I'm delighted that this essay exists. Jessica helped out in so many different ways during the early days of Stripe that I can barely remember half of them.<p>(John and I became interested in startups in large part as a result of reading Founders at Work. And then, because John and I were immigrants without credit history, our residence of the Bay Area started with Jessica helping to convince a landlord to rent a place to us. Once the company was underway, whenever John and I had a major decision to make, figuring things out generally involved biking over to Jessica's and PG's place for an invariably clarifying discussion.<p>I recall one particular decision that John and I had been debating for weeks. We just couldn't decide. Jessica's response, when asked, was immediate and adamant. We were surprised but trusted her. John and I often remark at how differently (and, I'm confident, worse) things would have ended up had Jessica not convinced us to make that call.)
All the great teams I've worked on had the "family-like" property Paul Graham talks about here.<p>The first really great company I worked at was explicit about being family-oriented; they'd bring everyone's family to the office and cook dinners, had Christmas at the founders house, that sort of thing.<p>I left that company and joined a different sort of family, which was more of a bar-fighting sort of family but <i>still had that vibe</i>.<p>Then I started my first company, which cratered, and which did not have that family feel at all, despite it being largely a group of people who were friends in real life.<p>I felt like we got part of the way there with Matasano (at least in the Chicago office, which was our largest), but not all of the way. It's tricky to pull off!<p>I really only want to work at companies that have that feel, for the rest of my career. It makes a huge difference. Also: if Jessica Livingston can generate that kind of culture on demand, that's definitely a reason to be impressed by her!
I would guess that (almost?) all successful startups have a lot going on behind the scenes that doesn't make it into the press.<p>My company isn't even particularly successful, but it's incredibly difficult for us to get anyone who writes about us to mention that I'm a co-founder (not <i>the</i> founder, let alone the fact that the community that does most of the important work) and that there's an entire team behind what we're doing (that it's not "my" thing).<p>The single-man myth is just a lot sexier, even if false. There are great founders, to be sure, but every time you talk to the person who is the "single man" they talk about how the company is successful because of a fantastic team. In fact, a lot of the work of a founder <i>is</i> assembling a great team and making them work well together. I don't think I've ever seen an exception to that - even Jobs, Musk, etc.<p>In fact, the real moral of the story is that the tech press is almost entirely bullshit, and that is mostly to be avoided.
I would think most founders who've been through YC would recognize Jessica's importance in the equation, so it's interesting that it is some sort of secret in the industry at large. Even early on, before her first book was published, she was obviously on top of, and involved in, everything. She was the primary point of contact for damned near everything for founders.<p>So, it's an interesting phenomenon that even with such a preponderance of evidence, the story that gets told and re-told mostly leaves her out. Our industry has so many internalized prejudices that are invisible unless and until you're looking for them, it can seem perfectly normal for the story to be about a lone man building an empire with a few supporting characters. If the story were framed as building a "family", rather than a business empire, would Jessica's role be more prominent in the telling? I think one could tell it either way, but the tech industry doesn't have language for that, even though I think some of the best companies were as much a family as an empire (early HP, for example).<p>Gender roles are weird, is what I'm trying to say, and the tech industry is more rigid than many.
I'm never sure how to reconcile PG's stance of "our founders are good people" / "X-ray vision for character" with some of the things that some of the portfolio companies do.<p>For instance, the vigorous, long-lasting and constantly denied spamming that AirBnB did off CraigsList with fake names, or some of the early Reddit fake accounts and general puffing-up (which was, to be fair, less bad.)<p>Maybe business tactics are explicitly not part of what PG and Jessica consider "good character"? It seems increasingly clear that they mean something different by it than I do.
Footnote #3 is worth pointing out, I think:<p>> The existence of people like Jessica is not just something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge, but something feminists need to learn to acknowledge as well. There are successful women who don't like to fight. Which means if the public conversation about women consists of fighting, their voices will be silenced.<p>> There's a sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. If a conversation reaches a certain level of incivility, the more thoughtful people start to leave.<p>I imagine that this idea applies to many situations. Replace "feminists" and "[successful] women" with something else.
Jessica,<p>Any chance you could write up what it means to have social radar? Right now you might as well substitute the word "magic." What is it that you see that other people don't? Do you score especially highly on reading micro-expressions (<a href="http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expressions/" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expressions/</a>)? Is this a familial trait? What is your subjective experience when talking to a 'faker?' Have you ever tried to track you first impressions against later behaviors?<p>I'm super curious about what seems to be a real life superpower!
On the one hand, good for PG for speaking up. On the other, how can one write a piece about persistent discrimination against a woman without mentioning societal gender discrimination as a thing?<p>He even asks the question, "If Jessica was so important to YC, why don't more people realize it?" His answer: he's vocal and she doesn't seek attention. Those may be true, but that's not enough to answer the question. As the NYT just wrote, even famous female economists get slighted like this:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/upshot/even-famous-female-economists-get-no-respect.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/upshot/even-famous-female-...</a>
Great essay. Besides setting the record straight on Jessica's key role in the founding and growth of YC, it also offers a rare glimpse into how and why YC became the juggernaut it is today.<p>"The overall atmosphere was shockingly different from a VC's office on Sand Hill Road, in a way that was entirely for the better."<p>The rest of the essay is filled with words like family, mom, character, culture, authenticity, good(ness), social radar etc. Words you would hardly ever associate with a successful business - let alone a big time, successful VC firm on Sand Hill Road or anywhere else. It sounds like a crazy way to run a company based on such fuzzy concepts. But remarkably, these soft, fuzzy concepts appear to be a key part of YC's huge success - and not some cold, calculated decision making. In a way this bears out one of PG's other theories - that hugely successful startups usually start out with ideas that look really bad or crazy. And in YC's case, the most successful startup to come out of YC may be regarded as YC itself!<p>Edit: Would like to add a key part of their approach seems to have been to throw out the old, tried and true approach, think from first principles and build the company and culture in a way that they felt comfortable with - and not how it was "supposed to be done".
> "There's a sort of Gresham's Law of conversations."<p>Generalized, this explains why a lot of the really cool, thoughtful, and kind people I know seem to fly under the radar.<p>And it suggests that moderating a discussion forum means constantly pushing uphill.
I still remember, back in 2007, sitting in the old Mountain View office when Jessica came out and yelled "Matt Maroon! I just love that name." I had been a little nervous until that but for some odd reason that was calming.<p>Those of us in YC knew she wasn't just PG's girlfriend.
<i>The existence of people like Jessica is not just something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge, but something feminists need to learn to acknowledge as well. There are successful women who don't like to fight. Which means if the public conversation about women consists of fighting, their voices will be silenced.</i><p>It's my impression (primarily from lurking) that the more nuanced, observant conversation tends to take place in less publicized fora, which while not exactly closed are at least so little publicized that they are not "public". Sometimes this is termed a "safe space", sometimes the essential characteristics are arranged without calling it that. Anyway the conversations are very much "here's my impression; it's different than yours but we can agree on at least these things" and "I'm sorry but that is just so far out of bounds that we'll have to part ways and not try to work this out". There's a conversation, but not a debate.<p>Maybe some would lament the "filter bubble" aspect of such an arrangement, because after all everyone should prefer to debate each point to death, but in fact not everyone does prefer that. (Of course, I do, but I'm slowly learning not to assume everyone else is like me.) It's tempting to put this all on "the feminists", but that is selling ourselves short. We can all listen without speaking, long enough to realize that feminism is not monolithic and that many feminists are aware of women like Livingston. The ignorance of the media and the Twitterati is a property of them, not of all of feminism. (Of course much of feminism is, for want of a better word, "masculine" in the sense of wanting to dialogue each point until we have a party line for everyone to toe, but much of feminism is not that.)
Here's an older piece by Jessica herself, on being a social radar, and the "mom" of the family:<p><a href="http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-social-radar-what-i-did-at-y-combinator" rel="nofollow">http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-social-radar-what-i-...</a><p>(I posted this partly due to the predictable reaction to PG's use of the word mom.)
I made a newsline of Jessica Livingston, that compiles many of her interviews: <a href="http://newslines.org/jessica-livingston/" rel="nofollow">http://newslines.org/jessica-livingston/</a>
So, what's her secret?<p>Is it something you can learn, is it experience, x-ray vision you either have or have not? Are women better suited for this job?<p>What clues are you looking for while talking to founders?<p>Is there something like a 'perfect' character or does she make a list of positive and negative traits?<p>Are some traits more important than others?
I wonder if it's easier to judge people's honesty/character/civility/etc. if they're interacting mainly with other people under your observation, rather than with you directly. I suspect so.
Thanks for this PG, it's wonderful to see Jessica get the long overdue credit she deserves.<p>That essay is also comforting for me on a personal level because like Jessica, I'm uneasy with attention, public speaking, etc and that's a tough thing to struggle with when you're a startup founder, where a big part of your job is to be the affable, extroverted face of the company. The thought of doing a YC or similar interview makes me sweat, even though I know what I'm building is awesome, cool and valuable. If ever Jessica is giving lessons on how to get over that, sign me up please!
<a href="http://recode.net/2014/08/21/ycs-jessica-livingston-was-hit-on-by-a-vc-on-the-way-to-this-interview/" rel="nofollow">http://recode.net/2014/08/21/ycs-jessica-livingston-was-hit-...</a> this is the article in question?
> <i>If bad founders succeed at all, they tend to sell early. The most successful founders are almost all good.</i><p>I wonder what chances these people would have if they were to apply to YC now: Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey etc.
> The existence of people like Jessica is not just something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge, but something feminists need to learn to acknowledge as well. There are successful women who don't like to fight. Which means if the public conversation about women consists of fighting, their voices will be silenced.<p>And therein lies the problem. Professional feminists are extremely vocal radicals that do not represent the majority of women. Their statistics and talking points tend to be universally unsound and inflammatory, and they are at this point more accurately described as a racist and sexist hate group.<p>So the question is, why are they deemed the authority on so many issues in the mainstream media? Why does PG even acknowledge their nonsensical demands, or try to engage with them to defend Jessica?<p>Anyone who has lived a day on this planet understands that empirical reality is immutable, and ideologies cannot alter them. So when feminists for example, state matter-of-factly that "biology is a social construct", why are they allowed to continue speaking nonsense? Meanwhile, brilliant academics who debunk feminist propaganda like Helena Cronin [1] are nowhere to be found in the media.<p>Perhaps women like Jessica Livingston and Helena Cronin need to take an active stance against radical feminists, and not dignify their accusations with a response other than: "please educate yourself before attempting to open a dialogue regarding these issues."<p>AKA: Do not feed the trolls.<p>1. <a href="https://edge.org/conversation/helena_cronin-getting-human-nature-right" rel="nofollow">https://edge.org/conversation/helena_cronin-getting-human-na...</a>
Great article.<p>Only one typo "[pg] is better at some things (that) [sic] Jessica is"<p>But I do have to say, wow, there was a lot of really new information in this post, to me, and I also could feel the emotion and passion in it.<p>It's nice when someone gets praised in such a manner - regardless of if its from their SO, because I felt that there was a lot of objectivity in this post as well.
Excellent read. Especially interesting trying to figure out all of the behind the scenes reasons for writing this essay, timing, content, etc.<p>My co-founder is a woman and we have a somewhat similar dynamic: she doesn't write as much, doesn't like the publicity or argument that sometimes happens with a position in business: but at the end of the day she helps create a feeling of family in our team. I don't know if it is gender-based or just her personality, but it's nice to see someone in a similar (albeit much more successful) position getting some recognition.
<i>The existence of people like Jessica is not just something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge, but something feminists need to learn to acknowledge as well. There are successful women who don't like to fight.</i><p>There is another lesson here for feminists that PG does not fully articulate. In my experience, most women are similar to Jessica in that they do not fit naturally into an alphadog founder type role. The time-honored tradition for such women to be part of accomplishing great things, is to partner with an alphadog mate. Unfortunately, modern feminism is all about turning women into men, rather than guiding women to fit in as complements and partners to a strong man.<p><i>If Jessica was so important to YC, why don't more people realize it? Partly because I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention.</i><p>And also because she was not listed as involved when YC was first founded. I assume that Jessica was "The Fourth Man wants to remain anonymous for now"? <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050324095016/http://ycombinator.com/about.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20050324095016/http://ycombinato...</a>
Thanks, PG. From my vantage point, authenticity is probably the not-so-secret ingredient of YC. This is a great essay and I hope that it impacts others not only in shining a light on the important contributions made by Jessica in the founding of YC but also in showing that one important tactic in the fight against sexism is to make sure to give credit when credit is due.
I knew Jessica and Paul were married, and implicitly assumed this was pre-YC. I read with interest the data point that they were "already dating" at the time.<p>I was wondering if you could share any data on success/failure of startups where 2 co-founders are in a relationship, and if/how this is rated in yc applications.
I've been thinking about this essay and reading all those comments for a few days now. I am looking for a company where people are not arrogant, and where self-confidence and outspokenness is not a proof of someone's talent, and where everyone gets a fair chance of recognition, without having to brag and show off. Those traits are not in my own personality. I am smart though. It looks like YC can be a good place for that. Unfortunately, and as I was being told personally, this kind of place is very hard to find. So all those comments makes me a bit sad, because it's basically an exception in this world. While it's good that someone speaks about JL's talents, there's actually a lot of places where someone absolutely has to show other abilities in order to be recognized.
my first company, thesixtyone, would've never happened if it weren't for jessica. she welcomed me to yc teas when i was just a starry eyed idea dude from los angeles (hello, xobnis and zenters!), and she also saved our face and investment after i naively bumbled pg's verbal offer.
It's really nice to see a man really, really in love with his wife! Mother Nature really likes that!<p>For how she is so good with <i>personality radar</i>, IIRC recently there was a research paper that confirmed that already in the crib the girls are paying attention to people and the boys, to things. So the girls are making eye contact, understanding facial expressions, smiling, and, thus, <i>eliciting protective emotions from adults</i> while the boys are trying to hack the latch on the crib and install Wi-Fi and an real-time, embedded Linux in the toy fire truck on the floor!<p>So, with some nerd men and a really feminine woman, there's no contest -- on <i>personality radar</i>, no way will the men catch up with the woman!<p>Congrats PG, you just achieved "the greatest prize life has to offer".
As a husband-wife co-founder team, I totally can relate. Having my wife's female intuition ( yes it really exists.. it's like a heat-sensing radar and magic 8ball all-in-one )<p>see her in action: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/zA41aSKM9C/?taken-by=juicycanvas" rel="nofollow">https://www.instagram.com/p/zA41aSKM9C/?taken-by=juicycanvas</a><p>The challenge is that 99% of my time is spent on so many righ-brain tasks..i practically become a 'vulcan' so when a customer email or PR challenge or new biz dev opp comes flying in.. its very easy to just mis-read it or reply in a curt almost cold way. Luckily she QA's all our communication with a filters yet undiscovered by scientists. Deb i love you darlin! Where would we be without you!
<i>"At one of the first she did, the reporter brushed aside her insights about startups and turned it into a sensationalistic story about how some guy had tried to chat her up as she was waiting outside the bar where they had arranged to meet. Jessica was mortified"</i><p>Interestingly I read the article he refers to earlier today and I was really surprised (I took it at face value, apparently I should have been wiser) to read that someone like Jessica was <i>so</i> "shaken" by a guy hitting on her in what sounded like not-that-aggressive a way to me. I've never met her, but I've read enough online about her to have the opinion that she probably isn't someone who gets off on playing the victim.
Surprised the essay doesn't mention <i>Founders At Work</i>, a great read that is really well done and likely very difficult given the breadth of the interview subjects. Seems like a perfect reflection on its author.
Now that I know about her, she seems pretty awesome. Great work, Jessica! I especially respect that she stays out of the press battles to focus on productive things. It's wiser because they're a trap anyway. The post gave a perfect example of that where they just tried to set her up for ratings. She seems to be playing her hand incredibly well as a ninja and sage behind the scenes. Such people don't get much press but are essential to many of the best organizations. Most are fine with the former because the pride is in the latter. :)
Having read posts on both HN and hearing from other founders, I'd always assumed for years that it was common knowledge that Jessica was so integral to YC.<p>Then again, I have noticed some of the changing narrative on the founding of YC and it's good that pieces like this are being written to prevent erasure. I've heard her speak both times at Columbia and have only heard wonderful things about her, so I'm glad this piece exists - hopefully the narrative will shift back to what I had thought it was in the future.
Great essay that should leave no doubt for credit where it's due. What I find strange is that pg would even have to explain all of this in an essay after all this time since none of this is new to me (or I would imagine many people in the start up scene) since it's been mentioned so many times in different interviews. Then again it was also strange that a Bay Area vc wasn't able to recognize Jessica in either Palo Alto or Mountain View and start making some weird remarks towards her.
I highly recommend Founders at Work to anyone who hasn't read it. Jessica is an absolutely incredible interviewer (in my opinion, one of the more underrated skillsets out there, probably because we're used to such generic interviews). This essay highlights some of her strengths that helped her write such an incredibly insightful book. PG is right, she simply has a knack for asking extremely illuminating questions and getting insightful or informative responses.
Thanks for writing this. I've been reading your essays for years and Jessica's name has never entered my radar. It really means something, to hear that not only is the female cofounder a central part of the team, but that we've never heard of her because she avoids the spotlight. It makes me think twice about stories of companies that don't seem to have any women in them - perhaps they are there, but they've been written out of the story.
Character is indeed very important, and in my view (given all the ^%&*$ I've been through with the one -and probably never again- startup I was involved with) the most important factor in any business. I wish I knew Jessica and that she'd could have warned me... She sounds like an "essential" person to know.<p>You are a lucky man, PG
pg was famous among programmers before YC so it makes sense that everyone considered it pg's new venture. It's the same with Stackoverflow being considered Spolsky and Attwood's venture even though there were a bunch of other cofounders.<p>Also, the publicity. pg was public in a bunch of ways that Jessica wasn't.
>> Incidentally, if you saw Jessica at a public event, you would never guess she hates attention, because (a) she is very polite and (b) when she's nervous, she expresses it by smiling more.<p>on point(b) - I do this too. I have seen that very few people pick up on this queue. I smile and hide my nervous energy.
"(As we later learned, it probably cost us little to reject people whose characters we had doubts about, because how good founders are and how well they do are not orthogonal. If bad founders succeed at all, they tend to sell early. The most successful founders are almost all good.)"<p>A little Manichaen?
So, Jessica is the Socrates for YC, and YC is the Socrates for YC start-ups.<p>Successful founders are usually doers that often make bold adventures and can execute plans efficiently and ruthlessly, but they need consultant guidance from a wise person. I guess this is the YC's success formula?
Livingston's book, Founders at Work is the most insightful book on startups I have read. In hindsight it was her ability to bring out the core of the founders' character that made the book so informative.
> It was also how we picked founders who were good people.<p>I've read about qualities of good startup founders. Wondering now, what are the qualities of good people? (real question) What have you found? What should I read?
I am a huge fan of Ms Livingston's book, and would love to see a follow-up work. I have no firsthand knowledge whatsoever regarding her work as a yc founder, but I certainly have no reason to doubt the views of many yc alumni who have commented on her importance at YC. However, as a father of two daughters who are started to find their way in the tech world, I'm a little confused and disappointed by this post by Mr Graham. If Ms Livingston's wishes are to remain in the background, then Mr Graham should respect that. If she has apparently changed her mind and wishes to take on a higher profile, she should speak for herself, not have 'the man' explain things to the world on her behalf, which wrongly implies she cannot do so herself.
Jessica sounds awesome! It is nice to see YC allow her to add value based on her strengths rather than forcing her into roles where her strengths would be lost.
<i>"Jessica knows more about the qualities of startup founders than anyone else ever has."</i><p>Putting these qualities onto paper would make good reading.
we live in a messed up place where women are undermined no matter how great or influential they are. we, society, need to stop doing that. good write up - let's see what happens next.
>A lot of the applicants probably read her as some kind of secretary, especially early on, because she was the one who'd go out and get each new group and she didn't ask many questions. //<p>Yet elsewhere it's noted that one of the candidates pointed out that Livingston asked the fewest but most pointed questions. This makes me wonder if anyone ever did think that Livingston was "some kind of secretary" [and what's wrong with that] or if that assumption just plays to the conclusion that sex rather than, say, hot-headed assertiveness or attention seeking is the reason for the disparity in public perceptions of Livingstone and Graham. [I'm talking speculatively, I don't know either of these people].<p>Given the nature of the essay I find this, in the footnotes, quite peculiar:<p>>No one understands female founders better than Jessica. //<p>Why does she only understand female founders the best - that would presumably be because females are inherently different in some characteristics pertinent to being founders? Why is this not "No one understands founders better ..." is there someone who does understand founders better but for some reason is unable to understand female founders as well as they do male founders.<p>Surely this is the answer to the question posed on notability if others are better at understanding founders who are male, for some reason, then as more founders are male [it seems, I don't have stats on this, just going with my perception of the consensus] it would stand to reason that those best able to understand the largest cadre of founders are most notable - this understanding we're told is the vital element in the field after all.<p>The inclusion of the word "female" here is the key one way or another.<p>>The person who knows the most about the most important factor in the growth of mature economies—that is who Jessica Livingston is. //<p>It almost looks like Graham is saying, but perhaps not wanting to say, that the sex of his co-founder is the key element in reaching a broader base of founders?<p>I'm not at all saying Livingston isn't the best person in the World in this role, but Graham's footnote leads away from that conclusion.<p>On a slightly different focus:<p>>There are successful women who don't like to fight. //<p><i>People</i>. There are successful _people_ who don't like to fight; unless you're saying their sex is the reason they don't like to fight or that this characteristic is peculiar to women then why do people have to force sexual bivalence all the time. The inference that follows that all [successful] men do like to fight is doubly unhelpful IMO.
It's uncomfortable to me that Paul Graham felt he had to write this. In particular, his enumeration of Jessica Livingston's 'Social Radar' as if it is some kind of superpower reads to me like a long list of the virtues emotionally unintelligent hacker dudes lack, like he felt forced to justify her role in the founding of YC. I could be overreacting but I also find it telling that he doesn't praise her for business acumen (until that blip at the end about data), but rather for her intuitive judgments.<p>Not a very interesting character portrait, and has an slightly weird sniff about it.
Its sad - that she isn't out there more: setting a visible example for other women. But it is by her choice, and I am glad she has the choice.<p>As men, we should make tech more accommodating to women.<p>It is interesting that if Jessica was really a man "Jessie" how would the experiences have been. (i.e. founders ignoring "him", assuming "he" was a secretary, etc.)<p>Of course, I better make sure I don't fall into this trap!<p><i>Update: Interesting state of affairs. My comment is being downvoted.</i>
At certain point in the article, he describes her aversion to give talks and talk to the press.<p>This makes me think that YC Combinator should upgrade from a school of entrepreneurs to a school of entrepreneurs advisers (which will create their own school of entrepreneurs).<p>Something like going from a simple school to a school that trains teachers and them to a school that trains teachers how to train a new teacher of teachers.<p>At this point, you can achieve self-sustenability. Wouldn't be great if YC model was replicated around the world (given the basic pre-requisites)?<p>TL:DR It would be nice if YC Combinator tought people how do what Paul Graham does, the whole package.
Yes the Startups and new programmers are sort of like another gold rush, almost everyone is getting into it.<p>You have to have social radar to sniff out the fakes and bad founders that would be bad investments and not able to finish a project.<p>PR firms and news media and SJW always try to paint women as victims, but don't talk about female founders like Jessica Livingston as a success who went on to help many founders start many startups and get them successful. It is politics mostly from the left that uses victimhood to sell stories and get ratings and attention. I'd like to read stories about successful female founders and how they got success through hard work and being able to use social radar to detect fakes and bad founders and find ways to advise founders and help people out and give tips for starting up a company.<p>So often on HN you see a link submitted about sexism in IT or racism or some other social justice cause and it usually gets flagged because it causes a lot of trolling and voting down of comments for disagreeing with them. I'm glad to read one about a female founder that isn't political and talks about her strengths and how she worked on a team to get things done and deserves more credit. I think HN needs more of this positive news about female founders rather than articles about sexism in IT or racism or whatever.<p>We need real life examples to get females and minorities to study STEM and get into more startup jobs. When they are victimized, they decide not to study STEM because they think they would be discriminated against, and really that isn't the case at YC which has no discrimination and judges based on authenticity and who is a good founder.<p>Not everyone is given credit, for example Steve Jobs is given credit for fixing Apple but he had a team of people helping out to find out which products cost more to support than they bring in and come up with new ideas for new products to bring in more revenue. The same with Bill Gates and Microsoft he had a team of people as well.<p>Jessica Livingston needs more recognition, and if I was doing PR I would list her accomplishments, I would write about her social radar and spotting fakes and bad founders, I would write about how she helped startups and got them going. I would never try to make her into a victim, I would focus on her strengths and skills instead.
"After that she told the PR firm to stop."<p>Oh wow I disagree with this totally. One reporter gives a bad slant to a story and that is enough to make you give up on setting up and getting other PR? What am I missing here? Anyone who has ever appeared in a story in the news (I have multiple times) knows they always get things wrong and always angle to story to what they think is something interesting that will allow them to sell advertising. That is the business they are in. With all due respect to Jessica (who I don't know) this sounds to me very thin skinned and not exactly an example of overcoming adversity in the entrepreneurship world. Of course it's her right to not do interviews if she doesn't feel like doing them but the way PG presents the story it's as if this one incident was enough to sour her taste (and there were no other factors at play).<p>Edit: As would be expected say something (not delicately or gently enough) about anyone closely associated with YC and get downvoted. Maybe that's just because people will pay attention to the comment more and tend to react more emotionally than rationally.<p>Edit#2: As far as those who say "YC is successful Jessica doesn't need to be in the limelight it's important to realize that people read these essays who are not in that position. Or even close. So perhaps PG could have pointed that out in a more direct way so that those learning from his writings could understand the nuance of the decision.