Sometimes I wonder if I should hire a token guy to act as a firewall for bargaining purposes. Then when it came time to bid for a project, I'd bid X, and he would bid X+Y as himself, but secretly he'd be working for me. If his (obviously higher) bids were accepted over mine, it would suck, but at least I'd get the business. His only job would be to be the figurehead. I'd be doing all of the magic behind the scenes.<p>It might be a sobering experiment.
I would love to see more women in "hard" technology startups. There are too few women founders out there (a sad thing), and out of them a lot work on companies that appeal mostly to women. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I would LOVE to see more women building complex tech startups - evening out the picture.