[teaspoon]

Because the subject of the sentence is "a startup founder", not "Jason Cohen".

[marknutter]

It's always irritated me to see the use of the word "her" because of the blatant political-correctness of it. If you want to be PC, use "their".

[slewis]

So we can only use "his" or "their"?

[rfrey]

You don't like implied political correctness. OP doesn't like implied gender bias. I don't like grammatical convolutions like using "their". What's to be done?

How about focusing on the message?

[marknutter]

> what's to be done?

use "their"

[jiggy2011]

constantly using "their" when reading anything that remotely resembles a story gets old pretty fast.

[mikemaccana]

Then use 'their'.

[sp332]

This particular (hypothetical) startup founder happens to be singular, and female.

[lawnchair_larry]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they

[sp332]

That's the exact opposite of the situation. I pointed out that the founder is singular and female, but the "singular they" is used for indeterminate number and/or gender.