Investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men

There is a misunderstanding of the difference of rated attractiveness between men and women. Women's attractiveness has a direct correlation with her reproductive capacity, whereas men's attractiveness has more to do with probability of social dominance. That includes confidence, assertiveness, aggressiveness, charisma, and of course height. Some of it is correlated with health, but other factors are not. So there is a big confounder in this study in that many of the factors for a man's attractiveness actually correlates with his potential for success.

Very interesting.<p>The following is completely speculative - I know - but possibly relevant. Bear with me.<p>I have noticed a difference among investors. There are the engineering&#x2F;slightly Aspberger&#x27;s types who tend to be prior founders who exited well. And then there are the HBS hail-fellow-well-met sports-loving never-ran-a-company-but-i-know-im-a-genius types. Yes, huge generalization - but those are the two bins I place them in. My observation in my experience is that the first type seems to be less influenced by attractiveness and appearances than the latter, and make better bets. I mean - take PG or AH. Need I say more? Now, that&#x27;s not to say the aspy-types are free of biases - not at all - just that they are less likely to be swayed by attractiveness.<p>In any case, I wonder if other people have observed this effect or whether it&#x27;s just me.

There is a little bit more color on some of the PR write-ups, see eg<p><i>They recruited 60 experienced and affluent backers to view video recordings of 90 randomly-selected verbal business pitches made by entrepreneurs from various sectors at three entrepreneurial contests in the US.<p>Investors were asked to rate the looks of the entrepreneurs and comment on the pitch.<p>Researchers found that men who were deemed good looking were 36 per cent more likely to be successful than those viewed as unattractive. However there was no difference for women.<p>In a separate study they asked investors to listen to the same pitches delivered by a man or a woman.<p>“We found that male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based that were the same pitches narrated by a female voice,” the authors concluded. . .</i><p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10688645/Good-looks-help-you-get-ahead-in-business-if-youre-a-man-Harvard-study-finds.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;science&#x2F;science-news&#x2F;10688645&#x2F;Goo...</a>

Not the first study who finds appearance to be significant in areas you wouldn&#x27;t expect it to be:<p><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/musicians-appearances-matter-more-than-their-sound-1.13572" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;musicians-appearances-matter-more...</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2011/06/06/can-being-thin-actually-translate-into-a-bigger-paycheck-for-women/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;lisaquast&#x2F;2011&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;can-being-t...</a> <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/08/labour-markets-3" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;freeexchange&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;labour-m...</a><p>Not to mention all the jobs where good looks is an explicit requirement such as in modelling, acting or implicit like for waitresses or cashiers in fancy clothing shops. It&#x27;s a fascinating subject and it is very impressive that we seem to be very close to quantify exactly how important beauty is. Even if it is bad news for ugly people it is better if the facts are out there so something can be done about the problem.

Its been widely observed that attractiveness helps in most interactions, especially sales related, so this is no surprise.<p>The real surprise should be that female attractiveness doesn&#x27;t have a significant impact. My initial guess would be that investors, unfortunately, are so dismissive of female pitches that attractiveness can&#x27;t even help.

Sounds like a strong case for intentionally skewing investment decisions towards women founders, as if the general population is unconsciously biased towards men, then there are likely many women founders who could generate a great return on investment but who aren&#x27;t being given the chance to do so.

PDF Here: <a href="https://mega.co.nz/#!QlA0kTgK" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mega.co.nz&#x2F;#!QlA0kTgK</a> Decrypt key: i3efFy0wv6R9Qjfw3_XkTUm9aC9Ea9PetMPMX58ogrI

This is unfortunate, and hardly unique to entrepreneurship.<p>In &#x27;Blink&#x27; Malcolm Gladwell describes how orchestras hold blind auditions, with the performers behind screens, to avoid this kind of bias.<p>Perhaps VC pitches should follow suit.

Anyone got past the login? Apart from the usual methodological checks, I would be interested to know if they controlled for the gender of the <i>investors</i>. Getting more investment if you are more <i>attractive</i> is hardly a surprise, what does surprise me is female attractiveness did not count.<p>So either we are seeing a genuine, global, cross-society level bias against women (possible), or we are seeing male investors wanting to invest in people they think are like themselves (attractive, successful men) or we are seeing a mislabelling of attractive (George Clooney is intelligent, articulate, methodical <i>and</i> good looking. Matt LeBlanc is just good looking (!)<p>So if they did what I suspect, got a bunch of male students to rate attractiveness of female entreprenuers and females to rate males, then what I guess is the boys picked the ones with big breasts and did not care if she was intelligent, the girls were more likely to pick &quot;life partner&quot;, which includes good looking but also &quot;able to provide&quot;.<p>Weirdly it might be useful to control females choosing &quot;attractive&quot; with their menstrual cycle.<p>WOw - complicated world I make up at times

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it. -Dale Carnegie<p>Not much of a surprise, same goes for picking presidents and other political leaders, even CEOs. Charisma has a lot to do with leadership and persuasiveness.<p>That said, it always surprised me how much of our community seems to at times take pride in the disheveled, socially awkward appearance...as if it&#x27;s a badge of honor or something. To me, that&#x27;s just as bad as the dumb jock persona. Why not be well-rounded? Why not take as much pride in our health and appearance as we do in our intellect?

So, all else being equal (the pitch, the idea, etc.) the study found that people looking to invest realize that attractiveness can play a role in the success of the venture.<p>Since the success of the venture depends upon a lot of sales and marketing of an idea both internally and externally... why is this a surprise?<p>Investors are worried about the success of the venture and their ROI. They understand that attractiveness can impact it.

paying $10 for this article isn&#x27;t gonna make me any more handsome

“When there’s an elephant in the room introduce him.” ― Randy Pausch

How is attractiveness evaluated? Because the standards for male attractiveness are very loose and often a great degree its perception is determined by the other factors.

Does anybody have access to the PDF?<p>I&#x27;d be interested in effect size in particular. The abstract only says &quot;profound&quot;.

scary, are investors turning as gay? this science survey is very stupid, without qualifying what is attractiveness.

Oh such surprise!

The article should have been titled: Attention seeking paper desperately succeeds at stating the obvious (while keeping a straight face)

Oh, I&#x27;m buggered then. 6ft6 ugly 116kg monster. Better stick to the day job