[simplemind]

Sadly, I sometimes worry that explicit moves like this deter investors from working with female founders. If the risk is, "I have to watch every little thing I say/joke with a female founder lest I get blacklisted", if I was a VC, I might choose to avoid female founders altogether. Wonder if the better solution involves more carrot and less stick.

[CodeMage]

> If the risk is, "I have to watch every little thing I say/joke with a female founder lest I get blacklisted", if I was a VC, I might choose to avoid female founders altogether.

That's rich. People who think like that should really take some time to read a few first-person accounts on sexism and misogyny in tech industry. Once you've read about how women have to worry about their appearance and behavior on a daily basis just to be able to somewhat tone down the sexism they're exposed to, men's complaints about how they might have to start worrying a bit more become laughable.

To illustrate, here's an excerpt from the Forbes story making rounds on Twitter [1]:

Unlike my male peers, who could wear anything from jeans and a hoodie to a well-tailored suit, I had to choose my attire carefully. Feminine but not sexy, structured but not form fitting, classy but not too expensive, lest I imply that I was bad at bootstrapping and not "scrappy enough," professional but not so stuffy that people would assume our product lacked creativity. My hair was almost always worn in a bun or pulled back conservatively.

During the ten years that I worked in international development, clothing was a tool to defuse gender, a strategy for gaining access to an almost exclusively male professional environment. We referred to it as "taking on the third gender." For all its self-regard as the most forward-thinking place on earth, it seemed I would need to use the same tactics in Silicon Valley.

[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/07/what-it...

[yid]

> if I was a VC, I might choose to avoid female founders altogether.

If you're a VC, you should be adept at assessing risk. If you think that the "risk" of working with female founders outweighs the potential upside, you're definitely not going to be touching my money and I'd rather not have any of yours.

[simplemind]

How would you know? We all know investors who only have male-founded companies in their portfolios.

[TheCowboy]

Then they're effectively "leaving money on the table" by avoiding female founders, because they're being too risk-averse. The risk of false accusations that will blow up are too small to worry about.

If they're not outright bad investors, they are at least investing a suboptimal way.

[Thimothy]

I wonder if male investors are actually acting rationally leaving women out of their portfolios. I mean, we all know how a pretty face can scramble the thought processes of a male, and there actually are scientifically verified cognitive biases [1] that work against rational thinking in a multi-gender environment.

Not saying, of course, that this justifies any kind of harassment, just that maybe some of these investors have learned in the hard way that their judgment gets clouded when dealing with women.

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

[coreyja]

But the Halo Effect page that you linked says that males were influenced by the halo effect when rating both male and female subjects so this isn't a strong argument for not hiring/investing in women. And in a MythBusters I watched the other night, they "Busted" the myth that men get dumber around an attractive female. I'm pretty sure it was from the newest season if you wanted to look it up.

[ghshephard]

"Sadly, I sometimes worry that explicit moves like this deter investors from working with female founders."

Where did you read anything about gender in that reminder from Jessica? That was guidance on behavior. I'm sure YC has strong positions on racism, but that doesn't in any way imply that VCs should be concerned about working with founders from different races/ethnicities.

Just don't be a jerk, and you'll be fine.

[elsigh]

Anyone who worries about this to the extent that they choose not to invest in a great idea/product/company run by females is just a bad investor.

[srcreigh]

It's the same effect, I think, that has caused your comment to receive a number of upvotes but very little (i.e. zero at the time of writing) agreement in the child comments.

Personally, I see where you're coming from. I learn more about how sexism manifests itself in the tech industry every week, it seems. Even with good intentions and a lot of conscious thought about the issue, it doesn't seem extremely unlikely that some action I previously considered harmless could be taken the wrong way.

[mkal_tsr]

One day there may be a VC that only interacts with potential investments through the internet where no age, gender, height, orientation, religion, etc. is ever disclosed, both by the investor and investees. The only information to go off of would be the product/service, the business plan, and the integrity of the idea. Funny how this hasn't really caught on yet...

[sillysaurus3]

This will never happen because investors don't strictly invest in ideas. They also invest in people. Pg would fund any Zuckerberg idea, not because of the idea, but because of Zuckerberg's qualities. Or, put differently, Facebook minus Zuckerberg may have failed. Their early years were tenuous, and one wrong decision about what users would or wouldn't tolerate may have broken their momentum.

You can't assess that via the internet. You have to meet them.

[mkal_tsr]

What are the enumerated qualities of founders that can only be discerned live in person in relation to profitable product development in an age when you can hire out your PR to another person? Genuinely curious about this. I grew up on the internet, before people used their real names, when people were debating ideas and not entrenched with identity politics. I earned my first freelance job as an 8th grader and those people in the UK had no idea my age or gender, just that I could make something for them.

[tptacek]

You think YC won't notice that, or will continue working with investors that studiously avoid investing in women?

[simplemind]

They haven't to date, right?

[tptacek]

Who knows? YC does a lot of good stuff we never hear about.

[lobotryas]

This is silly. If I, as an investor, never find any female-led startups that are worth funding in an already very small pool, then I should be punished?

[goatforce5]

What if that same male VC met a male founder and he got some gay vibes off of him? Oh no!

Best take him to the gym and do manly guy things like working out and hanging out in the steam room to prove his masculinity.