before Lollipuff, she was an regional sales director at a company selling electrical power SCADA software / hardware. She quit that job to do Lollipuff. Trust me... she's a hardcore engineer at heart -- she just loves fashion too.

caseorganic2• 13 years ago

There are plenty out there, but the overwhelming majority of them are doing their job instead of talking about it.

areyoumental• 13 years ago

I don't care if they're female or not.

mindcrime2• 13 years ago

I long for a day when this can be the worldview of most everybody... when we don't even have to care about gender differences, because we believe (rightly) that every individual is afford equal opportunity to do/be/build/dream/create as they see fit, without gender (or race, or religion or skin color, etc.) even entering into the equation.

That said, we aren't in that world yet, so celebrating the accomplishments of female founders, and hoping they will serve as role models (or at least inspiration) for others who may feel disadvantaged or inhibited in some way, is probably a good thing.

philtar• 13 years ago

I was thinking of a way to say it without hurting any feelings and you did that perfectly.

In Kuwait, people went through what the technology industry is going through now. People were so up in arms about women not being treated fairly that the women have been compensated so much people are complaining the other way around now. A man was running against a woman for a government position and his slogan against her was "Was she elected despite being a woman or because she is a woman?" That struck a chord with a lot of people and he annihilated her at the polls.

vowelless• 13 years ago

I was in Kuwait for the 09 elections when women were first elected to the parliament. What was the incident you talk about?

Additionally, high castes in India frequently complain about the government mandated reservations for low castes and other minorities (example, at the IIT [1]). I remember there was a year when the low caste positions went vacant just because they were reserved for them, while qualified high caste students were rejected.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_policy_in_Indian_In...

caseorganic2• 13 years ago

Thank you. I'm much more interested in 'people' in tech and interesting founders. What about the most interesting founders in the class? The most interesting 'people' in the class? So many people are excited about one kind of person in tech that they draw attention in the wrong way.

groby_b3• 13 years ago

As a woman in tech - the existence of role models is important. They often get lost in the noise. Having them pointed out in a separate post is nice. It's not like they're taking away precious bits from male founders :)

And our industry sure could use a bit more diversity, so attracting non-male (and/or non-white) people to work in it is a good idea.

And I'm not saying that because it'd be nice to have a few more women around, so things wouldn't be quite as lonely - there's a clear benefit to diversity. See e.g. https://infocus.credit-suisse.com/app/article/index.cfm?fuse...

Why it is especially important in areas that require innovation: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/hr_neale_groupdive...

saraid2163• 13 years ago

I don't care that they're female.

I care that they're not male.

abduhl• 13 years ago

This type of thinking marginalizes women by constantly comparing them to men. It sets the equality for women in tech cause back by subtly ingraining the idea that we should be focusing on the males rather than the females.

If you are in favor of more women in tech then say exactly that. Unless you're actually just against men in the tech field, in which case you should just carry on doing what you're doing.

lanthe• 13 years ago

You missed me.

dmor8• 13 years ago

I'm sorry Iolanthe, Vu let me know and I am going to update the post as soon as I can (just trying to keep the site up with 2 simultaneous front page stories at the moment). So sorry!

Hey everyone, meet Iolanthe is CEO and cofounder of Swish.com - a YC W13 company that let's you pre-order products from all over the web.

whitehat2k9• 13 years ago

Number of females with an explicit mention of technical expertise: 0.

waterhouse2• 13 years ago

Taking "technical expertise" to mean "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics", and having nothing to do with art or psychology or anything else that could be dismissed by a certain type of person as "fuzzy":

"Cindy is a transplant from Seattle, where she was previously a Research Scientist and Engineer @UW Bioengineering." --Seems to qualify.

"Kelly was previously at Google as a UX design intern for YouTube and is currently Senior at Carnegie Mellon University double majoring in Human Computer Interaction and Industrial Design." --Borderline. I'm not sure whether UX design includes handling code or not; if so, it would definitely qualify; if not, it could be dismissed.

"Prior to Goldbely Vanessa headed up UX and Visual Design at Blip.tv, and was a Senior Interactive Designer for Gilt Groupe. [...] Vanessa handles UI/UX and all things creative at Goldbely." --Again, if "UI/UX" includes handling code, that would seem to qualify; if not, maybe not.

So it looks like 1 to 3, assuming you mean what I think you mean.

[Edit: not originally included was this: "Iolanthe received her Masters of Engineering, EECS in 2010 from MIT and also holds a B.S., EECS, Physics from MIT." This brings the count up to 2-4 out of 10.]

jcr• 13 years ago

Fei Deyle is an electrical engineer.

So %50 are technical of the ones who are known.

Two more are still in stealth mode.

jquery4• 13 years ago

As a coder, why would you join one of these companies with non-technical founders instead of just building or co-founding your own product and collecting vastly more equity? I don't see the draw.

dmor8• 13 years ago

75% equity in a company with a product no one knows about, or 30% equity in a company everyone uses?

s_baby• 13 years ago

Why wouldn't you want to ride in on the coattails of affirmative action?

chollida1• 13 years ago

> Number of females with an explicit mention of technical expertise: 0.

Ummm

> Iolanthe received her Masters of Engineering, EECS in 2010 from MIT and also holds a B.S., EECS, Physics from MIT.

that's a pretty huge mention of techincal expertise by pretty much anyones definition

jquery4• 13 years ago

That was a curious oversight. She wasn't included in the original lineup.

colmvp• 13 years ago

Looking forward to the meet x male African American and x male Hispanic American Founders of YC.

dmor8• 13 years ago

I'd love to write those posts for you, but I believe it was 0 and 0 for this batch.

kclay• 13 years ago

Maybe I should join next batch hehe

rdl• 13 years ago

There have been in previous batches, though (way more Hispanic background than African-American, though)

joshguthrie• 13 years ago

Again, "male"s, are you kidding me?

But of course, I was expecting no less from the male-fuelled bro-powered testosterone world of HackerNews... Well, sexism won't lead you to more readers!

(PS: Sarcasm.)

Female Founders of Y Combinator’s Winter 2013 Class

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