"If Travis Kaladick or whatever his name is were running the company, the narrative would be very different."
Now, given that Uber and Travis have been disparaged by both the press and HN on a regular basis, how would the narrative be different if he was running Theranos?
Do you actually believe that if Travis was in Elizabeth's shoes, we would speak more positively about the general situation?
I don't see how that's true, given that we speak very negatively about him already, and what he has done (behaved like a douche, promoted a bad culture) is, arguably, less egregious than what she has done (committed outright fraud, stolen investors money, possibly killed or at very least jeopardized peoples' health).
Well, of course they do - there are many more men founding startups overall, so they'll get most of the press even if the publications were actually more likely to report women's accomplishments.
With less than 20% of startups having one woman founder (Crunchbase, 2014), what do you expect the press to do?
It is a little like that. It isn't proportional.
Jessica Livingston is one of the two people who dreamed up YC. Paul Graham soon wrangled his previous confounders in on it. I hear vastly more about the three male cofounders than I do about the one female cofounder. Nor do I ever here her get credit proportional to PG. He was the front man. He was replaced by Sam Altman. Sam now gets most of the press.
Maybe this is Jessica being savvy and sidestepping the sexist bs in the world by trying to avoid press. Maybe she is way smarter than me. But I think YC is probably more "her baby" than Paul's or Sam's, yet I never see it framed that way.
If women are 2% of founders and get 1% of the credit, they are still being shorted.
For example, you say that "I hear vastly more about the three male cofounders than I do about the one female cofounder."
I believe you - you hear what you hear. That said, I've been around HN for a while, yet I had to look up who the other male cofounders even were. Doing a search by their names, Jessica has easily three times more submissions about her than either Trevor or Robert.
And so when our perception is so different, many people will simply incorrectly assume dishonesty, because that's easier to picture. I find it unfortunate, but I don't think it can be avoided unless one's willing to be very detailed about the priors that led one to a certain conclusion rather than just state it and hope people will see it the same way.
She and Paul apparently cooked this idea up together. But it took forever for that detail to come out. For the longest time, my impression was that this was Paul's baby. I vaguely knew there was a female cofounder. It was much later that I heard that, really, this idea was her and Paul, not him and his prior cofounders.
