There have been 5 female cofounders. Marie from Heysan, Divya from Jamglue, and Michelle (with a company from last summer that hasn't launched yet) are the women still involved with their startups. <p>I hope more women will apply for funding this fall!
We had a female hacker employee over the summer that came to a couple of the YC dinners. First thing out of every guy hacker's mouth - so, are you likebetter's graphic designer?<p>I'm sure we all have the best intentions, but face it, we're a bunch of chauvinistic bastards. I hope more women apply and serve as counter examples to an outdated stereotype.
I've encouraged my girlfriend to apply (she's smart, has a couple of good business ideas, has done a lot of design work and has a college degree in art, and has great work experience at Google among other places...she has the skills she needs to be valuable to a startup), but startups are just not her thing. I don't know if it's endemic to being a woman...risk aversion is definitely more important to her than me, but that may just be different personalities, not related to sex.<p>It would almost certainly be a positive thing to have a well-qualified woman involved early in a startups life, as there are definitely some differences in the sexes, and some balance would probably be valuable. But, as someone else pointed out, the number of women in the hard sciences is very low, and probably lowest in computer science. Design is better represented, but even in that, there is a much lower number of women involved than men.<p>I suspect the goal should be (if there is a goal to be found in all of this) to get more girls interested in the hard sciences early. Being equipped to build a technology business is something that starts young.
I hate to say it because i only wish that it was not true, but women seem to question authority a lot less.<p>Maybe a YC for women would work better to attract female founders.<p>Another difference I find is that women tend to gather more information before making a decision on something, maybe a YC that was better focused on this would help women cross the gap?
I wrote a blog post about this awhile back:
<a href="http://divyab.livejournal.com/5855.html" rel="nofollow">http://divyab.livejournal.com/5855.html</a><p>the post is somewhat rough, preachy, and jumps around a little bit. I would probably write it differently now after a year of start-up-ing. Also, feel free to make fun of me for using LiveJournal.
We have a female co-founder, but she's not really a hacker. Where she lacks in programming skill she more than makes up for it in other areas though, which is why she's on the team. Don't be fooled, she runs much of the show..
"never attribute to malice what can be explained by math" -pg<p>people usually found companies with their friends
peoples friends are usually of the same sex
less women in technology
thus the number of founders will be around that small percentage squared<p>I forget what PG essay this is from, anyone?
jamglue.com has a girl founder: <a href="http://www.jamglue.com/people/divya" rel="nofollow">http://www.jamglue.com/people/divya</a><p>don't remember anyone else though. maybe shoutfit had a girl founder too.