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In the past years, the focus on Women in Technology has drastically increased and this trend will keep growing more and more. Why? It’s time to change the way people think and try to build a world where there is no difference between a man or a woman. We think that events just for women are going to increase the number of them in tech, but won’t solve the problem, which is a cultural one. However it’s always good to see new initiatives that aim to get more people involved in entrepreneurship, no matter they are men or women.
This year YCombinator has decided to host its first event, exclusively dedicated to women, “The Female Founders Conference“. Although one of the YCombinator’s co-founder is a woman, Jennifer Livingston, and many YC alumni are women, it seemed this event was the result of some criticism that the company got after Paul Graham made some “particular” comments about women in an interview last year. The aim of the conference, which took place yesterday at the Computer History Museum in San Francisco was to bring women together to discuss their entrepreneurial journey in tech and obviously raise awareness.
With more than 450 females who attended the conference, this was the largest event that YC has ever held. YCombinator’s companies have now a combined value of more than $13.5 billion by making it the best accelerator in the world. As Jessica Livingston recalls in her talk, they would have never imagined that the small company, that she started with her boyfriend (Paul Graham), would have scaled in this way.
Entrepreneurship can’t be taught and the experience you get on the field is unique, probably something you will never find in any textbook; but events like this one can help us reflect and see how other people, in this case women, have achieved what we want to achieve. The world needs more entrepreneurs and if conferences are able to inspire more people, we need to keep hosting and promoting them.
The way women are treated in business and technology is not something we can solve in a single day conference. However it’s just one step of the thousands that we must take in order to change a culture, which needs to be influenced by politics, starting from schools, where young generations learn about how the world works.
Jessica Livingston at Female Founders Conference 2014
Adora Cheung at Female Founders Conference 2014
Julia Hartz at Female Founders Conference 2014
Elli Sharef at Female Founders Conference 2014
Kathryn Minshew at Female Founders Conference 2014
Elizabeth Iorns at Female Founders Conference 2014
Fundraising Panel at Female Founders Conference 2014
Jessica Mah at Female Founders Conference 2014
Speakers
Adora Cheung, Founder, Homejoy
Diane Greene, Founder, VMware
Julia Hartz, Founder, Eventbrite
Elizabeth Iorns, Founder, Science Exchange
Ann Johnson, Founder, Interana
Jessica Livingston, Founder, Y Combinator
Jessica Mah, Founder, inDinero
Kathryn Minshew, Founder, The Muse
Danielle Morrill, Founder, Mattermark
Elli Sharef, Founder, HireArt
Jamie Wong, Founder, Vayable
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