zlacker

>>femfos+(OP)
A female founder acquaintance of mine (who's quite smart and capable) went on a Twitter screed a couple weeks ago. As it turns out, someone else had copied her idea, and her startup now had a competitor. The competitor was also able to raise a solid amount of money despite her being first to market and her having more relevant knowledge of the problem space (by her own estimation).

So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her. The VCs who funded the competitor? Obviously racists and sexists, and she called them out explicitly as that on Twitter.

I considered reaching out to her to offer some perspective, but ultimately demurred. Why? I didn't want to be caught in the wurlitzer. Better to let her make more problems for herself than offer a sense of perspective that could get me cancelled.

>>scarmi+6O
I feel like the key takeaway here is / was:

> her having more relevant knowledge of the problem space (by her own estimation)

That sounds an awfully lot like, "We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong."

I rarely try to rely on my own estimation of my knowledge, because I know I can't be objective.

>>cbozem+l21
For what it's worth, as a naive outsider who doesn't know much about the other founder, she seemed to have a good argument for why she would.

It's just a bit of a stretch to think that a VC not giving her money must be because he was thinking "oh, she is definitely more competent and knows more about this space than this other founder, but because she's a woman I'm going to cut her out and go with the other guy."

>>scarmi+241
Maybe they thought, oh, she is much more qualified than this other guy. But there is just something my gut is telling me about this guy... Or for some reason, I just feel more comfortable around this guy... Or, I'm going to invest in this guy because he reminds me of myself when I was starting out.

In other words, unconscious bias.