Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism, I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say.

I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due to patterns of this sort and not because most men intentionally want me to fail. But the cumulative effect of most men erring on the side of protecting themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me meaningfully really adds up over time and I think that tremendously holds women back generally.

I think gendered patterns of social engagement also contributed to the Theranos debacle. I've said that before and I feel like it tends to get misunderstood as well. (Though in the case of Theranos it runs a lot deeper in that she was actually sleeping with an investor.)

Wasn't Theranos debacle because the tech was never going to work due to it being borderline snake oil and whishful thinking hyped by con(wom)man?

Yes, but it was called a "decacorn" because it was valued at $10 billion dollars and its valuation dropped overnight to zero when it was outed as a fraud.

I posit that it wouldn't have gotten so crazy overvalued if it hadn't been headed by a pretty young woman. But trying to explain that is probably "off topic" and just thinking about trying to explain it makes me tired. I'd rather not.