Having a Woman On Your Team Ruins Your Chances For VC Funding (theoutline.com) 296
Laura June, writing for The Outline: It's a well-known, well-documented fact that women entrepreneurs face an uphill battle in the fight to get funding for their businesses. But a new study suggests that it can actually be almost impossible. According to the study, published Tuesday in the journal Venture Capital, having even one woman on a company's team makes them far less likely to get funding than an entirely male one. In fact, an all male team is about four times more likely to get funding than teams with any women on them. The study was done by researchers at Babson College and Wellesley, and looked at data on 6,793 companies funded between 2011 and 2013. This is the first large-scale study in a decade to focus on women's efforts to get funding, and it's not encouraging. The authors write, "We did not determine any significant performance differences between companies with women CEOs from companies with men CEOs, so it is quite surprising that women are still, practically speaking, shut out of the market for venture capital funding, both as CEOs and participants of executive teams."
Correlation is not causation (Score:3, Insightful)
The implication that all VCs are sexist-driven rather than profit-driven is a bit perplexing. These are the people that are like the Iron Bank from GoT. They probably don't even see the people for who they are, rather than just seeing us all as numbers, except possibly the one that claims to be the CEO for sheer viability.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty bad you can say about Vulture Capital companies, but not that they're bad about correlating past chances for a startup to become profitable with various pieces of data about those startups, especially data that is easy to measure.
If they noticed that teams that include women are statistically non-negligibly less likely to succeed, they will use that knowledge. They don't care that you have a poontang instead of a wang, they care about what has historically been proven to give better chances of profit.
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If they noticed that teams that include women are statistically non-negligibly less likely to succeed, they will use that knowledge.
That doesn't seem likely or supported by any evidence.
More likely, they are mostly not consciously being sexist, deliberately discriminating against teams with women on them. Rather, there is subconscious bias. Both men and women exhibit this bias. Doesn't make them bad people, just human.
No. MOST likely it's a bullshit study. (Score:5, Informative)
Cause it is.
Biased, post hoc ergo propter hoc nonsense.
They didn't do a comparison of probability for a company to get VC funding based on the presence of women.
They didn't compare companies which received VC funding vs. those that didn't.
They just took all the VC funded companies and counted ones with women listed on the company profile.
It's a literal post hoc condition for determination of likelihood of receiving VC funding.
As for bias... From the study:
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) reports that in 2013 approximately 13% of the working population of the United States was in the process of starting or running a new business - the rate for women was 11% compared with 16% for men (Kelley, Brush, Greene, and Y. Litovsky 2013 Kelley, D., C. Brush, P. Greene, and Y. Litovsky. 2013.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Women's Report. Wellesley, MA: Babson College. [Google Scholar]). This means that one out of every 10 women in the United States was becoming an entrepreneur, which is a higher rate of female entrepreneurship than for any of the other 24 developed economies.
Disregarding the fact that they are confusing "one out of every 10 women in the United States" with 11% OF the 13% OF the working population... in the process of starting or running a NEW business.
People who write biased crap can't do math. Big surprise there.
But their criteria for VC funding female teams is "a single female on the team".
In other words, their sample will look a LOT like that 11% mentioned in the cited study, as it doesn't discriminate between the teams with a single woman, teams with more women or teams with one or more women starting or running a business which is not new, but only seeking VC funding for the first time.
Cause they are going out of their way to find a proof of "women being bad luck on the ship".
Number of VC funded companies, according to the study, with at least one women on the company profile in that same year (2013)? 18%.
2012 - 13%.
2011 - 9%
I.e. Percentage of companies with women on the team receiving VC funding is actually higher than the percentage of women in the process of starting or running a new business.
It's even higher than the percentage of ALL population starting or running a new business.
Only thing they got right is that there are MORE COMPANIES WITH WOMEN.
But that's not the idea they want to get behind.
See... there's this patriarchy thing...
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They just took all the VC funded companies and counted ones with women listed on the company profile.
It's a literal post hoc condition for determination of likelihood of receiving VC funding.
The actual study doesn't make the claim in those terms. It looks at the amount of VC funding received. Maybe TFA doesn't report it well, but that's not the fault of the study.
Any it couldn't really be any other way, because I doubt anyone keeps stats on the number of companies that pitch and get nothing. That doesn't mean that the conclusions they draw are invalid automatically.
Disregarding the fact that they are confusing "one out of every 10 women in the United States" with 11% OF the 13% OF the working population... in the process of starting or running a NEW business.
You misread it. They are saying that 13% of the working population is involved in starting or running a new business. That includes
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The actual study doesn't make the claim in those terms.
Except it does. Right there in the conclusion.
However, there is still a significant gender gap, in that all-men teams are four times more likely to receive funding from venture capital investors than companies with even one woman on the team.
It's pushing the idea of "women are bad luck for VC investments". By describing it as a probability.
WHICH IT IS NOT!
Probability for the companies in the study to receive VC funding is 100%. They've ALL received VC funding.
Regardless of their being women, Chinese or little green men on the team.
You can't do conditional probability for A happening when the condition is that A has already happened. That's a loop.
It's not "You're not poor BECAUSE you have money"
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Informative)
According to the study, it's the exact opposite:
"Are there differences in performance outcomes between male and female entrepreneurs funded by venture capital?
When looking at outcome measures, we see that company valuations are significantly and consistently higher for companies with a woman on the team than those with no women."
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So, either venture capitalists are choosing teams that will make them less money, or academics are fudging the numbers. Which would you like to bet?
Bear in mind that venture capitalists are under enormous financial pressure to get the best return from their capital, and academics are under substantial political pressure to produce results that support a feminist narrative.
Re: Correlation is not causation (Score:2, Insightful)
Shhh, were all supposed to pretend that women don't take a huge amount of time off to give birth, or outright quit because they'd rather be fulltime moms.
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Sssh.....soon, you'll have men wondering WTF they are forced to pay for maternal care on their medical insurance policies, even if single and/or no intention of ever having kids....
Re: Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Insightful)
i'd rather employ 1 person who can singletask properly than 3 people who claim to multitask with ease. as far as I can tell, multitasking is a myth perpetuated to women by (mostly) other women and (possibly) the single biggest hindrance to their effectiveness in any job.
Re: Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
It really only takes one to figure that out and the market corrects. Of course not all projects are equal, so there is a question as to whether or not women are more disposed to be parts of projects that don't have as good of return potential as men.
I suppose I could read the study myself to see if this was done or attempted.
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You assume a supply shortage of companies to invest in. If there are many companies seeking investment, an arbitrary and unfair mechanism for winnowing out companies would be an advantage (unless it's strongly anti-correlated with success; that is, the companies you refuse to consider due to arbitrary criteria can't be significantly more likely to succeed).
If there's no performance difference measured from having women on your team, as the linked study found, only choosing all-male teams is a safe winnowing
Re: Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
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The issue (if it is one at all as you'd want to look for confounding factors to control for before leaping to a judgement) should be self-correcting. Assume for the sake of argument that all ventures are equally good regardless of the sexes of the team or that from a funding perspective they all have equally good returns. Investors who don't discriminate on sex would be able to get greater returns because there are fewer other VCs that want to invest so they can negotiate a better deal. Since the returns are just as good, those investors make more money and other investors start to adopt their investment strategy.
It really only takes one to figure that out and the market corrects. Of course not all projects are equal, so there is a question as to whether or not women are more disposed to be parts of projects that don't have as good of return potential as men.
I suppose I could read the study myself to see if this was done or attempted.
The 80's called and they want their assumption of perfectly rational economic actors back.
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It's hard for investors to overcome their subconscious biases, even when the rational part of their brain knows that mixed teams are a better investment. The study looked at outcomes and found strong evidence that mixed teams provided a significantly better ROI than all-male ones.
The problem is that the bias is really subtle. The investor perceives the pitch as weaker when coming from a woman (again, two studies demonstrating that with repeatable experiments are cited) so they think it's more risky, and eve
Re: Correlation is not causation (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I can see, the data has two easily visible explanations.
1. VCs are sexist and don't like to fund teams with women on them.
Or
2. Women are more like to choose (or be placed) in projects that are less likely to receive VC funding
Correlation does not imply causation. Data and evidence has no meaning without interpretation.
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An earlier study, cited in this one, looked at this issue: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi... [tandfonline.com]
They made identical pitches and found that the gender of the person making the pitch affected the outcome. Both male and female investors were affected in the same way, biased against women making the pitch.
It's what is known as institutional sexism. The individual investors are not necessarily sexist or consciously biased, it's a more general bias in a society that portrays masculinity as stronger and more reliable
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From what I can see, the data has two easily visible explanations.
1. VCs are sexist and don't like to fund teams with women on them.
Or
2. Women are more like to choose (or be placed) in projects that are less likely to receive VC funding
Correlation does not imply causation. Data and evidence has no meaning without interpretation.
Data have, not has.
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It's still a bad default assumption.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. For this to have _any_ significance with regards to sexism, it needs to prove causation. Otherwise it means exactly nothing.
However, it gives us one data-point in a related discussion: This is yet another faulty argument trying to prove sexism against women. That tells me that the people trying to prove sexism against women are probably pretty bad at statistics. This study here was authored by four women. It would be interesting to see whether a) there is a correlation between bad statistics and female authorship and b) whether there actually is causation.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Informative)
If you bothered to read the study, they vite evidence that proves causation:
"The effects of sex were investigated in a study of men and women pitching in three experiments, where the results showed that investors prefer pitches presented by men, even when the content of the pitch is the same (Brooks et al. 2014)"
"More specifically, another study of venture pitches finds different results, where sex of the entrepreneur does not influence investor preference for the venture but gender does, whereby there were systematic biases against femininity, and entrepreneurial competence was associated with masculinity (Balachandra et al.)"
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Started out as a good argument then went down to crazy town.
"The effects of sex were investigated in a study of men and women pitching in three experiments, where the results showed that investors prefer pitches presented by men, even when the content of the pitch is the same (Brooks et al. 2014)"
Alright. That's informative and the sort of sociological work that I'd expect from real scientists.
"More specifically, another study of venture pitches finds different results, where sex of the entrepreneur does not influence investor preference for the venture but gender does, whereby there were systematic biases against femininity, and entrepreneurial competence was associated with masculinity (Balachandra et al.)"
....What? Ok, first off, if THIS study shows that sex doesn't have an influence, that directly contradicts the first paper. Hey, I get that, sociology is a soft and squishy science and studying it is hard. You're going to be able to find papers that come to different conclusions. The solution is a massive amount of reproduction. Boring and bana
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You can read the paper they are citing. Basically they took it beyond just the sex of the person asking for investment by comparing pitches with different gender signifiers, meaning comparing feminine language, mannerisms, dress and the like with masculine versions.
So basically, the more masculine a woman acts the less she is disadvantaged. Appearance, tone of voice, choice of words etc. The mere fact that the investor knows the gender of the entrepreneur doesn't seem to have much effect, it's how they subc
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You're assuming that the cross-dressers were detected as such by the VCs. The whole point of the study would have been to make the cross-dressing indetectable. I would also expect some "Pat" or "Chris" characters that were dressed ambiguously to serve as a control.
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This second one is interesting, as it implies there was cross-dressing involved so that males were perceived as women and vice versa. Either that or I don't understand the difference between sex and gender as sociological terms.
"More specifically, another study of venture pitches finds different results, where sex of the entrepreneur does not influence investor preference for the venture but gender does, whereby there were systematic biases against femininity, and entrepreneurial competence was associated w
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The implication that all VCs are sexist-driven rather than profit-driven is a bit perplexing. These are the people that are like the Iron Bank from GoT. They probably don't even see the people for who they are, rather than just seeing us all as numbers, except possibly the one that claims to be the CEO for sheer viability.
Which is pretty much the opposite of what they actually do.
VCs don't care about the product, if the product was finished they wouldn't need VCs. The VCs care about the team, they're looking for people who can actually use the money that's given and bring the project to market. It's basically a fancy job interview.
That these VCs end up doubling down on the same biases as everyone else in entirely predictable, I'd expect the same results for start-ups with black team members as well.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
You are operating under the assumption that people (or even a subset of people) are rational. Here's a simple test: does "gut" instinct play any part at all in your decision making processes? If so, you are at least to some degree irrational. Don't feel bad, you have lots of company: the rest of the human race.
If you look at the historical efforts of venture capitalists, you have to conclude that they're as irrational as anyone else. What injects realism into the process is failure. The thing is, having a bias against female team members doesn't necessarily result in failure. It results in narrowed opportunity for success, but if the rational aspects of the VCs decision processes bias those decisions enough to success, he'll still make money, and he'll feel completely vindicated in his mistaken belief in his rationality.
It's a case of the dog that didn't bark -- in this case the investment that you didn't take that would have made you a ton of money. However, now that this is out, it's possible that some smart VCs will start looking for undervalued opportunities. It will only be a matter of time before we have our first female rock star tech entrepreneur, and that will change things.
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Your argument makes no sense. Sure they see numbers. But the numbers they see are incorrect because they are sexist.
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There are also at least three scientific studies referenced in this thread that support that position. The main one in the article and two cited in the main study that have been referenced here.
I have yet to see anyone in this thread cite a study that supports the position that the apparent bias is caused by factors other than perceived gender.
Not looking at pipeline (Score:5, Insightful)
I have only read through the paper's methodology section and conclusion so far, but it appears they didn't look at the total number of pitches by companies with at least one woman founder. They only looked at companies which did receive funding. Their study therefore says nothing about whether women on your founding team has anything to do with whether you will get funding. It just says there are less women founders.
This isn't just a case of the article having a misleading title. The study itself makes conclusions it cannot back up.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is a pretty bad fail. Their results are completely meaningless.
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Their study therefore says nothing about whether women on your founding team has anything to do with whether you will get funding. It just says there are less women founders.
That is incorrect. You are assuming that "received venture capital" is a single, one-off event with equal value every time. As they make clear in the study, it's not. Companies get multiple investments, and the investments differ in size. Therefore, what they look at is not the number of investments if a binary invested/not invested, but the total monetary value of those investments per company.
With a sample size of over 6000 in a timeframe of 2 years, that's statistically valid. They acknowledge that there
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Not exactly. The study in the article cites two previous studies that showed that identical pitches were more likely to get funding if they were made by men than if they were made by women. This study proceeded from the assumption that VCs were already biased in selecting all male teams because the previous studies had already demonstrated the pitch bias. This study was looking at the outcomes regardless of how the pitch was given.
There's still the possibility of flaws in the previous studies, nobody on thi
Another worthless SJW non-study. (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on that you might as well say this study shows that companies with a women in lead position comes up worse ideas then a team of all men.
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Based on that you might as well say this study shows that companies with a women in lead position comes up worse ideas then a team of all men.
Well, occam's razor would suggest no, especially given that numerous other studies have demonstrated that people are often biased against women. And the study notes that the success rate varies between states. So your alternative hypothesis is that magically, VCs are immune from biases that are well documented, and it's just women from some states have worse ideas that men in their groups accept.
Also, startups
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Re:Another worthless SJW non-study. (Score:4, Insightful)
And the study notes that the success rate varies between states.
Here's the problem: the study, as far as I can tell, at no point actually gives the success rate, in any way. It only talks about the percentage of funded companies with women on the executive team. That's all. It then pretends that that percentage is some kind of proxy for a success rate, but it isn't. It could, in fact, be that all companies with women on the executive team that apply for funding get it (which would imply that VCs actually have a strong bias towards women-run companies), and there just aren't a lot of such companies. It could also be that very few such companies receive funding (which would imply the exact opposite, that VCs have strong anti-women biases). In other words: the study tells us exactly nothing about VC bias for or against women. And the study does make this claim: it says women are "shut out" of VC funding, but it in no way shows that.
Is there an available data-set of companies that attempted to gain funding and didn't, let alone their gender breakdown? I tried to start a company briefly and received no funding. It's not a formalized process, there wasn't a department of startups we had to get a license from. The only way you'd know it ever happened is if you talked to one of the four or five people involved in our pitch.
No, there probably isn't such a data set. You know how to fix that? You go out and you make the data set. That's what science is all about. It's not easy, but few things worth doing are.
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It only talks about the percentage of funded companies with women on the executive team. That's all.
No, it doesn't talk about that at all. You haven't read it, have you? You are just pretending to have.
The study doesn't look at the percentage that were funded. How could it, when no-one keeps stats on how many pitches were received but rejected? What it looks at is the amount of money invested via VC funding in over 6000 companies in a two year time span, and what proportion of that funding went to companies with at least one woman on the team making the pitch. Not even the executive team necessarily, just
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Reap What You Sow (Score:3, Insightful)
When TV cameras are tripping all over themselves to put women who scream about workplace sexual harassment in front of the lens, then what did you think was going to happen? Venture capitalists aren't stupid. The easiest way to avoid having to put out a public relations fire is to remove the kindling from the equation entirely.
Misleading conclusion (Score:5, Informative)
Misleading summary and conclusion from a website that with a subtitle of, "Did we ban men yet."
Direct quote from the study:
The average dollar investment in businesses with a woman on the management team was slightly higher for all three years during 2011â"2013, $12 million for those with women, $8 million for those with no women.
Re:Misleading conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
The average dollar investment in businesses with a woman on the management team was slightly higher for all three years during 2011Ã"2013, $12 million for those with women, $8 million for those with no women.
That's kind of an odd statement. Since when is a 50% difference "slightly" higher?
Re:Misleading conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
In the same world where women were "shut out" while still getting funding, and where a conclusion about the percentage of teams with women getting funding was made without counting how many did not. (a percentage requires both a numerator, and a denominator to calculate!)
In other words, this is a biased, sexist, political hit piece, and not a scientific study.
It's time to stop gender BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Please stop posting BS gender issues on slashdot once and for all... It's not tech news, it's not nerd news, it's not news you want to hear, it's not even a news... It's just BS.
There is about 96% male CEOs so their companies gets about the same percentage of the funding. WHAT A SURPRISE...
And don't tell me somebody in western countries is forbidding women to create their own businesses or denying funding for good businesses, because it was woman's idea...
Can we get some non-political submissions today? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we please get some good submissions on the front page today?
This one is pretty much just political, meant to agitate leftists and get them to post a lot of angry comments about "sexism".
The one before this one was about transsexuals in the US military. Again, it was meant to agitate leftists and get them to post a lot of angry comments about "transphobia".
The one before that one was about Americans avoiding vaccines. Yet again, it was meant to agitate leftists and get them to post a lot of angry comments about "anti-vaxxers".
I know, I know. Some will claim it's done to generate controversy, which generates page loads, which generates ad views. That argument never made sense to me, as most of us here are probably smart enough to block ads outright, or if some embedded ones do slip through, we just ignore them.
Can we have relevant articles on the front page, please? Ones having to do with science, technology, math, computing, electronics, and stuff like that which we can't get from other news sources?
Can we not be subjected to these petty identity politics? If we wanted to argue about "sexism" or "transphobia" or "anti-vaxxers" we could just go to a site like Huffington Post or Reddit.
There are lots of good Firehose submissions about truly interesting topics that don't involve -isms or -phobias or identity politics. Editors, let's get some of those on the Slashdot front page, ok?
We come here to discuss open source software, programming languages, Linux, tinkering with electronics, and to learn about new scientific discoveries. We don't come here for leftist identity politics.
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Mod this AC up.
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Let's talk about Drupal instead. Oh wait..
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Those stories always get the most comments. That suggests that people like commenting on them.
If you want them to stop, stop commenting.
Fully strange... (Score:4, Insightful)
The opposite should be true. After all, the "woman are wonderful effect" is very well known. Both men and woman have an unconscious pro-bias towards woman as well. Ranging from social to material interests. But you can look all over society and find cases where this isn't true because of the problems it brings.
And those problems? You can thank false allegations, socjus, fake sexual harassment, cases like this [mercurynews.com] or Ellen Pao [nytimes.com] and the ability of a woman to destroy your career and life over a false claim. I'll bet that nearly every person that reads this comment and is currently working in a corporate environment of some kind has seen the shift where men leave doors open, or have one or more individuals in the same room with them when talking to a woman. There's a reason for it.
And it's to the point where that even if proven false in the court of law that a man's choices are commit suicide or try to work through it, by picking up and moving to another part of the world to try and start over. It's not worth the trouble, and this is a result of people trying to limit and protect themselves from a potential fallout. I'm sure someone is going to bring up a "but it really doesn't destroy them..." No? Find anyone who's been the subject of a false claim, and you'll find a person who's lost friends, family, career, connections, and are ostracized even when innocent, the person recanted, or was dismissed by the courts with prejudice against the accuser.
Re:Fully strange... (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn son, put the tinfoil hat down. Women aren't some scary alien thing. Just act like a decent human and you're good.
Don't be an idiot kid. Take a look in the US for example with the title ix complaint system at universities if you want an example in action. Two people hook up, woman decides that she's changed her mind, was pressured by friends to recant because of social status, made a false rape claim for various reasons(like trying to get another person to like her), or she rapes him, or he has proof of such and she's lying. And you'll find those male students thrown out, rail roaded, crucified in the court of public opinion and some go right down that dark path of killing themselves because they see no way out because their entire life is ruined in their early 20's. That's it. There is zero accountability in that system.
Let's look at policing. You're taught to always believe the woman in a case of rape or sexual assault. If it turns out to be false? Charges are almost never laid, because there's the belief that it would stop victims from coming forward. It's only in the very rare cases where a woman has made multiple false claims, is she charged. You can have a case where the accuser is outright lying and the police will not lay a charge.
Didn't the UVA false rape claim teach you anything? Or the several dozen other cases that made the news in the last year? That when someone, anyone has the ability to make a serious claim and bare false witness without repercussions they will. Even ancient Mesopotamia figured that one out.
Re:Fully strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
No...that poster was dead on.
About 3.5 years ago, when this wave of feminism was kicking off, I had a good friend who was a woman.
She and some of her comrades in arms decided to circle the wagons around feminism, and I was one of the victims.
Victim in the sense that they lodged a complaint against me. BUT- it was unfounded, and that was the outcome of all investigations.
Do you know how little good that did me? The fact that I didn't harass, but they 'felt as though they were being harassed' was all it took. Exactly as the poster said, lost my job, my friends, etc.
Why? Because I am part of the patriarchy, and they want to smash that...and it doesn't matter who gets in the way. Because here's the plan...men don't matter. We are less. Damaging a few men to get what you want is like stepping on ants. (Read the byline on the website that is linked.)
Women are not the problem by themselves. The problem is that we throw so much sympathy at them, that we don't pay attention to the facts. And this article that we are commenting on is a really good example of that. Some jackass out there is going to take this at face value, and start an affirmative action campaign to 'correct' the situation.
I hate working with women now. I view each of them as a time-bomb that will go off, pretty much independent of my own actions. It's happened before, it will probably happen again.
Will I actively work against them? Nope. But I will never again get into that trap...and now overall productivity is way down, because I spend my time avoiding getting on the wrong side of someone who one day will wake up, get a pixie cut, and decide that men are her problem- not the fact that she just hates her job like the rest of us.
The guy you responded to is experienced. And more and more men are gaining this experience of women using the laws/sympathy to get what they want.
To the ladies who don't do this. Sorry..but that's the way it goes. Same way you won't meet me in a dark parking lot. I am not a rapist, but you need to be careful- I understand that- so you act as though I might be a rapist. Sure, you are not the type to lodge a bullshit complaint, but I need to be wary, because the other women don't identify themselves ahead of time. So you all get tagged with the, "She will file a complaint against you" label.
Yay for women in tech...
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If there were laws and policies in place that specifically protected those individuals, I would feel the same way.
I work at a University. Title IX is real, and everything that goes with it. If you don't think that women as a protected class (yes, literally, yes, factually) is not an issue, then you have no idea what goes on at Universities.
Yes, men are capable of all kinds of stupid shit. But men don't have the ability to end an interpersonal problem with, "She was harassing/intimidating me". Because m
Take the Remington Steele approach... (Score:3, Informative)
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Or JK Rowling, George Eliot, and other writers of fiction
I've done the opposite with my gender-neutral pen name, C.D. Reimer, writing short stories with lead female characters, and submitting them to anthologies edited by female editors. I've gotten quite a few first serial sales that way. Mostly because writers, including female writers, tend to write short stories with a lead male character. A short story with a lead female character stands out from the crowd.
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Or JK Rowling, George Eliot, and other writers of fiction
I've done the opposite with my gender-neutral pen name, C.D. Reimer, writing short stories with lead female characters, and submitting them to anthologies edited by female editors. I've gotten quite a few first serial sales that way. Mostly because writers, including female writers, tend to write short stories with a lead male character. A short story with a lead female character stands out from the crowd.
Nice example of Zen Marketing! Kudos!
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/4171001.C_D_Reimer
I haven't looked at that profile since Good Reads got bought by Amazon. Something else for my to do list.
I really like the gender-neutral bearded fat man picture.
Without a beard I look like a woman. After a few odd conversations on Twitter, I always post my picture with a beard.
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"Another one of my revenue streams dried up completely, I forgot about it."
Good Reads has never been a revenue stream.
Another creimer lie....
Zoom in on my face without showing any hair. Male, female or can't tell?
I'm not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
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Men work harder when their wives get pregnant, woman take time off.
Unsupported broadbrushing. Some men may work harder, sure, but I doubt if it's most. New parents, male and female, tend to be pretty exhausted. And lots of men take time off when the baby first comes home.
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I hate to say it, but even with all things being equal you still have to worry about your owner having a kid. Men work harder when their wives get pregnant, woman take time off.
You'd take time off, too, if you spent nine months carrying a bowling-ball strapped to your abdomen.
Risk Taking (Score:2)
I'm sure someone will jump on this as sexist, but women don't take as much risk as men. Why that is, is up for discussion, but until it's fixed, it makes sense for VCs to take less risk with them. There's plenty written on the topic, here's a sample.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/a... [entrepreneur.com]
Almost impossible? (Score:2)
Bullshit website (Score:4, Insightful)
I looked at the other "articles" from that website.
It has golden nuggets like this " For as long as America has existed, its criminal justice system has maintained the supremacy of white people. "
I must admit that I choose to skip the "placenta osso buco" article.
Why do you keep linking to garbage sites like that, what the fuck is wrong with you?
VC money is poison (Score:3)
It should be avoided anyway.
What am I misinterpreting? (Score:2)
From the summary:"We did not determine any significant performance differences between companies with women CEOs from companies with men CEOs, so it is quite surprising that women are still, practically speaking, shut out of the market for venture capital funding, both as CEOs and participants of executive teams."
So presumably, there is a much harsher filtration system in place for women, both as CEOs and as successful funding recipients. Only the astoundingly good ones would even have a slim chance of ge
Look at the Study (Score:4, Informative)
faith based (Score:2)
Ex ante, idiot! (Score:2)
Not ex post!
How can you be so stupid?
Extremely anti women article. (Score:2)
Does stupidity
Makes sense (Score:2)
Women work less.
Re: Good for them (Score:2, Funny)
But this sounds like it could violate the Rust Code of Conduct. If they aren't careful then the Rust Moderation Team may come after them to teach them about tolerance and acceptance.
Re: Good for them (Score:2)
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
If VCs don't care about making wise decisions with their money, they can. Looks to me like no one is suggesting otherwise. I don't think anyone is suggesting they shouldn't be able to put their balls in a blender either. It's their genitals and they can do with them what they want. Definitely.
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perhaps the nature of business contributes to this. business is aggressive and competitive intrinsically, all-male teams may lack a moderating female influence and their presentations are on average more aggressive 'hungrier' than those with female team members, if only the creme of the crop, hungriest, most competent, stellar ventures and teams are going to get money, who's to say?
as jordan peterson is also likely to point out ... the average might be the same, that doesn't mean that skimming the top or b
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This at least is a slightly more plausible version of the hypothesis than originally stated, but it boils down to "VCs are more attuned to funding aggressive business plans and presentations" and assuming that such business plans are more likely to come from all-male teams.
"women tend to value work-life balance, and men are more likely to value 'providing for the family' and put in extra hours to get that promotion" - this runs completely counter to your assumption that the management teams on startups repr
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More likely VCs do not respond to women's business plans or sales pitches, for whatever reason, real or perceived. We're talking about VCs, most of what they see, hear and act on is some degree of fantasy or another. Even successful investments morph over time from the pitch to the reality.
To get their money you have to appeal to some part of their lizard brain that makes them want to part with their cash, a combination of rationalization and vision. It's very likely that as they are mostly men, other men a
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I think what can be done is to educate people on what makes a good investment and what doesn't, and how we can be fooled. If we are conscious of it we can a least partially compensate. I don't think investors have some secret plan to keep women down. More likely it will be something about the way men present ideas that will attract them more. People frequently make unwise decisions based on form over substance. This probably a similar thing to something read recently saying we pick charismatic leaders over
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Or maybe VC's know something about female-led businesses that the rest of us don't want to accept.
Posting as AC because of insanely politically incorrect opinion.
Fact: women are just as good in the business as men
Fact: women are just as good in engineering as men
Fact: women are just as good in entrepreneurship as men
But also, unfortunately:
Fact: women present a higher risk to VC funding than men.
Why? Male entrepreneurs don't get pregnant. Male entrepreneurs will 99.9% of the time not ask for parental leave. Male entrepreneurs typically don't need to go home to pick up their sick child from scho
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But is it reality? Hell yes.
I'm glad you're convinced of your own thesis there?
And on a side note, if you really want to march in favor of women's rights on Market Street in SF, start with protesting against women's situations in the Middle East or Africa. They are far more worse than here in the U.S.
That's a false dichotomy. And that would be ineffective if not counterproductive, and everyone knows it. I mean, our war campai
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"Fact: women present a higher risk to VC funding than men.
Why? Male entrepreneurs don't get pregnant. Male entrepreneurs will 99.9% of the time not ask for parental leave. Male entrepreneurs typically don't need to go home to pick up their sick child from school at 1pm (because they are supported by strong women at home)."
You are conflating work/personal issues suffered by the workforce at large with issues suffered by female executives.
1) Female entrepreneurs generally can afford a nanny.
2) If a female ent
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3) Men may not have family life commitments (which is a statement I firmly disagree with, but I am accepting as a premise for this debate), but they have their own risks. They are far more likely to jump to a competitor for a bump in salary and/or control. This can be a risk on both ends of the jump. See recent lawsuits involving Oculus and Facebook/Zenimax.
Counter intuitively this may be the reason men win more venture capital, because men's priority is money (not saying its a good thing) and this matches the Venture capitalists priority, so they are more likely to appeal to them. (Just a theory)
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Male entrepreneurs don't get pregnant. Male entrepreneurs will 99.9% of the time not ask for parental leave. Male entrepreneurs typically don't need to go home to pick up their sick child from school at 1pm (because they are supported by strong women at home).
Thing is, companies with women on the team had better outcomes on average. They made the investors more money. So if anything:
Fact: all-male groups present a higher risk to VC funding than mixed ones.
Why? I can only speculate, but maybe because all-male groups where only 0.1% are willing to take paternity leave and don't participate so much in family life tend to burn out make poor decisions more often. Good work/life balance, something more common in mixed groups, produces better overall results.
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Actually...VCs typically are mingling money from other investors with their own. So if the VCs are ignoring potential opportunities for a reason unrelated to the sales pitch, they are potentially leaving money on the table and costing their investors.
Correlation is not causation, and I'm sure this isn't a conscious discrimination in nearly all cases, but do any of you really believe that women are 75% less effective at developing any component of a business model than men? Financially? In HR? Marketing?
What are the stats for how female VCs fund co's? (Score:2)
Oh wait, first, what is the percentage of VCs that are female, and roughly, why is that?
Not suggesting female VCs would or should decide differently.
Frankly, using gender of the proponent as a criterion is just f'ing dumb.
It should be about drive, dogged determination, intelligence, team synergy, idea quality, progress so far, roadmap credibility...
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The word, "fonding" [urbandictionary.com], is, "The act of looking at someone with such care that you radiate your love for them by simply staring at them."
The IRS does that job quite well. No need to create another layer of bureaucracy.
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Seriously you know what he/she meant.
If I did, I wouldn't be looking it up. :P
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I wake up this morning, and I see creimer talking shit about someone else's bad spelling.
Have some Hot & Spicy Spam [amzn.to] with your whine.
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If you had creimer on your team, no VC would show up in the first place!
Have some Spam-flavored Macadamia Nuts [amzn.to] with your whine.
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Right, because there are no difference between men and women. In all seriousness, see my other post on risk taking.
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Bet your wife doesn't know you posted that.
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...Oracle...
Oh, wait a minute...