Ask HN: Women who've applied to YC?

[limedaring]

We know the number of women accepted to YC is pretty low, so I assume the number of women simply applying is pretty low as well. Being that Startup School was 99% guys, I wanted to see how many women are on here and who've applied (if only to say hello and rock on. :P). Or even, women who read HN regularly and haven't applied, and why.

Personally, I've applied this round with http://weddingtype.com.

EDIT: Also, any guys who've applied with a woman on their team, speak up. :)

[iamelgringo]

My wife and I are applying for this winter session.

She's been co organizing the Hackers and Founders SV, SF and Berkeley meetups with me for the past 9 months. And, she's the primary reason that our membership has tripled in the last 9 months. She works quietly in the background and makes everything run like clockwork.

I've recruited her as my co founder for several years. And, she just signed on three months ago. We're building a financial news search engine at http://Newsley.com/search.

[PStamatiou]

I had a thread about moving to SF on HN back in May. Jonathan personally reached out to me offering help finding a place, introductions to other like-minded folk, help finding a job, etc. Went to one of his H&F's earlier in the summer. Fantastic person. Thanks again!

[nkassis]

That's pretty cool. If my current idea fails, I'd like to come with something me and my wife can do. It probably would have to be something related to books if someone has an idea ;p

[geuis]

I've met iamelgringo a couple of times ath the H&F meetups. Top-notch fellow. Good luck on getting accepted!

[helwr]

the search doesn't return anything on Goog. pls fix

[shelly]

I'm a girl (and an engineer), and I applied for the summer round this year with http://wordchuck.com. I never got a response from YC after submitting my application, which was a bit disappointing.

I haven't had any trouble launching and getting traction on my own, so don't get discouraged, no matter what happens with YC :)

That said, WeddingType looks like a terrific idea, and I hope you do get accepted!

[pg]

I just investigated. You submitted a late application, and with late applications we didn't reply individually; we just posted a notice in late May saying we'd contacted everyone we were going to.

Summer 2010 was the first time we accepted late applications, so we were still figuring out the procedure. We'll probably email all the late applicants from now on, in case they miss an announcement. Sorry if we kept you hanging.

[gruseom]

I'm pretty sure YC make a point of responding to all the applications, so this was likely a technical glitch. For example, I distinctly recall that the response we got ended up in my Spam folder.

[limedaring]

That seems really odd, they seem to take pride in responding to everyone, even if it's a nicely worded negative response.

Thank you!

[tonystubblebine]

Love the idea of wordchuck as a stand alone business. How's it going?

[Female]

I'm a relatively active HN user. This is a throwaway, because I'm not "out" as a girl on HN.

I have not applied, and I'm not going to, because my husband would never let me spend 3 months in SF by myself (and he has a job where he couldn't come with me.) And this is not a hypothetical, we've discussed it and he put his foot down.

[vietor]

Could you go into more detail about what the reasons given were? My initial reactions on reading that was ... unreservedly hostile.

Given the likely upside of going through YC if accepted, 12 weeks of separation seems insignificant.

(On topic: I applied this year and one of my two co-founders is female.)

[bkrausz]

May I ask why you're hiding your gender on HN? I know of many potential reasons, just curious what yours is.

[sbowles]

Wow, I’m so sorry to hear that. My husband is actually quitting his awesome, well-paid job so we can move back to SF because he really believes in me and my business. Long distance relationships are initially scary, but you can pull it off by staying in daily contact. We have been long distance four times, ranging from three to eight months each time (Toronto-Montreal, Toronto-Paris, Toronto-San Francisco, San Francisco-Los Angeles). We both work in tech and we’ve never wanted to deny each other the opportunity to succeed. It has meant moving cities and countries multiple times, but it has actually made our relationship stronger and our careers much more interesting.

[puredemo]

That's fucked up. Relationships are not intended to be that controlling / limiting.

[Mz]

I'm female. I started an application at some point, mostly for the process involved in thinking things through, and contemplated whether or not I thought applying would be realistic. I ultimately decided, no, that's not really the right path for me. But I hang out here a fair amount.

(I made a wish list at some point and one of the items on it was something like "Get feedback from Paul Graham" (another was "get feedback from Millard Fuller", er, who happens to be dead it turns out). Decided I didn't need any special favors, I could just keep reading pg's articles and also hang here. So far, so good. Still don't have any answers for the impetus behind the Millard Fuller wish. Que sera, sera.)

[limedaring]

> I ultimately decided, no, that's not really the right path for me.

Did you continue to start/continue a business, or was the path you decided on a non-entrepreneur path?

[patio11]

Not female and also not applying this go round, but congratulations on your launch. This and related spaces desperately need product innovation, while so much of our collective effort goes to creating an iPad-enabled FourSquare for dogs.

[mkramlich]

great, patio11 gives away my stealth startup doh! :)

[jlees]

Good luck @limedaring! You know me, but to weigh in: I am XX, applied three times (once as solo founder), got one interview, didn't get into YC, found my way to the Valley (from the UK) anyway.

I intend to apply again in future if the startup I'm working on turns out to be the right sort of thing for it, and especially if I can team up with other hackers, especially a couple of people I've known a long time (last time my cofounder was non-technical and I had met him while looking for a cofounder). Gender balance or anything like that has never, ever been an issue for me with things like YC. Currently doing Women 2.0 Labs where it is a tacit issue, which would be interesting to contrast when I do go through YC.

I know of another woman who is applying this round and has not posted in the comments yet.

[sbowles]

I am a woman and I applied for this round along with my male co-founder. I'm moving back to SF from LA at the end of this year, specifically because I recognize it is a better location for my startup. Although I still have a decent network in the Bay Area to tap back into, I do value the mentorship and camaraderie a program like YC could offer an early stage venture. When I described my startup or did a demo of my app for other people at Startup School, I was impressed by the intellectual generosity. People gave a lot of great feedback, freely. Acceptance by YC won’t make or break my startup, but it would make networking and fundraising a little easier as it implies a certain ‘quality’ stamp.

FYI, if you haven’t read it, Illuminate Ventures’ whitepaper on the performance of female founders in tech relative to male founders, it is an interesting read: http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/. You’ll have to request the whitepaper via email, but they respond quickly.

[curlyque5000]

I'm applying with my long-time boyfriend. We've been working on our app for about a year now. It's a social media management application that helps companies measure and optimize their return on investment from social media marketing. http://www.socialblazeapp.com

We're actually about to launch a public beta soon.

Go female founders! :)

[SabrinaDent]

I'm female and my co-founder is also female. I bring the design and the marketing; she brings the tech. We didn't apply this round because we're already edge case candidates and a conflict with the schedule made us pretty much a non-starter for winter.

We're older than the average YC applicants by a couple of decades and we have partners, kids, dogs and mortgages that complicate things slightly. My co-founder has primary custody of her school-aged son and absolutely cannot relocate to SF for three months. I can go though, and would be delighted to; my husband would be equally delighted to hold down the fort here. Unfortunately, I have an immoveable commitment in February, so the winter schedule just wasn't going to fly. We're going to apply for the spring instead, and we're looking forward to the process.

[jedwhite]

Not me. Co-founder (3-person team) is @mediamum who is doing a PhD as a Research Assistant at the School of Computer Science at CU (alum include David Morin from Facebook and Woz). She's doing research into the use of social media for crisis communications (hurricanes, wildfires etc) in the Crisis Informatics Lab there. Doesn't hang out on HN so much (must be startup and PhD getting in the way).

Interestingly, Woz got kicked out of the CS school at CU for hacking side projects on the timeshare system as an undergrad - something other schools might have encouraged, and which CU today I am guessing would also not frown on the same way.

[follower]

> She's doing research into the use of social media for crisis communications (hurricanes, wildfires etc) in the Crisis Informatics Lab there.

Oh, interesting. Do you know if she did any research into the use of Twitter etc for communication after the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand?

[blackguardx]

To which CU are you referring?

[pmjordan]

Not this time, but applied with a female cofounder previously. (no interview, pretty sure it was a combination of technically unproven idea and no terribly impressive achievements between us so far; also, lame video) The application wouldn't really have improved much at this point, as developing the product part-time didn't work out (too many distractions from consulting customers). Instead we've been focusing 100% on consulting to get some cash to keep us going, now transitioning to 100% product dev. Might apply again once we get some traction with a beta.

[limedaring]

> also, lame video

Since the videos don't have to be that polished, what do you mean?

[Jun8]

This is a wonderful area that you've addressed, definitely beats going through thick, heavy binders of invitation examples to select one. I wish this was around when I got married.

[limedaring]

Thanks, just got to launch now... :)

[kfool]

My sister applied for the Winter 2011 batch with me as a co-founder. Frankly, her idea puts to shame all ideas I've ever had.

In my opinion, women possess a unique perspective of what people may want. With 99% of founders being male, it sounds that women founders are likely to introduce unimaginable ideas.

I may have pushed her a bit to apply, and she may have needed the push, but she had no trouble filling a well thought-out application.

(I am dying to see the response)

[sheena]

I'm a female co-founder (Mockingbird - http://www.gomockingbird.com). My co-founder is a guy. We interviewed with YC last year, though we didn't end up getting funded. Best of luck with weddingtype and your application; whatever the outcome, I think the process itself can't help but be useful.

[abraham]

I have an application submitted for the current round with my sister. She is not active on HN as working on her PhD currently takes much of her time. She is awesome though.

[katieben]

I'm female and I've applied for the winter session. (: Rock on!

[limedaring]

What did you apply with?

[saifa]

Good luck girls! Remember you can make it, look at indinero's story...

[ahoyhere]

At Startup School a few years ago, I pitched my idea to Paul and he invited me to apply for the summer class even though I'd missed the deadline.

I against it. That whole "dropping out of high school and college" thing pretty much proved how much I chafe against what I consider hoop-jumping and YC was too much hoop-jumping for me.

Didn't stop me though: http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/

(Different product than the one I pitched.)

[limedaring]

Really dislike people who downvote because they disagree, rather than arguing against. Very passive aggressive.

Can you expand on the hoop jumping and YC with some specific examples? I'm sincerely curious.

[follower]

In your post you mention that the figures are gross revenue.

While people seem to be (understandably?) reluctant to talk publicly about profit rather than revenue what's your thoughts on focussing on revenue rather than profit when talking about success?

[alanthonyc]

Hi there,

I just checked out your Freckle app. That's a pretty cool time tracking system, better than anything I've seen elsewhere. I signed up. ;)

Grats on a cool product!