'Attractive women 16% more likely to secure startup funding, study shows' WTF

AnnieD·Jun 09, 2023

Roxanne Bras Patreaus on LinkedIn summarized this well "Wow. I'll say it. This article *and* the study are bananas. Come with me on this tour of red flags:1. The article describes an experiment where subjects are "shown video of the same start-up business idea presented by a conventionally hot actresses and one who is more plain."Conventionally hot?! Why stop there. How about "smoking hot?" I'm giving this 🚩🚩We shouldn't use casually objectifying language in a professional context. Our VP of marketing is effective. Our VP of marketing is not, "rocking a great bod."2. The article goes on to opine that, "The study does not touch on whether companies founded by attractive women are better investments, however. Maybe it’s a good strategy?"Wait, we're endorsing this as a strategy?! Here's where I get to 🚩🚩🚩Determining capital allocation based on women's attractiveness is not a strategy, unless I guess your fund invests in bets on beauty pageants.3. But 🚩🚩🚩🚩 for the ending. "So maybe the solution is for VC companies is to hire fewer jerks?"No!While I see a lot of jerk behavior in this article, the solution isn't to call people jerks or to hire fewer of them.The solution is to acknowledge there are many biases at play in the workplace and then come up with tactics to ensure decisions aren't made based on those biases.For example, investors can have a standard set of questions they ask all founders, regardless of gender (or hotness?) to fight the tendency that men get asked more about potential than performance.Finally, this article gives the impression that "hot women" easily raise funds: Less than 3% of VC funding goes to all women founding teams.And articles like this don't help us move the needle."

I'm not sure what is worse, that this study exists or the men's comments about it on this YC thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36234248

As a female founder who is fundraising, this represents why we have opted to bootstrap for as long as possible. A lot of the VC world feels like a bros club. This just nails home the sentiment.

Iynna·Jun 10, 2023

Oh would you mind sharing the original article if you have it? It's terrible indeed :( I feel like it can be extrapolated to other areas of life e.g hiring... it's been showed that people who are conventionally more attractive have more success in interviews and on the job too and generally in life people with "better looks" (wtf that means) fare better... I haven't looked at these studies in further details (they may be flawed on many levels) but just a human I think we have some biases... I digress here but found this piece and thought maybe it could be of interest https://hbr.org/2019/10/attractive-people-get-unfair-advantages-at-work-ai-can-help

AlexBXPteams·Jun 10, 2023

Wow, this is so disturbing on so many levels! Definitely red flags in how the study was conducted, and also horrifying that this is a phenomenon that exists,As a female founder looking for funding, I already have a mile-long list of characteristics to be self-conscious about in order to get into the room and be taken seriously. I hate that my physical appearance has to be one of those.

zsoriano·Jun 10, 2023

Yeah, this sucks, on top of women being less likely to receive vc funding already. I spent about a year in the fundraising world (and didn't get any funding) and am happy to share what I've learned. Feel free to dm me.

Lawanna127·Jun 12, 2023

Yuppp!! Sad to say I am not surprised at the post title. Plus, as you said, it is already wayyyy harder for women to get funding vs. men. And men can totally fail at startups with funding and then turn around and get handed MORE FUNDING. Like what??? "As WeWork's Adam Neumann Raises $350 Million, Female Founders Call Foul': ...I hate it here,' say women entrepreneurs who've been through the venture capitalist-funding ringer"https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/adam-neumann-funding-women-entrepreneurs.html

Filomena21·Jun 11, 2023

It's certainly depressing but I do think "pretty privilege" is consistent across genders, though of course that's separate from how difficult it is for women to raise funding vs. men. I don't think the gender fundraising gap is driven purely by this.And IMO Hacker News articles are a bit like Reddit where you should only pay attention to the TOP-voted comments once the post has been up for at least 12 hours. If you look at comments that are new when a post first goes up, you might read a comment from some incel who will ultimately be downvoted into oblivion. If you go back to the link you posted, the top-voted comments are actually pointing out that this is also true for men (https://www.geekwire.com/2014/study-ugly-men-tougher-time-raising-venture-capital/).I'm a female founder too and I've definitely had my share of days when I'm super angry about unfairness. But I've found that reading articles like this only serves to distract me from achieving more. If I end up in a spiral where I'm looking at articles like this, I try to channel that energy into something that could be helpful to me, such as either exercising or perhaps doing something out of my comfort zone that I've been avoiding in my business. If all else fails, I just know it's time to take a break for the day to reset.

srividyaiyer·Jul 05, 2023

I have heard men say that as well from a hiring perspective (not fundraising). When I was starting out in my career, I used to read articles like this and get upset about the unfairness and rant to anyone who would listen. Now when I read them I take it at face value and have lerant to pick my battles.