Startups Anonymous

I caught this too.

So did one of the commenters: [1]

Sorry it didn’t work out.

“I can’t go much longer without a paycheck. But, I can’t imagine working for somebody else. I wish my wife understood that.”

Change your perspective on this.

I’m a co-founder of a successful and growing business. I’ve got around $2M liquid and who knows what on paper. I’m decently rich headed for pretty damn rich. In the last week, I’ve changed light bulbs, picked up bugs with my hands (no tissue close, wanted to get it and call the bug guy before people saw it), swept the floors, took box trash out to the dumpster, cleaned some toilet stuff (will leave it there) and just generally served people on my team in any way I could. I find ways to do it because they are talented, could work anywhere and choose to work here. So I serve them. Also, I have deep relationships with them and I love them. I want to win with them.

From your words, I worry that you don’t understand the point of the game you are playing. If you want to run any successful team be it a business, a non-profit, a 5th grade little league ball club – you are servant in chief. Others exist in the world. You aren’t really ever by yourself or for yourself. Work on being and building a team. Make meaning and tie it to production. Start by being the best teammate you can be. Being an employee in an intense and well managed company is a good place to learn this skill.

To me the key point was this:

If you want to run any successful…

Well, there is this:

> The main challenge comes when we actually do get a female candidate. We don’t discard a single one on resume. We see all of them. We discard about 80% of guys on resume. But even so, we get to see 4 guys to 1 girl or so. In the interviews, we help the girls shine, because we actually want to hire them, but then, one of the other 4 guys shows just an amazing performance, for whatever reason, truly impressive, like he has done many more things than the girl (and than the other candidates), can show more amazing code, personal projects, etc. And we think: “If the girl was a guy, she would not be on the race with this guy, just like the other male candidates are totally discarded now”. Should we let this amazing coding guy go? It’s not easy to find amazing coders either, you know?

source: https://startupsanonymous.com/story/hiring-girls-difficult-work-space/

And it makes sense that someone would vent such things anonymously or not at all, considering the skewering they'd get from the media if they even suggested anything of the sort publicly.

As someone who's experienced teaching programming classes for girls, I can wholeheartedly say that trying to recruit candidates who are actually interested in the area is quite difficult. The program I worked for eventually had to move away from being a 'programming' course, to more of a 'digital arts' course just so that we'd get enough applicants to justify continuing it. And this is in the bay area, the…

At first glance, this existing site: https://startupsanonymous.com/ looks incredibly depressing.

Over the years, I have participated in various kinds of support groups for various things. They are often incredibly depressing and are often drama fests where it is difficult to really talk about solutions. Social pecking order and "respecting" the pain of people who can't get their act together becomes far more important than actually being useful to people who desire to move forward. This means anyone with real answers is shouted down by the folks saying it cannot be done.

So, I will suggest you put some thought into how you intend to keep the focus on problem solving. It is all too easy for "support" groups to just become places to vent and not places to get real solutions.

I am semi interested, but I am not going to give you my city and I am not sure I am a good fit for your group. But I would be happy to exchange a few emails. (And I have posted this HN discussion on my blog.)

Best.