we've talked about this before. we fund founders of all ages above 18 (though i think the oldest founder in the current batch is 66). we haven't calculated it yet but the median age for this batch is probably in the late 20s, with most founders in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. the last time i looked, we'd funded many more founders in their 40s than in their teens.
there are a lot of promising 16 and 17 year olds that apply that we can't fund, though i think it's probably a good thing for them that we can't.
as we have also discussed before, the majority of the most valuable companies we have funded have been started by founders in their 20s (with exceptions like stripe on the lower side and zenefits on higher side).
If (as I think the case is) YC doesn't discriminate on age at all, one might still expect a lower acceptance rate for higher ages. Allow me to explain why.
As much as we hate to admit it, our brains (like the rest of our organs) start to decline in our 20's.[1] We're not quite as quick as we used to be. We can't work as hard. We take a little longer to learn new things. In almost every discipline, crystallized knowledge more than offsets this loss of fluid intelligence. Eventually though, age catches up with us. Combine that with YC's very high bar (accepting the top 3% of applicants), and even a slight dulling due to aging would cause a discrepancy.
How large is the random sample? Since that you're asserting that YC does not discriminate because the actual proportion of female entrepreneurs funded is more than the number that applied, the conclusion is open to variance.
EDIT: Originally incorrectly said "sampling bias."
for gender, it's the entire applicant pool (we ask for gender so that's easy to compute.)
for race, it's a bit harder. we don't ask for it, but we looked through hundreds of videos and made our best guess (it's also why we left the number as approximate, as of course there are cases where we got it wrong.)
Small nitpick:
What you are talking about is not sampling bias, it is something else.
You are alluding to how confidence in the presented results may be significantly lowered due to a high variance - associated with small sample sizes (it is a statistically significant possibility that you obtained the outcome through chance and not because it is representative)
Sampling bias is another thing altogether, when the method of taking measurements will exclude some of the population. For example, estimating ratio by taking note of the presumed gender of people leaving a particular room - not realising that it is in fact the female toilet.
Nonetheless, it is always a good idea to query the sample size when results are presented in such a manner :-)
we didn't look at this here because we fund a lot of asian and indian founders, and we just don't have enough of a sample to look at e.g. native american founders.
on things like education level, country of birth, age, etc we've previously looked at and discussed the data and it seems very diverse.
Yeah, I find a lot of software organizations it's becoming more and more a disadvantage of being white. Not sure I can complain, it's worked out for me, but I worry about my kids.
Why sample as opposed to looking at the whole population? The typical reason is, "because it's difficult to survey the entire population". But in this case I'd think that it'd be easy because I assume you have all the data.
It would be interesting to have some more insights, like how many of rhw minority groups ( black or hispanic as the article says ) were funded, also more meaningful like:
Race/Sector of interest
Age/Sector of interest
Gender/Sector of interest
People with Higher Scholar degree/ Sector of interest
Startups funded by sector
Good to know that YC doesn't seem to be affected by biased selection process. The low overall percentage of minority or female founders is a reflection of the current state of society, which, alas, isn't where it could be.
the big question is of course about self selection: how many nonwhite, female and non-Stanford entrepreneurs would like to apply for YC but don't because they think their chances are basically zero?
The post does not add any value -- "you are not at a disadvantage" means we are evaluating everyone with the same scale. Why should this be a surprise? this is the least we would expect anyway.
"The good news is that there is no disadvantage to applying to YC as a female or minority founder."
I don't understand why that's good news.
It'd be good news if YC were actively preferring female and minority founders. Everyone acknowledges the glaring diversity problem in tech, but apparently YC is happy standing on the sidelines.
I suspect that everyone (or nearly everyone, anyway) evaluating the auditions wanted the best musicians regardless of gender, but the linked study determined that when orchestras began using blind auditions, more women were offered positions.
In YC it is impractical to conduct "blind interviews", so that it is good practice for the partners to ensure that they aren't accidentally disadvantaging women and minorities.
Whether YC should actively prefer female and minority founders is, I believe, much more subjective.
> "We want to be sure we’re not discriminating against founders in our funding decisions at YC"
This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity. It primarily seeks long term positive returns, and to do that you have to evaluate people and their ideas based on merit, not their gender. Having more female founders would probably be better for the startup ecosystem as a whole, but "actively preferring" a class of candidates based on attributes poorly correlated with their probability of success would be bad for YC.
The question is, would this post still be made publicly, in the same manner, if the data actually found serious discrimination happening?
Who knows, maybe YC is actually divinely meritocratic and there are no biases. Maybe they are transparent enough to make their biases public if they were discovered, and I absolutely admire that YC takes the initiative to check.
But if we were to be scientific about it, having YC take a look at discrimination within YC wouldn't be considered a reliable experiment that you could draw any conclusions from.
Michael, I think you should really ask yourself: what good can come of this? It doesn't really demonstrate anything about YC's fair-opportunity goals, and it opens the topic up for significant scrutiny--both by rights activists, and now (even worse?) by stats majors who are always looking for an opportunity to tear apart someone's oversimplified models.
>Michael, I think you should really ask yourself: what good can come of this?
I got this one!
The good that comes is you solve the current status quo, where on a thread like "Why silicon valley works" people make comments and genuinely feel like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552487
>If you are a white male, in your early 20's and went to Stanford, go for it. If you're not, don't even try to play the game; it's rigged to use you, not help you.
or up-thread someone else
> Complete and utter bull. Maybe in [YC's] world, sure! White? 20-something? No-kids? Harvard/Stanford? B2C? Let’s chat! > Early-40's/Late-30's? Not-white? Married w/ kids? Not-Harvard/Stanford? B2B? Nope. (Don't bother to apply to YC either).
Theirs is a strong argument when 0.0% of founders are black. When it's 4%, man, 1 in 25 is better odds than 80% of the things you're doing to build a $100M exit anyway. You'll go for it and apply.
I gave up as I'm in a hurry, but search 'Hackernews search' (hn.algolia.com) for white/asian, "bother to apply" and similar words - there are a ton of comments by people who think they shouldn't because it's 0%. They should!!!
This blog post is totally great, and a bit surprising. Kudos.
[+] [-] williamstein|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sama|11 years ago|reply
there are a lot of promising 16 and 17 year olds that apply that we can't fund, though i think it's probably a good thing for them that we can't.
as we have also discussed before, the majority of the most valuable companies we have funded have been started by founders in their 20s (with exceptions like stripe on the lower side and zenefits on higher side).
[+] [-] bkessler100|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chroma|11 years ago|reply
As much as we hate to admit it, our brains (like the rest of our organs) start to decline in our 20's.[1] We're not quite as quick as we used to be. We can't work as hard. We take a little longer to learn new things. In almost every discipline, crystallized knowledge more than offsets this loss of fluid intelligence. Eventually though, age catches up with us. Combine that with YC's very high bar (accepting the top 3% of applicants), and even a slight dulling due to aging would cause a discrepancy.
1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/4gi/age_fluid_intelligence_and_intel...
[+] [-] DodgyEggplant|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: Originally incorrectly said "sampling bias."
[+] [-] sama|11 years ago|reply
for race, it's a bit harder. we don't ask for it, but we looked through hundreds of videos and made our best guess (it's also why we left the number as approximate, as of course there are cases where we got it wrong.)
[+] [-] cronin101|11 years ago|reply
You are alluding to how confidence in the presented results may be significantly lowered due to a high variance - associated with small sample sizes (it is a statistically significant possibility that you obtained the outcome through chance and not because it is representative)
Sampling bias is another thing altogether, when the method of taking measurements will exclude some of the population. For example, estimating ratio by taking note of the presumed gender of people leaving a particular room - not realising that it is in fact the female toilet.
Nonetheless, it is always a good idea to query the sample size when results are presented in such a manner :-)
[+] [-] api|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pius|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronz8|11 years ago|reply
Or even more interesting to me, how about the distribution of education level and background?
[+] [-] sama|11 years ago|reply
on things like education level, country of birth, age, etc we've previously looked at and discussed the data and it seems very diverse.
[+] [-] proveanegative|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blazespin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atom-morgan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamzerner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klochner|11 years ago|reply
Do we know total applicants? I'd like to know what n produced a 5% sample.
[+] [-] moisesvega|11 years ago|reply
Race/Sector of interest Age/Sector of interest Gender/Sector of interest People with Higher Scholar degree/ Sector of interest Startups funded by sector
[+] [-] evanwarfel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] komrade|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yurisagalov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dirkdk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billconan|11 years ago|reply
I have been reading articles saying introversion is not good for entrepreneurship. I wonder if this is true.
if it is true, will VCs treat introvert founders like they do to minorities?
[+] [-] CmonDev|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staunch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auggierose|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j_baker|11 years ago|reply
Is there some kind of rule at YC that mandates that blog posts must insist that nothing is a zero-sum game?
[+] [-] byEngineer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dimdimdim|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maceo|11 years ago|reply
I don't understand why that's good news.
It'd be good news if YC were actively preferring female and minority founders. Everyone acknowledges the glaring diversity problem in tech, but apparently YC is happy standing on the sidelines.
[+] [-] impendia|11 years ago|reply
This is because of "implicit bias", wherein people discriminate against women and/or minorities unconsciously and unintentionally.
For example, here is an article demonstrating that orchestra auditions were subject to bias against women:
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/orchestrating_...
I suspect that everyone (or nearly everyone, anyway) evaluating the auditions wanted the best musicians regardless of gender, but the linked study determined that when orchestras began using blind auditions, more women were offered positions.
In YC it is impractical to conduct "blind interviews", so that it is good practice for the partners to ensure that they aren't accidentally disadvantaging women and minorities.
Whether YC should actively prefer female and minority founders is, I believe, much more subjective.
[+] [-] john_b|11 years ago|reply
> "We want to be sure we’re not discriminating against founders in our funding decisions at YC"
This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity. It primarily seeks long term positive returns, and to do that you have to evaluate people and their ideas based on merit, not their gender. Having more female founders would probably be better for the startup ecosystem as a whole, but "actively preferring" a class of candidates based on attributes poorly correlated with their probability of success would be bad for YC.
[+] [-] adrianbordinc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shiftpgdn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unlaut|11 years ago|reply
Who knows, maybe YC is actually divinely meritocratic and there are no biases. Maybe they are transparent enough to make their biases public if they were discovered, and I absolutely admire that YC takes the initiative to check.
But if we were to be scientific about it, having YC take a look at discrimination within YC wouldn't be considered a reliable experiment that you could draw any conclusions from.
[+] [-] kolbe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicallee|11 years ago|reply
I got this one!
The good that comes is you solve the current status quo, where on a thread like "Why silicon valley works" people make comments and genuinely feel like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552487
>If you are a white male, in your early 20's and went to Stanford, go for it. If you're not, don't even try to play the game; it's rigged to use you, not help you.
or up-thread someone else
> Complete and utter bull. Maybe in [YC's] world, sure! White? 20-something? No-kids? Harvard/Stanford? B2C? Let’s chat! > Early-40's/Late-30's? Not-white? Married w/ kids? Not-Harvard/Stanford? B2B? Nope. (Don't bother to apply to YC either).
Theirs is a strong argument when 0.0% of founders are black. When it's 4%, man, 1 in 25 is better odds than 80% of the things you're doing to build a $100M exit anyway. You'll go for it and apply.
I gave up as I'm in a hurry, but search 'Hackernews search' (hn.algolia.com) for white/asian, "bother to apply" and similar words - there are a ton of comments by people who think they shouldn't because it's 0%. They should!!!
This blog post is totally great, and a bit surprising. Kudos.