Given you have three female bloggers in your immediate family, maybe you can supplement your research with some focus group work? I know your wife reads this blog, because she has commented here before, but do your daughters? Do many of those who read your wife's blog read yours?
Maybe men and women tend to have different interests?
jillstern
· 1 month ago
Fred, I don't finding it shocking at all that your audience is mostly men. Women, in general, don't like this stuff, or haven't been trained to like this stuff. If I were you, I wouldn't worry about trying to get women readers-enjoy the audience you have. (But if you want, come have a talk at IN GOOD COMPANY- the all women entrepreneur shared workspace on 23rd Street! That might tip your scale a bit.)
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
I'll do that when I am in New York next. We'll talk "How to give yourself a red manicure" (I still can't figure this out, and I'm 23)
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
that's a good suggestion Jill
why do you think women, in general, "don't like this stuff"?
jillstern
· 1 month ago
because there are dresses, shoes, make-up, and lots more 'consuming' that fills their time up!
The links are good and show your well roundedness (in bringing-in family in a useful manner), but I thought your women readership would be the ones interested in entrepreneurship/tech related topics. A suggestion for increasing the female % might be to have a couple of well known women guest bloggers that are either geeks (e.g. Leah Culver) or entrepreneurs (e.g. Catherine Flake). At least you'll get a flurry of their followers, and they'll decide whether to return or not.
jillstern
· 1 month ago
I read gg as well but it does not interest me as much as avc because I like the excitement of business and deals and money and new ideas.
Mark Essel
· 1 month ago
So that covers "girly" stuff my fiance suggested. Now more Oprah.
jillstern
· 1 month ago
Fred, You don't have to reply to my comment. I don't want you to come off sounding bad. Women have been targeted to fill their brains (and time) on consuming. I'd like more females to be interested and of course the younger ones are--which gives me hope!
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Thank you. I'm glad I give you hope.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Guys are equally targeted to consume. They just consume differently that women. One of the best things of watching TechCrunch or Gizmodo is it is essentially one large hidden advertisement. I would bet good money it is largely male readership- that's who the adverytisments are being delivered to along with the superbowl ads. Women don't get advertised to that way. That's about it.
Women reading this stuff have a very different reaction. Many social scienctists and marketers have noticed it is about the product relationship. I would bet my non-existant louboutins that Android is going to be more successful than we think because it has a cute looking robot as a mascot and names its product releases aftr yummy sweet food. All about the relationship. Meanwhile it will totally fill my niche of balancing my life.
The guys will be very attracted to the slick "Droid" commerecial. Very different groups we're talking here.
We don't talk about gendering. That's bad. We want to be gendered to some degree. We want to be male/female. And that's ok. We feel bad that we're different. Why? I don't care. I'm happy being female (most of the time- the times I don't have to do with what's up woith the golf/sports thigns that I don't like right now and how do I communicate more effectively with guys on a variety of issues). Up to a point, it is perfectly ok that the guys are guys and I'm a girl. I just wish that the network for women was stronger. Women who are interested in these issues seem to not connect with each other very easily- and that is difficult...
patricia2207
· 1 month ago
sadly, I think this is far to close to the truth!!!
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Some gendering is good in your life. Really. I don't want to be a guy.
andreaitis
· 1 month ago
aww, gotta register a dissenting opinion. i think it's too much of a generalization to say women 'don't like this stuff.' i know lots of women interested in digital media and tech, but it usually comes down to time, priorities and what you're juggling in day-to-day life. if it's a choice between researching whether to give your children the swine flu vaccine and reading avc.com, a lot of working moms will tackle the swine first. that's the necessity, which makes avc the luxury. didja ever think you'd be a luxury item, fred?
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Then why mom-blogs?
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
I'm a big fan of vaccines and all forms of prophylactic medicine. I've taken every vaccine out there and want my kids to do the same. I recognize that vaccines have some risk but I believe the risk/reward tradeoffs are almost always strongly in favor of vaccines
My kids took the swine flu vaccine as soon as it was available. I'm getting mine soon
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Gendering in the US. Although we do want to self gender, we do it in a cultural context. I want to be female, I was brought up in my environment- I want to be female in a sort of different cultural environment.
When we did the book list, I put up The Second Sex. That was on purpose. I would also add The Feminine Mystique. These are not guys guys books. That Iron John, which I can't say I have read.
I have a friend in the Comp Sci department from Eastern Europe who complains that she was expected to do better in school, including math. Now she does theoretical comp sci and is complaining about how most programs have moved away from this because she wants to go to graduate school. (This is a help her part, very few women are this cool, and want to do theoretical comp sci while everyone else is doing "how does xml work practically")
I will never forget the following things in my life that the oldies would say "raised my conciousness." 1) Watching a number of people I know get married, inclkuding family, and realized there isn't the same ethos of self education. it creates women who are very dependent on thier husbands. If you are white and very educated, this matters less. Enterpenuers and those in finance tend to have less of this problem.
2) Dating a now 37 (yes you read that correctly) year old man,and realizing that even if I had a job, it would scale back, because he was a lawyer at a prominent firm and partner track within the next three years. I wanted something more equal and I wasn't bimbo, and it was hard to create respect. (it was a good relationship otherwise, trust me)
3) We have a problem teaching math. I was invited to my schools math team. (I'm a dork) I hated it. They did this weird kind of math that I had no interest in. And didn't get what it did with actual math. The AMC exams or something? it was all weird and mechanical. I would rather sit down and read Euclid or something. That guy seems interesting. Trying to figure out why I beleive certain things about calculus, or number theory, that's interesting. No one teaches that way. Ever. They teach towards engineering and economics and very mecahniazed math. Not very visual/usual math and how it works. It's really really boring. Women will leave quickly. And then they sort out the top men from thier. Such as my brother. Interestingly, I can give better verbal and written explanations than my brother, but I can't perform the math....and he's an actual engineering student.
It makes it extremely difficult to go back to math, especially after you start stabilizing after puberty. I was talking to a friend of mine who told me based off the way I talk and what I am interested in, I should have been an engineering student. (probably comp sci, whatever) Outside Biomedical, I really would not have anyone take me seriously. And it is difficult to spend the time right now teaching myself. It is better to do it in groups. Even I admit to want to learn in a group of women, or a guy who won't hit on me.
That's more difficult than you think. I've sat in math classes where even though I wasn't doing well because I was trying to take my first comp sci class (hint: don't take Java in six weeks flat with a first time instructor) the combo of the questions I asked and the way I looked when I asked them would get stares. and I was coming back to math after four years away.
I don't think my experience is atypical. Beyond that the Econ program here does have a significant amount of women, I don't expect them to rise through the rankls and become the ladies of finance. I expect them to more likely marry the lords of finance, I already know one girl who did...It's not a pare to pare experience
5) Finance- So there is a group in the community that discovered that even though the vast majority of women make purchasing decisions, they know nothing of finance. Then there is deal making finance. That's a wholely new level of finance. Before coming here I actually had asked my father about it: he Kept telling me when I am older (at age 16), which was a really uhhh, silly response. Why not just tell me? Now I'm behind. It is not an uncommon experience when you are trying to gender children though, you want your child to be female/male.
That being said, I respect the gendering. I want my daughters to be female (except in a could of limited rare cases). Most people don't realize that guys flee jobs and charity events and all sorts of behaviors where there are too many women. If this community actually started to rise up above the 25% margin, I would get worried. They seem to need men only spaces. In some ways, it's actually psychologically good that it is a mostly male space.
I actually would create a mostly male space. Though apparently it may have wore the GG out. I wish I was there, I would have said hello. There are times that the fact that this place is so testosterone and argumentative that it is hard to rise above it. I remember the healthcare debate and wanting a really female response of leadership through friendship. I think I would have gotten a really pissed off bunch of guys who were working it out there own way. Didn't make me any less nervous.
Same with women. If you want women to enter xyz jobs- create women only spaces and bar the men.
There you go. Shana's veiw on feminism and structuralism. I probably could write more. But ehh. Though I totally second that we need a VC blog that does mention the word makeup. And 4 inch heels on sale.
Adelaide Lancaster
· 1 month ago
Thanks for the shout out, Jill! And, Fred, we would love to have your speak at In Good Company anytime! I am a frequent reader of your blog (although I only occasionally comment) and we work hard to encourage our membership to read blogs like yours! In fact, your 10 Characteristics of Great Companies post is included in our new member packet. (I hope that doesn’t get me into reprint trouble.) I don’t think it is true that women “don’t like this stuff” but I would guess that many women business owners wouldn’t consider themselves as swimming in the same pool as your portfolio companies (given in part the average disparities in finding, size, scale, and revenue), and they may not feel that they are being spoken to on the blog – although that isn’t the case for me.
I believe that you can learn from any company and we make it part of our IGC mission both on our blog and in our classes to distill takeaways and lessons from larger, seemingly less similar companies so that our members can apply them to their own ventures. I also believe that when you work for yourself, you are entrepreneur first and something else (consultant, nutritionist, photographer, etc) second. Nothing makes us happier then when someone tells us that we have helped them change how they see themselves and that they are now identifying as a business owner.
So, please consider yourself invited to speak to the IGC membership! And in the meantime, I’ll continue to link and share A VC!
- Adelaide Lancaster
JLM
· 1 month ago
With just the tiniest bit of tongue in cheek ---
If one ponders the lack of seemingly entrepreneurial young women, it might be instructive to eavesdrop on the unsuspecting conversations of sorority girls discussing their boyfriends and assorted other beaus. As a father of a UGA junior, I have some first hand experience.
I was baffled to hear them speaking of their boyfriends in terms of "EP". When a name came up someone would say something like --- "Oh, lakehouse."
I was baffled until my daughter provided the Rosetta Stone that EP means "earnings potential" and the graduation system ran the gamut from "poverty, tenured professor, accountant, lawyer, big dog (this is the University of Georgia Bulldogs, mind you) big house, lake house, beach house, pied a terre overlooking the Seine, airplane, etc.".
The ultimate measure of EP is, of course, the "Lottery Ticket".
Of course, things may be different in the South.
So maybe the smartest girls are letting their prospective mates carve out their place in the world while maintaing control of the enterprise through other means.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
JLM- one of the oddest books I've ever read told me to marry wealthy, and that the new new way of marrying wealthy was to go to business school...
Are they smarter- not clear, I hope they have great prenups. Might want to tell your daughter (who sounds about my age), that having been in that relationship- it tends to look better when you are your husband's peer scaling back, according to Vogue. But I guess they missed that article (also somewhat tongue in cheek)
I have spoken to my male friends about this, because as we say locally, "we're in the parsha" (we're dating to get married, except for me it seems) The guys know we are looking, because as the KidMecury comments, we end up getting Pregnant. And unless everyone can pull some amazing salary that it won't happen, we know that as females, some of the traditional roles of being female will be given to us as soon as there is a kid in the picture.
I remember seeing that on the GothamGal's blog, and I realised I will face those choices myself too. My ex sat me down and explained to me once that I better be able to support myself fully- just in case, because of that choice. I accept that burden, mostly. It's really hard to look on and know that at some point, I may become a bit player to someone out there. I could start the world- and then become a bit player. Vogue put it very succinctly when they profiled Marissa Mayer. They mentioned her parties, and her upcoming marriage to a guy even more wealthy than her, a hedge funder.
Yup...eventually, we all come second to guys even more aggressive than us. Personal thought.
If I knew how, JLM, I would...if I knew. Then again, I'm single, so what do I know...
karen_e
· 1 month ago
That is certainly one strategy, JLM. As others have mentioned, the venture/entrepreneur lifestyle is very demanding. Lately, as a career woman who came around to getting pregnant later rather than sooner, I have marveled at the fertility charts in doctors' offices. Fertility peaks between 19-24, period. During those years our modern woman is in school, college, and grad school, preparing for a career?! It's very hard to discuss this conundrum with even a ten-foot pole, I realize. I probably would jump down the throat of any man who would suggest we're wasting 'their' spots at Harvard Business School - and I have jumped down these throats! Yet the only thing that keeps women having *some* earning power in the US is that the workforce is very flexible - a woman can come in and out of it more easily than in many countries. At the same time we all know that largely does not apply to the most demanding professions or to the highest tier.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
We peak out after say 28-32. Are we having a pull out the business world after that point, which is when the guys are all getting going?
(that's fertility wise)
adelaidelancaster
· 1 month ago
ShanaC & Karen_e - glad you're representing!
Im weighing back in because women entrepreneurs are what my company is all about. I work with 250 women business owners daily and spend my professional life embedded in networks that contain 1000s of women who work for themselves and are building ventures of all sizes. My professional world is so overwhelmingly skewed this way that it is funny to hear people comment about a lack of us. This problem is certainly not for a lack of women entrepreneurs (remember, the latest estimates put us at 8M strong).
First, let’s get past all this talk of clothing and accessories.(Although I realize that Hunch prompted the make-up talk...I was in the minority on that one, and by being of "average" comfort with technology...in case you couldn't guess from my accidental double post). But, back to accessories...my point is that we certainly wouldn’t talk about sports or cars if we were wondering why some men don’t read Fred’s great blog or seeking VC funding, so let's move onto the meat.
So disparities in women v men’s non-professional interests aside…what I do know from the scores of entrepreneurs that I work with is that for women, flexibility and autonomy are among the top 4 motivating reasons to start their businesses. My theory is that, in part, women don’t seek VC funding because the traditional entrepreneurship track associated with a business of that size and scale usually precludes the kind of flexibility that women anticipate wanting over let’s say the next decade of their lives. All things being equal, would many VC funders be excited about a female founder planning to give 150% for 2 years, then intentionally scaling back to 75% for years 3 and 4 before ramping up again?
We do know that women are starting businesses at almost twice the rate of men, and that women are continuing to opt-out of traditional corporate roles. Why? Largely because the traditional corporate roles don’t offer the kind of flexibility that they desire and my guess is that the assumption is that a VC-backed start up wouldn’t either. (Is that true, gentlemen? ladies? Idon't want to assume as I’m not VC-backed..yet!)
That being said I know a lot of women entrepreneurs who care a lot about access to VCs and a lot of women entrepreneurs who couldn’t care less and who probably think you’re wasting your time worrying about them. What we also know though is that too many Women Business Owners go out of business and that 15% of all WBOs make 80% of the total revenues generated by WBOs.
I believe that entrepreneurship is a critical employment and economic vehicle for women.
The truth is that we need to expand 2 things: expand access to VC funding for women who want it AND expand our collective definition of the word entrepreneur to include many of those 8M women who aren’t feeling left out but instead say no thank you to funding. We are working these efforts everyday and I would love to talk to anyone who wants to help! This is a serious call for interest.
The two worlds can learn a lot from each other. Aside from the obvious business lessons, there is more and more data supporting women’s influence over general work force trends and issues of work life fit... check www.worklifefit.com
Thanks for the shout out, Jill! And, Fred, we would love to have your speak at In Good Company anytime! I am a frequent reader of your blog (although I only occasionally comment) and we work hard to encourage our membership to read blogs like yours! In fact, your 10 Characteristics of Great Companies post is included in our new member packet. (I hope that doesn’t get me into reprint trouble.) I don’t think it is true that women “don’t like this stuff” but I would guess that many women business owners wouldn’t consider themselves as swimming in the same pool as your portfolio companies (given in part the average disparities in finding, size, scale, and revenue), and they may not feel that they are being spoken to on the blog – although that isn’t the case for me.
I believe that you can learn from any company and we make it part of our IGC mission both on our blog and in our classes to distill takeaways and lessons from larger, seemingly less similar companies so that our members can apply them to their own ventures. I also believe that when you work for yourself, you are entrepreneur first and something else (consultant, nutritionist, photographer, etc) second. Nothing makes us happier then when someone tells us that we have helped them change how they see themselves and that they are now identifying as a business owner.
So, please consider yourself invited to speak to the IGC membership! And in the meantime, I’ll continue to link and share A VC!
awaldstein
· 1 month ago
Fred--three pre expresso comments: -33% w/o a car. In N. American, NY is the only place that can be. So your blog is local to you in NY to some degree. -17% Europe. If the blog has a large local component, it is where you are and work. -Percentage of male seems unnaturally high even for a VC/investment/tech work.
Yesterday's post was chatty and fun and drew out the person behind the post in many instances. A good thing.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
thanks for highlighting the no-car and european numbers. i am proud of both of those. i'd like to get rid of my car too.
CoryS
· 1 month ago
Surprised that hunch.com doesn't have a simple location question or tag the IP address and ask if it is correct or not (to stay in the yes / no / skip format).
Between this and Twitter, Fred, there's a ton of food for marketers' thought. :)
sushantanand
· 1 month ago
I'm surprised 18% that read your blog don't use Twitter.
Ben Saren
· 1 month ago
Fred, consider this: I spent about 30 minutes playing with Hunch yesterday. Just found myself addicted. Yet, my wife, whom I thought would become as hooked, couldn't care less. I would have bet she'd love it, but she was bored within 30 seconds.
Maybe you have more female (and international?) readers, but for some reason Hunch doesn't appeal to them. Certainly other ways beyond Hunch (Quantcast, Google Analytics?) to find out.
But Hunch is not truly "quantified" on Quantcast, and non-quantified sites tend to be way off - like, wayy off. I would, however, agree that more than 50% of your readers probably are men. Look at the industry. How many women VCs are there? How many high-tech startups, entrepreneurs, founders, are women? Engineers with clever ideas, and have IP? I think it sucks. I was at a conference recently and looked around, and I seriously counted one woman. ONE woman. In fact, at ad:tech this past week, I was walking around the exhibit hall, and I noted that at the booths, women, lots of women, beautiful and in some cases scantily clad. But walking through the exhibit hall aisles? - Men. I was with a female colleague, and she commented on it too. Once you start to see the industry in this light, you suddenly realize - wow! We have a long way to go still... like we're still living in the days of Mad Men. Are we? Haven't we changed?
awaldstein
· 1 month ago
Ben, I'm with you. And all the more remarkable because the world has dramatically changed in the last 10 years in almost every possible way-No intelligent person litters. No one smokes in public places. (thnx to Gary Vaynerchuk for grouping these data points in a speech.) You can launch a new product without a huge marketing budget. I would bet though that women entrepreneurs are a larger number than we see here or in tech. They are just more dispersed, less tech centric and funded by friends and family. This is just a hunch though.
Ben Saren
· 1 month ago
Last week I had coffee with a fellow Boston entrepreneur, who's running an Internet company. She raised her first round of VC money. We were quite caffeinated, but sharing our perspectives on entrepreneurship, and the passion that we, as founders, feel and need to harness. I remember thinking to myself, 'why aren't there more entrepreneurs and founders like her?' Nevermind female, but she embodies the essence of today's entrepreneur - full of passion, enthusiasm, drive, and she will be successful in her new enterprise - I'd bet on it. There are so many 'entrepreneurs' out there, but so few really have what she (and I think I) have - the infectious passion and drive that so many others lack. I'm not sure what my point is here - but I'd guess that for every 20 male entrepreneurs and founders, there might be 1 woman. That's just my feeling, without data. Interestingly enough, if you Google "female entrepreneurs" there are no links to Techcrunch or any sites that you and I might consider relevant or reputable. Its all links to the SBA, about.com, and clearly not a topic that's discussed - for one reason or another. Clearly this is a bigger issue than I think we realize, as individuals and probably as an industry. Or, we're just creating one... :)
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
Its a huge issue and one that needs to be talked about. Its not that we don't want to fund them. We don't even see them approaching us for the most part
Ben Saren
· 1 month ago
Totally! It seems like its less a matter of want or need, I think its a matter of culture and society. Don't you? At the tech/founder/entrepreneurial etc meetups all around the country, there are far lest women than men. It's just a macro problem, for lack of a better word, I suppose. Maybe, at the same time, women founders and entrepreneurs need to do their part too... be more vocal, create groups and blogs around these things. And I bet they're out there, we just don't know about them for any number of reasons. I do know a CEO of a very well established company in the high-tech/marketing/Internet space that is known to be more vocal on this topic. I'll see if I can get her to chime in here...
awaldstein
· 1 month ago
It is changing as there are no structural or cultural walls to crash from my perspective. But ever so slowly. Note the funding of Jen Bekman's 20 x 200 project a few weeks ago. I thought this was a huge step forward but didn't get as much attention as it deserved either as a project or her as a women entrepreneur. Bringing attention to these important projects can't help but help. An important project I thought (http://bit.ly/3UkqIi)
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
I love this project, though as someone who just did a successful/failed depending on how you think of it Net Art project which should be in the Rhizome database, she needs more exposure to the heavy hitters including the Rhizome and Eyebeam.
She'll get the exposure she needs from there. I don't think she needs this community, I think she needs to see her artists and her model exposed it ArtForum and in the Gagosian. That will cause a number of people to go up in arms. A lot of people. It throws the model of who is artist out the door which in my humble opinion where it should be.
jillstern
· 1 month ago
I tell my single lady friends who complain that they can't find any guys to go to the Tech Meet-Ups. I explain that women are a minority there and they might get a lot of attention!
Ben Saren
· 1 month ago
Oh those poor friends of yours! lol :)
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
I go to them and then I feel weird. I don't want to get hit on, I want to tweet out...Take me seriously and hit on me later. it's really hard that dynamic of sexuality versus seriousness. what do you want me to do, wear a bag?
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
I would feel extraordinarily odd approaching you without at least two guys...If your idea seems macho, you want someone else to portray a macho image for you.
alexismichelle
· 1 month ago
LaunchBox Digital made a very concerted effort to reach out to female enterprenuers when accepting applications for its 2009 program, and even with that effort less than a handful actually applied. Ultimately they did end up accepting a company with female founders (Keen Guides, lead by two women, one of whom is deaf and recently featured in DC magazine!), but that was ultimately on the merits of the company and not on the fact that it was lead by women.
The same problem exists in VC to a large degree-- do you think its a cyclical problem? VC is hard enough to break into, but as a woman it seems even more daunting. Not to say that there are not fantastic female VCs (or fantastic female entrepreneurs), but the numbers are pretty skewed.
That said, I love this blog post by Christine Herron at First Round Capital. She put out a call on twitter for companies with female founders, and got a surprisingly large response: http://bit.ly/femalefounders
kidmercury
· 1 month ago
IMHO it's a biological issue, plain and simple. you have kids you know how it is, especially that first year, it is more than a full time job, especially for the mother -- at least that is what i have seen across cultures and generations. and being an entrepreneur is still an unfortunately large challenge in our current world. i think lots of women realize this and choose maternity or a maternity and a stable job rather than the high risk self-imposed torture known as entrepreneurialism. i don't think that's sexist, i could care less what folks want to do, but i think the biological issue is a big factor and barring drastic cultural and physiological changes i don't see how this issue can be modified so that the female entrepreneurial situation is different.
but don't get it twisted, i'm all for female tech babes, so keep it up ladies!
JLM
· 1 month ago
I suspect we are all caught up in the hunter --- gatherer --- nurturer --- agriculture --- child bearer paradigm and it is very, very difficult to make a broad shift.
Why?
Probably because many of the stereotypes are simply true.
Without leaping to my soapbox, the phenomenon of the glass ceiling, unequal pay, old boy network and other similar ills are simply TRUE.
The first woman President of the US will have played team sports w/ the boys and have learned all the leadership, cultural and alpha male wolfpack skills directly.
julespieri
· 1 month ago
Ben, I'm taking a flier here but since I know just about every VC funded female CEO in Boston, I have a pretty good clue about whom you reference. And since you say the person already has her funding, she is probably supressing the memories of how painful it was to raise. (If you can supress the pain of childbirth, you can supress the pain of anything.) And it was incredibly painful, at least in the cases I know of--for female founders. It's the old Ginger Rogers thing...having to do everything Fred did, but backwards.
That's not a whine. We are all too busy growing our businesses to dwell on injustice. Just fact.
Fred if you want more women to read your column, you need to fund more female founded businesses. Nothing will make you more relevant or interesting to female entrepreneurs than putting your money where your keystrokes are. We have the same drive, passion, ambition, and goals as men. But we can't build our businesses on words.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
i am trying to fund the best businesses i can find. i need more women to bring me interesting deals.
julespieri
· 1 month ago
Female CEOS often agree that is is just plain hard for men to recognize good deals brought in by women. I know most male VC's think they are giving women a fair shake, but there are tidal waves of subconscious data and history preventing that. (I read a compelling study recently that argued that racism is not genetic, but sexism pretty much is. Yikes.)
In the VC board room pitch, we are not the archetype pocket-protector-tech-founder (even if we are sometimes smarter/better) or the archetype hail-good-fellow-well-met (even if we are steely-eyed killers when it comes to biz dev). So it is hard to put us up against the patterns of the successful entrepreneurs an experienced VC has enjoyed funding.
We present our thoughts differently. We tend to be more realistic about our forecasts and claims--I am sometimes stunned by the bullshit I see men put in front of VC's, with a straight face. And women tend to focus on markets we know (which men don't always understand, because women control 85% of the US consumer spend).
I think VC's probably have to try harder to shake bias to get past this cycle of ever-repeating history. Hire more female VC's. Listen more open mindedly to female founders. Override bias more actively and work to assign more intellectual, experiential, and analytical credibility to a female founder as she speaks. Also allow for the fact that women found companies at a wider age spectrum than men...they tend to build rich professional experiences to prepare themselves for being founders, and are not always as young as the typical male first time founder.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
I don't care what claims or projections entrepreneurs make. They are almost always hype
We invest in web services that have been launched and have demonstrated user traction and accelerating adoption
You can bullshit your way past that fortunately
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
I meant can't in the last line
Paula Marttila
· 1 month ago
I evened up the respondent stats regarding European and female :)
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
Thank you
Helen Kurukulasuriya
· 1 month ago
Me too, Paula.
Fred, I started reading when I was still living in Switzerland. My stats changed much over the last months.
I'm really curious about the Tech guys that occasionally wear make-up. (I get it that some may have mistyped, I'm not going to start figuring out significance)
I really wouldn't want to hear about make-up here. An interesting post about shopping could look at how ideeli, Gilt and other shopping communities are doing so far. I'd be curious how their ratio of active users is.
jillstern
· 1 month ago
Isn't Kevin Ryan behind Gilt.com? This site might be catered to women shoppers but isn't he going to profit?
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
They're rock stars and they wear eyeliner!
William Mougayar
· 1 month ago
Re: Europe & non-NA being less represented- Could a factor be that this survey kicked-in Saturday morning EST, and the rest of the business world tends to shut-down a bit more on week-ends? How do your geo-stats on Charbeat or Google Analytics relate to this, especially during the week-end? If you're also getting 75% from NA during week days, then you'll know if the week-end was a factor or not.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
Good point william. I'll look at those stats
patricia2207
· 1 month ago
I think that 92% number maps almost exactly against the gender split in venture capital, as I've seen it. So you may have an uphill battle, Fred.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
That's fine. Its worth working on
Paolo
· 1 month ago
Just gave my contribution to the "no-car and european" cause ;-) Regarding Hunch, I think it's a great tool, I totally love it, but it's also "very american". As far as I know you're very popular/appreciated in Europe too!
andyswan
· 1 month ago
Would be neat if we could see Fred's answers instead of "all hunch users".
I have a "hunch" that authors tend to attract their mirror image as readers.
So Fred are you an urban, north american male that uses twitter, eats meat, owns a sedan, votes liberal, uses a mac, that likes to make your own mark, clasically styled, employed, well-funded, married man?
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
close
i drive a minivan but wish i could get rid of it and just walk and ride a bike and a vespa
i do eat meat but am cutting way back on it, may be headed to partial vegetarian, meaning i make exceptions for steak and ribs occasionally
i use a windows machine in the office and a mac everywhere else
and i don't know about "classically styled". i like to think of myself as trendy, but my girls would laugh out loud at that characterization
David Semeria
· 1 month ago
What about the perfume? We *demand* an answer to the perfume question!
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
That remind me, I wish I could re-invest in something more appropriate for me. Someone gave me that advice a long time ago...Something, interesting
David Semeria
· 1 month ago
Sometimes your comments are seriously surreal, Shana ( I'd love to hear Sean Connery read this sentence...)
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Glad to make your Internet day. Aren't you happy that some women found their way here? ;)
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
The other thought I had to this comment- "Does this mean I'm turning into a Bond Girl, I seriously hope not..."
Mark Essel
· 1 month ago
hehehe, I do so enjoy reading Shana's comments, but sometimes they can be a challenge for me to decipher (no offense Shana :).
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
Ditto
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
It means- I've been wearing the same perfume when I go out for over three years now...It's considered an older person's/classic perfume, but I'm 23, maybe I should get something different. The post reminded me of that in a vague sort of way
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
I don't think I've ever worn any kind of scent ever
David Semeria
· 1 month ago
No French genes then? :)
Joking apart, Hunch is going to have to work hard to keep this fresh. I was already bored taking IQ/personality/whatever tests in the last millennium.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Maybe not, It does give good reccomendations for the most part. Though I'm semi-curious why it thinks I need the Amex Black and it doesn't know what college I go to...
bstancam
· 1 month ago
Hunch is pretty neat, but the statistician in me really wishes the summary figures were a bit more rigorous. Some risk ratios and p-values would be really useful, and they clearly have the data to do some pretty good estimates there. Not to mention correcting for the more common demographic variables (age, sex, etc.).
On a more practical note, doing those kinds of corrections and flagging very low p-values would allow one to highlight how an individual or sub-population was truly different.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Thank you for saying this good person. I'm not a statistician, but something in this survey bothers me too. Also there should be ratings for some of the questions rather than yes/no
glenngutierrez
· 1 month ago
I've been using Hunch since one of their first press mentions came out. I just enjoy seeing how much more comprehensive the system has come along. Very cool
Nick Giglia
· 1 month ago
It was a fun exercise, and I'm looking forward to learning even more about the AVC reader community.
Hunch is also a very interesting tool; I've followed it since I saw it a few months ago at the NY Tech Meetup. I wonder if some of the questions - such as "Like to Fit In" and "Like to Make Your Own Mark" - are a bit leading, since we all know the chasm that could exist between reality and personal perception. However, that's part of the fun of it. I hope we re-visit the results in a week or so when we get a more statistically significant sample.
kirklove
· 1 month ago
Glad to see this survey here. I took it when Chris was testing it via Twitter. I really find myself using Hunch more and more. For me it's becoming a bit addictive. Plus, I swear they have a camera following me around since they are about 80% with their predictive answers.
Fred have you ever thought about ditching the mini van and going with Zip Car? As a long time suburban boy turned Manhattanite I did and I don't miss my car at all.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
Hmm. Need to think about that
Whitney Johnson
· 1 month ago
That was a lot of fun. I discovered you through Inc's list via Guy Kawasaki's AllTop. I'm one of the 9% women.
GeekMBA360
· 1 month ago
On a side note, it'd be interesting to compare your survey result against the "user profile" services such as Quantcast, NextAction, etc. I bet those services are far off from the actual audience make-up. :-)
Colm Brophy
· 1 month ago
I think it's worth noting that when you define well travelled as visiting a number of countries, it skews against Americans who have, in general, a long way to travel to get to another country, where us Europeans can quite easily visit 5 countries on a single summer holiday.
awaldstein
· 1 month ago
Shana, wasn't kvetching, just pointing out that there are start-ups doing important work who happen to be women, but it seems not a lot of them. 20 x 200 is close to my heart as an art collector and a fervent believer that web democratization is the breakaway business model of the future. 20 x 200 will find its momentum of course, with or without this community, but I felt good about bringing attention to it within my networks, many which do include gallery owners and other collectors.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
My reply had very little to do with that. I'm an art student affiliated with the really tiny University of Chicago Department of Visual Art. I started out in drawing (primarily nudes) and have moved into Net Art, depending how you define that term, considering that it's really been only growing as a movement for say, 10 years? And part of my Bachelor's thesis just went wildly out of control before I could enter it into the Rhizome artbase. It was on Facebook. It's been a totally exhilarating three weeks. Very interesting three weeks. Wow. I should blog about it, but I really need to find someone on facebook to hand me a copy of the data of a project called Art Dova.
I made my critique blind in the art world. I love the project, it;s come up for me, but it has to become more expansive in the sense of could she topple what is going on this Year at the Venice Bienniale. Most people here still don't realize that the first computer virus in Python was released there a number of years ago, and that they gave out t-shirts in honor of the opccasion. Can she get one of the 20 dollar prints up to 20 grand on the auction block at Soethby's by chnaging the game of production of art and who and what counts as insider/outsider art, or even that there should be such thing as peer produced art?
That's a huge question to be played out. My comment only relates back to that. She needs to bnasically launch herself into those spheres and see what people do. It's hella annoying, and one of the reasons I can't see myself purely staying there. It's a place where you learn a lot about a specific mode of thinking and it teaches you a lot about the pure theoretical mechanics of how places like this work and how to break them down and put them together in new and much more forward ways-it doesn't teach you how to make money or change the world. I rather do the second set.
She still has a point to prove though to the "seven days in the art world" crowd though. She can do it. Just has to see how... I fully support this engagement. I think it will be very interesting to see her topple over the likes of Miltos Maneteas as gatekeeper of all things D-Art. But she'll have to take risks with some of the art, and a lot of it is in no ways risky compared to some of the stuff I've seen out there in the past.
awaldstein
· 1 month ago
Shana, thanks for taking the time to clarify and share this. Yes, do blog about it.
Long Live Art Dova, even in Death. I'm still processing the entire experience. I wish I could get a copy of the data from facebook. I basically have the conversation and a couple of screenshots. I really wish I had a copy of Art Dova, fully functioning Mirrored somewhere. The most amazing Internet Experience of My Life so far. Though it is still beyond me who friended Howard Lindzon.
awaldstein
· 1 month ago
Thnx Shana. Reading your comments makes me think of Charles Olson, the founder of the Black Mountain School of Poetry. Hyper intellectual. Concrete poet. Somewhat obscure. I wrote my Master's thesis on him. Enjoy
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Considering that in person the thing I need most is the data, a hug, a couple of days worth of sleep...I'm actually not sure what to think. It might be too late at night for me to think straight.
Is it better to be more or less obscure?
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
Thank you for making me write that. I finally sat down and cried over that profile. As odd as it sounds, I was treating it as human, but as a creation as my own...I feel a bit lost now without it, I'm not sure what do to with my own facebook profile. It's really not the same.
robyncowie
· 1 month ago
Fred,
I wouldn't worry too much about the 75% living in North America. I live in Oz and last looked at your site on Saturday morning before the survey was posted. Now it's Monday morning and I'm looking again. The weekend weather here was spectacular - summer is coming, so I wouldn't be surprised if many of my fellow Aussies didn't spend too much computer time until now.
Also, to add another female perspective. I'm sure you have lots of female readers, but maybe for some it is intimidating to comment. On my first post here, I had a response about how pretty my eyes are. I didn't take offense so much, but it's not what I came here for, so I guess I've backed off again. And I purposely didn't use an avatar with my whole face, just for this reason.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
It took me nearly 5? months to show my face. And there is a back story to the drawing in the background- which is essentially a back off or else back story. I don't blame you at all.
Don Jones - VentureDeal
· 1 month ago
Start translating your posts into other languages and you will get other people reading them...
lazerow
· 1 month ago
Fred-
Here are the most interesting findings:
~ 10% of your audience is female ~ 15% of your audience admits to wearing makeup (rarely to daily!)
So that means that 5% of your audience comprises men who wear makeup at least part of the time. I don't find this incredible surprising given you live below 14th street in a very progressive neighborhood. But you may want to dig a little deeper here.
Best,
MML
chefbikram
· 1 month ago
Other phone marketers and online surveys should follow Hunch's lead: allow participants to skip questions AND make it snappy! The WSJ used to send me surveys and I would like to contribute, BUT I had to answer every question to continue. So I ended up just closing it out and giving them nothing. As a result they miss out on good info. Other online surveys also have this onerous requirement. And telephone pollsters often require over 15 minutes of your time. Anything beyond 5-10 minutes is a deal killer even on issues that want to provide feedback.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
You can't make correlations without the data. This isn't a good survey in a lot of ways.
chefbikram
· 1 month ago
Good point. But wouldn't a business want to get any feedback? And often there isn't even a "NA" to check off. So asking someone to answer a question they have no clue about is equally flawed. And for telemarketers, they should then consider a "short-form" and once that concludes then ask the respondent if he/she would like to continue.
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
It should be the standard shoprt form v long form v open ended observational interview. All have their place in life.
Siddhartha Dhiman
· 1 month ago
Would love to know region wise stats for Asia :)
Sanjay
· 1 month ago
I read your posts regularly, though through google reader. Did not take the survey until you said you were disappointed with the fact that most of your readers seem to be from North America. So I took the survey so that you would know there are people (at least me :)) from India who follow and appreciate your posts. Thanks you.
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Lee Stone
· 1 month ago
The weekend issue is key - it's now Monday am in London and I have just found the posts about the Hunch survey. Chalk up another European reader - albeit still male!
karen_e
· 1 month ago
My husband technically speaking wears a little makeup. He was raised in utterly non-American circles and has a natural inclination to reach for all my creams - occasionally even peering at my concealer (undereye stuff to hide dark circles) and muttering that he needs to pick up some in his skin tone. Once in a while he comes home with a cream or serum with the same excitement that ladies do - "check out this great stuff I got at Kiehl's!" He also wears cologne every day of the week and has for his entire adult life. If he had taken this survey, he would have answered 'wears makeup' without much thought. Fun survey, and fun to hear about the readers. By the way, we were in NYC this weekend, eating at the Spotted Pig. We said to each other, how did we hear about this place? I dunno, we shrugged. Probably on Fred's blog over the years.
Mark Essel
· 1 month ago
These stats are great areas to understand your current readership but more importantly to focus on "marketing" your ideas to an entire world audience. I still am a firm believe your blog audience could grow a ton. I enjoyed reading here before I considered the potential of a startup.
How about globally catching women entrepreneur's attention?
I have not the slightest clue on how you'd go about doing such a thing. Let me ask my fiance about topics that may appeal to women entrepreneurs globally...
"I don't understand the question" her first response. then "Magazines, shoes, makeup, and Oprah. Everyone loves Oprah"
In conclusion Fred, be like Oprah to expand your audience. :D
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
I'm tryin'
tomasvdb
· 1 month ago
perhaps the 8 of us who live in Africa could meet up sometime for dinner :)
Liz
· 1 month ago
Well, I helped your female count, anyway.
My professional "required" reading list includes a blog section, and the women on that list are mostly "mommy bloggers." I suppose people are just writing what they know, but I know a lot of bright successful women, and I'm just not finding where they blog...
For the most part, I just want something interesting and thought-provoking to read; whether it comes from a man or a woman doesn't matter to me very much. But I do find it interesting - and slightly annoying - that there is an idea that "Women don't like this stuff." Maybe it's more that they don't see the value reading blogs? Or that they read but don't care to comment? I'm not sure, but I'm bummed there is still an us/them dynamic.
Fred, I don't think I'd be interested in an entry geared specifically towards women (not that you are suggesting doing that, but if you are trying up the chick demographic, I could see something like that happening). The women who are interested in this field will find you.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
Good suggestion
Aruni
· 1 month ago
Sorry this is so late. I've been dealing with a lot of personal and other things. I've been reading your posts but haven't had a chance to reply. You now have one more female to add to your results.
I went to the Hunch site and the 2 questions it said it could predict my answers, it got wrong...go figure. That logic must be designed for a man. :-)
All Comments
Given you have three female bloggers in your immediate family, maybe you can supplement your research with some focus group work? I know your wife reads this blog, because she has commented here before, but do your daughters? Do many of those who read your wife's blog read yours?
Maybe men and women tend to have different interests?
I don't finding it shocking at all that your audience is mostly men. Women, in general, don't like this stuff, or haven't been trained to like this stuff. If I were you, I wouldn't worry about trying to get women readers-enjoy the audience you have.
(But if you want, come have a talk at IN GOOD COMPANY- the all women entrepreneur shared workspace on 23rd Street! That might tip your scale a bit.)
why do you think women, in general, "don't like this stuff"?
emilyjanewilson.com are for :)
A suggestion for increasing the female % might be to have a couple of well known women guest bloggers that are either geeks (e.g. Leah Culver) or entrepreneurs (e.g. Catherine Flake). At least you'll get a flurry of their followers, and they'll decide whether to return or not.
You don't have to reply to my comment. I don't want you to come off sounding bad.
Women have been targeted to fill their brains (and time) on consuming. I'd like more females to be interested and of course the younger ones are--which gives me hope!
Women reading this stuff have a very different reaction. Many social scienctists and marketers have noticed it is about the product relationship. I would bet my non-existant louboutins that Android is going to be more successful than we think because it has a cute looking robot as a mascot and names its product releases aftr yummy sweet food. All about the relationship. Meanwhile it will totally fill my niche of balancing my life.
The guys will be very attracted to the slick "Droid" commerecial. Very different groups we're talking here.
We don't talk about gendering. That's bad. We want to be gendered to some degree. We want to be male/female. And that's ok.
We feel bad that we're different. Why?
I don't care. I'm happy being female (most of the time- the times I don't have to do with what's up woith the golf/sports thigns that I don't like right now and how do I communicate more effectively with guys on a variety of issues). Up to a point, it is perfectly ok that the guys are guys and I'm a girl. I just wish that the network for women was stronger. Women who are interested in these issues seem to not connect with each other very easily- and that is difficult...
My kids took the swine flu vaccine as soon as it was available. I'm getting mine soon
When we did the book list, I put up The Second Sex. That was on purpose. I would also add The Feminine Mystique. These are not guys guys books. That Iron John, which I can't say I have read.
I have a friend in the Comp Sci department from Eastern Europe who complains that she was expected to do better in school, including math. Now she does theoretical comp sci and is complaining about how most programs have moved away from this because she wants to go to graduate school. (This is a help her part, very few women are this cool, and want to do theoretical comp sci while everyone else is doing "how does xml work practically")
I will never forget the following things in my life that the oldies would say "raised my conciousness."
1) Watching a number of people I know get married, inclkuding family, and realized there isn't the same ethos of self education. it creates women who are very dependent on thier husbands. If you are white and very educated, this matters less. Enterpenuers and those in finance tend to have less of this problem.
2) Dating a now 37 (yes you read that correctly) year old man,and realizing that even if I had a job, it would scale back, because he was a lawyer at a prominent firm and partner track within the next three years. I wanted something more equal and I wasn't bimbo, and it was hard to create respect. (it was a good relationship otherwise, trust me)
3) We have a problem teaching math. I was invited to my schools math team. (I'm a dork) I hated it. They did this weird kind of math that I had no interest in. And didn't get what it did with actual math. The AMC exams or something? it was all weird and mechanical. I would rather sit down and read Euclid or something. That guy seems interesting. Trying to figure out why I beleive certain things about calculus, or number theory, that's interesting. No one teaches that way. Ever. They teach towards engineering and economics and very mecahniazed math. Not very visual/usual math and how it works. It's really really boring. Women will leave quickly. And then they sort out the top men from thier. Such as my brother. Interestingly, I can give better verbal and written explanations than my brother, but I can't perform the math....and he's an actual engineering student.
It makes it extremely difficult to go back to math, especially after you start stabilizing after puberty. I was talking to a friend of mine who told me based off the way I talk and what I am interested in, I should have been an engineering student. (probably comp sci, whatever) Outside Biomedical, I really would not have anyone take me seriously. And it is difficult to spend the time right now teaching myself. It is better to do it in groups. Even I admit to want to learn in a group of women, or a guy who won't hit on me.
That's more difficult than you think. I've sat in math classes where even though I wasn't doing well because I was trying to take my first comp sci class (hint: don't take Java in six weeks flat with a first time instructor) the combo of the questions I asked and the way I looked when I asked them would get stares. and I was coming back to math after four years away.
I don't think my experience is atypical. Beyond that the Econ program here does have a significant amount of women, I don't expect them to rise through the rankls and become the ladies of finance. I expect them to more likely marry the lords of finance, I already know one girl who did...It's not a pare to pare experience
5) Finance- So there is a group in the community that discovered that even though the vast majority of women make purchasing decisions, they know nothing of finance. Then there is deal making finance. That's a wholely new level of finance. Before coming here I actually had asked my father about it: he Kept telling me when I am older (at age 16), which was a really uhhh, silly response. Why not just tell me? Now I'm behind. It is not an uncommon experience when you are trying to gender children though, you want your child to be female/male.
That being said, I respect the gendering. I want my daughters to be female (except in a could of limited rare cases). Most people don't realize that guys flee jobs and charity events and all sorts of behaviors where there are too many women. If this community actually started to rise up above the 25% margin, I would get worried. They seem to need men only spaces. In some ways, it's actually psychologically good that it is a mostly male space.
I actually would create a mostly male space. Though apparently it may have wore the GG out. I wish I was there, I would have said hello. There are times that the fact that this place is so testosterone and argumentative that it is hard to rise above it. I remember the healthcare debate and wanting a really female response of leadership through friendship. I think I would have gotten a really pissed off bunch of guys who were working it out there own way. Didn't make me any less nervous.
Same with women. If you want women to enter xyz jobs- create women only spaces and bar the men.
There you go. Shana's veiw on feminism and structuralism. I probably could write more. But ehh. Though I totally second that we need a VC blog that does mention the word makeup. And 4 inch heels on sale.
I believe that you can learn from any company and we make it part of our IGC mission both on our blog and in our classes to distill takeaways and lessons from larger, seemingly less similar companies so that our members can apply them to their own ventures. I also believe that when you work for yourself, you are entrepreneur first and something else (consultant, nutritionist, photographer, etc) second. Nothing makes us happier then when someone tells us that we have helped them change how they see themselves and that they are now identifying as a business owner.
So, please consider yourself invited to speak to the IGC membership! And in the meantime, I’ll continue to link and share A VC!
- Adelaide Lancaster
If one ponders the lack of seemingly entrepreneurial young women, it might be instructive to eavesdrop on the unsuspecting conversations of sorority girls discussing their boyfriends and assorted other beaus. As a father of a UGA junior, I have some first hand experience.
I was baffled to hear them speaking of their boyfriends in terms of "EP". When a name came up someone would say something like --- "Oh, lakehouse."
I was baffled until my daughter provided the Rosetta Stone that EP means "earnings potential" and the graduation system ran the gamut from "poverty, tenured professor, accountant, lawyer, big dog (this is the University of Georgia Bulldogs, mind you) big house, lake house, beach house, pied a terre overlooking the Seine, airplane, etc.".
The ultimate measure of EP is, of course, the "Lottery Ticket".
Of course, things may be different in the South.
So maybe the smartest girls are letting their prospective mates carve out their place in the world while maintaing control of the enterprise through other means.
Are they smarter- not clear, I hope they have great prenups. Might want to tell your daughter (who sounds about my age), that having been in that relationship- it tends to look better when you are your husband's peer scaling back, according to Vogue. But I guess they missed that article (also somewhat tongue in cheek)
I have spoken to my male friends about this, because as we say locally, "we're in the parsha" (we're dating to get married, except for me it seems) The guys know we are looking, because as the KidMecury comments, we end up getting Pregnant. And unless everyone can pull some amazing salary that it won't happen, we know that as females, some of the traditional roles of being female will be given to us as soon as there is a kid in the picture.
I remember seeing that on the GothamGal's blog, and I realised I will face those choices myself too. My ex sat me down and explained to me once that I better be able to support myself fully- just in case, because of that choice. I accept that burden, mostly. It's really hard to look on and know that at some point, I may become a bit player to someone out there. I could start the world- and then become a bit player. Vogue put it very succinctly when they profiled Marissa Mayer. They mentioned her parties, and her upcoming marriage to a guy even more wealthy than her, a hedge funder.
http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2009/07/mach...
Yup...eventually, we all come second to guys even more aggressive than us. Personal thought.
If I knew how, JLM, I would...if I knew. Then again, I'm single, so what do I know...
(that's fertility wise)
Im weighing back in because women entrepreneurs are what my company is all about. I work with 250 women business owners daily and spend my professional life embedded in networks that contain 1000s of women who work for themselves and are building ventures of all sizes. My professional world is so overwhelmingly skewed this way that it is funny to hear people comment about a lack of us. This problem is certainly not for a lack of women entrepreneurs (remember, the latest estimates put us at 8M strong).
First, let’s get past all this talk of clothing and accessories.(Although I realize that Hunch prompted the make-up talk...I was in the minority on that one, and by being of "average" comfort with technology...in case you couldn't guess from my accidental double post). But, back to accessories...my point is that we certainly wouldn’t talk about sports or cars if we were wondering why some men don’t read Fred’s great blog or seeking VC funding, so let's move onto the meat.
So disparities in women v men’s non-professional interests aside…what I do know from the scores of entrepreneurs that I work with is that for women, flexibility and autonomy are among the top 4 motivating reasons to start their businesses. My theory is that, in part, women don’t seek VC funding because the traditional entrepreneurship track associated with a business of that size and scale usually precludes the kind of flexibility that women anticipate wanting over let’s say the next decade of their lives. All things being equal, would many VC funders be excited about a female founder planning to give 150% for 2 years, then intentionally scaling back to 75% for years 3 and 4 before ramping up again?
We do know that women are starting businesses at almost twice the rate of men, and that women are continuing to opt-out of traditional corporate roles. Why? Largely because the traditional corporate roles don’t offer the kind of flexibility that they desire and my guess is that the assumption is that a VC-backed start up wouldn’t either. (Is that true, gentlemen? ladies? Idon't want to assume as I’m not VC-backed..yet!)
That being said I know a lot of women entrepreneurs who care a lot about access to VCs and a lot of women entrepreneurs who couldn’t care less and who probably think you’re wasting your time worrying about them.
What we also know though is that too many Women Business Owners go out of business and that 15% of all WBOs make 80% of the total revenues generated by WBOs.
I believe that entrepreneurship is a critical employment and economic vehicle for women.
The truth is that we need to expand 2 things: expand access to VC funding for women who want it AND expand our collective definition of the word entrepreneur to include many of those 8M women who aren’t feeling left out but instead say no thank you to funding. We are working these efforts everyday and I would love to talk to anyone who wants to help! This is a serious call for interest.
The two worlds can learn a lot from each other. Aside from the obvious business lessons, there is more and more data supporting women’s influence over general work force trends and issues of work life fit... check www.worklifefit.com
Interested folks can read more convo with Jason Cohen (of a smart bear) and his wife Darla here: http://ingoodcompanyworkplaces.blogspot.com/200...
I believe that you can learn from any company and we make it part of our IGC mission both on our blog and in our classes to distill takeaways and lessons from larger, seemingly less similar companies so that our members can apply them to their own ventures. I also believe that when you work for yourself, you are entrepreneur first and something else (consultant, nutritionist, photographer, etc) second. Nothing makes us happier then when someone tells us that we have helped them change how they see themselves and that they are now identifying as a business owner.
So, please consider yourself invited to speak to the IGC membership! And in the meantime, I’ll continue to link and share A VC!
-33% w/o a car. In N. American, NY is the only place that can be. So your blog is local to you in NY to some degree.
-17% Europe. If the blog has a large local component, it is where you are and work.
-Percentage of male seems unnaturally high even for a VC/investment/tech work.
Yesterday's post was chatty and fun and drew out the person behind the post in many instances. A good thing.
of those. i'd like to get rid of my car too.
Between this and Twitter, Fred, there's a ton of food for marketers' thought. :)
Maybe you have more female (and international?) readers, but for some reason Hunch doesn't appeal to them. Certainly other ways beyond Hunch (Quantcast, Google Analytics?) to find out.
http://www.quantcast.com/hunch.com
She'll get the exposure she needs from there. I don't think she needs this community, I think she needs to see her artists and her model exposed it ArtForum and in the Gagosian. That will cause a number of people to go up in arms. A lot of people. It throws the model of who is artist out the door which in my humble opinion where it should be.
The same problem exists in VC to a large degree-- do you think its a cyclical problem? VC is hard enough to break into, but as a woman it seems even more daunting. Not to say that there are not fantastic female VCs (or fantastic female entrepreneurs), but the numbers are pretty skewed.
That said, I love this blog post by Christine Herron at First Round Capital. She put out a call on twitter for companies with female founders, and got a surprisingly large response: http://bit.ly/femalefounders
but don't get it twisted, i'm all for female tech babes, so keep it up ladies!
Why?
Probably because many of the stereotypes are simply true.
Without leaping to my soapbox, the phenomenon of the glass ceiling, unequal pay, old boy network and other similar ills are simply TRUE.
The first woman President of the US will have played team sports w/ the boys and have learned all the leadership, cultural and alpha male wolfpack skills directly.
That's not a whine. We are all too busy growing our businesses to dwell on injustice. Just fact.
Fred if you want more women to read your column, you need to fund more female founded businesses. Nothing will make you more relevant or interesting to female entrepreneurs than putting your money where your keystrokes are. We have the same drive, passion, ambition, and goals as men. But we can't build our businesses on words.
bring me interesting deals.
In the VC board room pitch, we are not the archetype pocket-protector-tech-founder (even if we are sometimes smarter/better) or the archetype hail-good-fellow-well-met (even if we are steely-eyed killers when it comes to biz dev). So it is hard to put us up against the patterns of the successful entrepreneurs an experienced VC has enjoyed funding.
We present our thoughts differently. We tend to be more realistic about our forecasts and claims--I am sometimes stunned by the bullshit I see men put in front of VC's, with a straight face. And women tend to focus on markets we know (which men don't always understand, because women control 85% of the US consumer spend).
I think VC's probably have to try harder to shake bias to get past this cycle of ever-repeating history. Hire more female VC's. Listen more open mindedly to female founders. Override bias more actively and work to assign more intellectual, experiential, and analytical credibility to a female founder as she speaks. Also allow for the fact that women found companies at a wider age spectrum than men...they tend to build rich professional experiences to prepare themselves for being founders, and are not always as young as the typical male first time founder.
We invest in web services that have been launched and have demonstrated user traction and accelerating adoption
You can bullshit your way past that fortunately
Fred, I started reading when I was still living in Switzerland. My stats changed much over the last months.
I'm really curious about the Tech guys that occasionally wear make-up. (I get it that some may have mistyped, I'm not going to start figuring out significance)
I really wouldn't want to hear about make-up here. An interesting post about shopping could look at how ideeli, Gilt and other shopping communities are doing so far. I'd be curious how their ratio of active users is.
How do your geo-stats on Charbeat or Google Analytics relate to this, especially during the week-end? If you're also getting 75% from NA during week days, then you'll know if the week-end was a factor or not.
I have a "hunch" that authors tend to attract their mirror image as readers.
So Fred are you an urban, north american male that uses twitter, eats meat, owns a sedan, votes liberal, uses a mac, that likes to make your own mark, clasically styled, employed, well-funded, married man?
i drive a minivan but wish i could get rid of it and just walk and ride a
bike and a vespa
i do eat meat but am cutting way back on it, may be headed to partial
vegetarian, meaning i make exceptions for steak and ribs occasionally
i use a windows machine in the office and a mac everywhere else
and i don't know about "classically styled". i like to think of myself as
trendy, but my girls would laugh out loud at that characterization
Joking apart, Hunch is going to have to work hard to keep this fresh. I was already bored taking IQ/personality/whatever tests in the last millennium.
On a more practical note, doing those kinds of corrections and flagging very low p-values would allow one to highlight how an individual or sub-population was truly different.
Hunch is also a very interesting tool; I've followed it since I saw it a few months ago at the NY Tech Meetup. I wonder if some of the questions - such as "Like to Fit In" and "Like to Make Your Own Mark" - are a bit leading, since we all know the chasm that could exist between reality and personal perception. However, that's part of the fun of it. I hope we re-visit the results in a week or so when we get a more statistically significant sample.
Fred have you ever thought about ditching the mini van and going with Zip Car? As a long time suburban boy turned Manhattanite I did and I don't miss my car at all.
I made my critique blind in the art world. I love the project, it;s come up for me, but it has to become more expansive in the sense of could she topple what is going on this Year at the Venice Bienniale. Most people here still don't realize that the first computer virus in Python was released there a number of years ago, and that they gave out t-shirts in honor of the opccasion. Can she get one of the 20 dollar prints up to 20 grand on the auction block at Soethby's by chnaging the game of production of art and who and what counts as insider/outsider art, or even that there should be such thing as peer produced art?
That's a huge question to be played out. My comment only relates back to that. She needs to bnasically launch herself into those spheres and see what people do. It's hella annoying, and one of the reasons I can't see myself purely staying there. It's a place where you learn a lot about a specific mode of thinking and it teaches you a lot about the pure theoretical mechanics of how places like this work and how to break them down and put them together in new and much more forward ways-it doesn't teach you how to make money or change the world. I rather do the second set.
She still has a point to prove though to the "seven days in the art world" crowd though. She can do it. Just has to see how... I fully support this engagement. I think it will be very interesting to see her topple over the likes of Miltos Maneteas as gatekeeper of all things D-Art. But she'll have to take risks with some of the art, and a lot of it is in no ways risky compared to some of the stuff I've seen out there in the past.
Long Live Art Dova, even in Death. I'm still processing the entire experience. I wish I could get a copy of the data from facebook. I basically have the conversation and a couple of screenshots. I really wish I had a copy of Art Dova, fully functioning Mirrored somewhere. The most amazing Internet Experience of My Life so far. Though it is still beyond me who friended Howard Lindzon.
Reading your comments makes me think of Charles Olson, the founder of the Black Mountain School of Poetry. Hyper intellectual. Concrete poet. Somewhat obscure. I wrote my Master's thesis on him.
Enjoy
Is it better to be more or less obscure?
I wouldn't worry too much about the 75% living in North America. I live in Oz and last looked at your site on Saturday morning before the survey was posted. Now it's Monday morning and I'm looking again. The weekend weather here was spectacular - summer is coming, so I wouldn't be surprised if many of my fellow Aussies didn't spend too much computer time until now.
Also, to add another female perspective. I'm sure you have lots of female readers, but maybe for some it is intimidating to comment. On my first post here, I had a response about how pretty my eyes are. I didn't take offense so much, but it's not what I came here for, so I guess I've backed off again. And I purposely didn't use an avatar with my whole face, just for this reason.
Here are the most interesting findings:
~ 10% of your audience is female
~ 15% of your audience admits to wearing makeup (rarely to daily!)
So that means that 5% of your audience comprises men who wear makeup at least part of the time. I don't find this incredible surprising given you live below 14th street in a very progressive neighborhood. But you may want to dig a little deeper here.
Best,
MML
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How about globally catching women entrepreneur's attention?
I have not the slightest clue on how you'd go about doing such a thing. Let me ask my fiance about topics that may appeal to women entrepreneurs globally...
"I don't understand the question" her first response.
then
"Magazines, shoes, makeup, and Oprah. Everyone loves Oprah"
In conclusion Fred, be like Oprah to expand your audience.
:D
My professional "required" reading list includes a blog section, and the women on that list are mostly "mommy bloggers." I suppose people are just writing what they know, but I know a lot of bright successful women, and I'm just not finding where they blog...
For the most part, I just want something interesting and thought-provoking to read; whether it comes from a man or a woman doesn't matter to me very much. But I do find it interesting - and slightly annoying - that there is an idea that "Women don't like this stuff." Maybe it's more that they don't see the value reading blogs? Or that they read but don't care to comment? I'm not sure, but I'm bummed there is still an us/them dynamic.
Fred, I don't think I'd be interested in an entry geared specifically towards women (not that you are suggesting doing that, but if you are trying up the chick demographic, I could see something like that happening). The women who are interested in this field will find you.
I went to the Hunch site and the 2 questions it said it could predict my answers, it got wrong...go figure. That logic must be designed for a man. :-)