OK, I re-read Charlie O’Donnell’s post and my opinion hasn’t changed.  Maybe I’m the only one, but I don’t see this as a negative post at all.  

When I first told my brother that it seems ‘harder for women to get funding”, he looked at me and said: “that’s stupid. Why should it matter.  If the idea is good, it’ll get backed”  

And that was the end of that conversation. 

I read Charlie’s post with my brother’s statement in mind.  All I see in this post is an investor trying to give his point of view.  And I have to say, I don’t disagree.  

(For the record, I have no firsthand experience with getting funding.  I have never met with an Angel or VC about funding for my site, only from what I read.)

 I’ll copy and paste parts of the post that I loved and write my comments.  

“I’ve yet to be pointed a single example of someone who absolutely had a backable idea that couldn’t get funded because of their demographic.”

If you read nothing else in the post, read that sentence.  If you have a good idea, and you think it’s the next big thing, or has the potential to make a boatload of money, you’ll be able to find funding.  Done.

Sure, sometimes it’s harder to convince someone to see what you see, but if you can make it into a business or at least show the value in it, I can’t see why you wouldn’t get backed.

“Would it be terrible if we created 10 female heads of marketing of 10 billion-dollar companies instead of 10 new female entrepreneurs?    Whose career more positively affects the role of women in the tech industry?  Marissa Meyer as a non-founder at Google or some new female tech entrepreneur who statistically won’t create nearly as many jobs and revenues as Marissa does everyday--because startups, no matter what the color or gender of the founder, are hard.”

I highlight and bold that last sentence, because I can’t tell you enough how much its true.  Stop thinking its glamorous.  The life of a startup founder sucks.  It’s hard, its draining, it’s an emotional roller coaster.  If you think that you wouldn’t be better off running a crazy budget at some awesome company, you’re wrong.  Maybe the words “Would it be terrible if we created 10 female heads of marketing of 10 billion-dollar companies instead of 10 new female entrepreneurs?” was taken badly.  I can see how.  B/c I read it at first and thought, “ouch Charlie”,  but when I re-read it, I got the point.  Unless your company makes it huge, you probably will never see the money that Marissa Meyer at Google has seen.  The budgets you play with won’t be as big, the brand you get to build up isn’t as big, and the lifestyle you have won’t be as great. Ok, so she’s not Larry or Sergey, but guess what, neither are the 1000’s of other Googlers.  And Larry and Sergey alone couldn’t make Google what it is today.

“I feel like half the entrepreneurs I meet with would be so much better off joining someone else’s startup that already has traction.  They’re smart, passionate, capable…and I don’t know if you noticed but if you talk to any top entrepreneur, they’ll tell you their biggest bottleneck is access to great talent.”

Everyone wants the startup idea to be theirs.  But that’s just not the way it goes.  And sometimes, you see things after joining a startup that the founder will never see.  Growing the company is hard.  Startups need good people to do that.  If all the good people are starting companies, then who’s working at the startup?

“I feel like we should focus our efforts on creating the best businesses and the best business and technical professionals to staff those businesses possible—and enabling anyone who wants in to get the skills necessary to participate.”

It’s much harder making the company something than creating it.

I realize I’m not an “expert” on all things startup.  Mine is still in its infancy stage, having just relaunched a month ago, after an 8 month beta period.  But I’ve had 2 other companies in the past.  My first when I was 24. 

And I’ll tell you this.  Age, gender, none of it matters.  Can we please stop focusing on that, and start focusing on the actual product? 

Maybe my startup will fall flat on its face one day.  Maybe it’ll be huge.   But at the end of the day, none of it will happen because I’m a woman.  It just won’t.   You don’t get a free pass because you’re a woman and you decided to start a company.  That’s just not how life works.

So, build a great company, or join a great company.  It doesn’t matter as long as you love it and do an amazing job at it.  I don’t think anyone cares if you’re a girl or a guy or black or Asian or part alien, if your idea is good, if your product is strong, nothing else matters. 

(please sent all hate mail to limor@spotery.com)