[jacalata]

That's the point, no? "male or female, you will only succeed if you can act in these typically male ways, regardless of how good your idea and execution are." Therefore, the tech scene is clearly not judging you solely on your idea and execution as they believe they are.

[newnewnew]

Those qualities are what's needed to build something out of nothing. It has never been easy. If you don't think females can do it, well that sounds sexist to me.

Nobody has a magic wand they can wave to give startup success to timid, easily defeated people. If it is your nature to make excuses, I suggest you go get a government job. No amount of feminist cultural revolution is going to convince VCs to throw away their money in order to be politically correct.

[jacalata]

No, most of those qualities are what it takes to make other people believe you can build something. It's an important distinction between 'people who can build amazing products' and 'people who can convince PG/YC that they should be given money because they can build amazing products', and the areas where the two do not overlap are the ones which demonstrate that SV is not a strict meritocracy based on tech skills and execution. You may be attempting to argue that it is a strict meritocracy based on 'the skill of convincing people that you are worth giving money to', and I might agree, but that is not what people generally seem to think they are arguing when they say SV is a meritocracy (although I think there is increasing recognition for this, based on slight differences in the themes of articles across HN).