<story><title>What I&apos;ve Learned From Female Founders So Far</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/what-ive-learned-from-female-founders-so-far</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jmduke</author><text>&lt;i&gt;We want to fund more women because it&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do, but we&amp;#x27;re not doing this for diversity&amp;#x27;s sake alone.  We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a huge thing that people seem to ignore when arguing &amp;quot;against diversity&amp;quot; (I put that in quotes because I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone actually argues against diversity -- they couch it in terms of meritocracy and egalitarianism, saying that the best people should succeed regardless of race and gender, it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.)  I think Sam does a great job of presenting this as a thing of &amp;#x27;greed&amp;#x27; -- or, more charitably, economic rationality.&lt;p&gt;In my mind, there are only two real possibilities (or, perhaps more realistically, two ends of a spectrum):&lt;p&gt;1.  The VC ecosystem, as it stands, is almost completely unbiased and fair-minded with regards to gender and race.  The massive disparities in terms of funding and founder backgrounds reflect that.&lt;p&gt;2.  The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil; in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of founders, startups, and opportunities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nawitus</author><text>&amp;quot;it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, and? For example, best programmers are overwhelmingly white and male, because majority of programmers are white and male. (Not sure about race, but it&amp;#x27;s probably true in Western countries). The majority of people interested in founding technology startups are probably white and male, and therefore the best people for starting a technology startup are white and male. You comment implies that it&amp;#x27;s wrong to state that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male, if you don&amp;#x27;t imply that, please make it clear.&lt;p&gt;If women are as skilled as men in, say, programming, then majority of best programmers are male.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;2. The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil; in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of founders, startups, and opportunities.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a third possibility: women and non-whites in Western countries are less interested in applying for venture capital. If that is the case, then in an equal world venture capitalists should invest less in startups founded by non-white women, because the majority of startups seeking venture capital are founded by white males.&lt;p&gt;The overall point is that you need to fix the root cause, not the effects of the cause. As long as women and non-whites are minorities in groups of people such as tech students, you should see less women and non-whites in tech student related phenomenon, such as technology startups.&lt;p&gt;This reminds me of all these communities like &amp;quot;AngularJS women&amp;quot;, who try to get more women into AngularJS. I think that&amp;#x27;s pointless. Once 50% of software engineers are women, and once women have exactly the same interests and values and beliefs as men, you&amp;#x27;ll find that 50% of AngularJS developers will be female.</text></comment>
<story><title>What I&apos;ve Learned From Female Founders So Far</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/what-ive-learned-from-female-founders-so-far</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jmduke</author><text>&lt;i&gt;We want to fund more women because it&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do, but we&amp;#x27;re not doing this for diversity&amp;#x27;s sake alone.  We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a huge thing that people seem to ignore when arguing &amp;quot;against diversity&amp;quot; (I put that in quotes because I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone actually argues against diversity -- they couch it in terms of meritocracy and egalitarianism, saying that the best people should succeed regardless of race and gender, it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.)  I think Sam does a great job of presenting this as a thing of &amp;#x27;greed&amp;#x27; -- or, more charitably, economic rationality.&lt;p&gt;In my mind, there are only two real possibilities (or, perhaps more realistically, two ends of a spectrum):&lt;p&gt;1.  The VC ecosystem, as it stands, is almost completely unbiased and fair-minded with regards to gender and race.  The massive disparities in terms of funding and founder backgrounds reflect that.&lt;p&gt;2.  The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil; in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of founders, startups, and opportunities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hnnewguy</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, I don&amp;#x27;t believe that is the argument.&lt;p&gt;The argument is &amp;quot;Let&amp;#x27;s not over-compensate for historical institutional racism&amp;#x2F;sexism, and, &lt;i&gt;going forward&lt;/i&gt;, select the best candidates based on merit, regardless of gender or colour.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t eliminate these issues overnight, with a rule or two.</text></comment>