Women In Tech: The Debate Rages On

This women in tech debate has really taken off, and I am glad.

Here's the guy who introduced me to Twitter, JP Rangaswami.

Women are underrepresented in a number of dimensions in the tech world, and this is noticeable in conference line-ups and in start-up founder lists. .... Take The Indus Entrepreneurs, TiE in short..... TiE was created to ensure that people of South Asian extraction were given the funding opportunities they were otherwise being denied. There was general acceptance of the engineering excellence of such people, but for some reason question marks were raised about their ability to run companies. Which meant that the “engineers” never got funded when they went forward with business plans..... We need to make sure that we eradicate prejudices that go along the lines of: Women don’t code. Founders must code. So women can’t found startups…..Systemic problems often need systemic solutions

I am glad he mentions the organization TiE, and draws the connection between gender and some of the challenges faced by brown people. And the thing he says about it being just fine for women entrepreneurs to not be coders, that is a theme a ran with when I blogged about a panel discussion here in New York City during Internet Week. (Women In Tech-Media Event At JP Morgan: Internet Week) I just had an email from the panel host Neha Chauhan yesterday saying she is working to launch her own startup in October.

And finally JP touches upon a theme I touched upon in a post I put out this past hour, (Gender Talks) that some of the biggest solutions are perhaps political.



Shefaly Yogendra: “Women in tech”: What Gives?:

Super Angels

Brad Feld: Serious Questions For Super Angels: As individual angel investors made more and more investments, they became super angels. One day a super angel woke up and thought to himself, “Gosh, I could do a lot more investments if I had a fund.” .... Now the micro-VC is a mini-VC. Does this keep scaling, or does the mini-VC succumb to the same challenges that $200 million funds ran into when they turned into $1 billion funds? ..... There’s a renewed focus and interest in early-stage investing going on in the United States



Some of the best bloggers in tech are VCs. I have often wondered as to why the top tech entrepreneurs are not also avid bloggers. It would make sense to avidly blog while you are trying to build a company. But there really are no entrepreneur versions of the top VC blogs. I wish it were otherwise. I felt this while reading this post by Brad Feld, quoted above.

The venture capital worlds has been seeing some major churn. And it is so much fun watching the drama unfold through the various VC blogs. It is gripping. It is like watching a good movie. There is high drama. It is capitalism in action. Blogging has brought forth much transparency to VC action, and that is a good thing.

Early stage investing is seeing some major fermentation. That will impact the VC world in that investing, even at mega scales, will become more hands on. VCs will have to get more involved.

Gender Talks

The Daily Beast: Leah Culver: Is There a Gender Divide in Startups?: The situation for women in technology isn't ideal. When I show up to tech events, I worry about looking out of place. For every job I apply for and don't get, I wonder if I just didn't fit the interviewer's mental picture of the perfect candidate. When I'm invited to speak at a conference, I doubt that I'm qualified. When most of my coworkers are men, I can't help but wonder why..... we need to criticize less. Blaming other members of the community (especially men) provokes a knee-jerk defense and doesn't help solve the problem. Instead we need to congratulate more women on their accomplishments and praise those who helped them along the way...... I could keep writing about the lack of women in tech, but starting a new company sounds like a lot more fun

Wall Street Journal Blogs: Venture Capital Dispatch: Shira Ovide: Addressing The Lack Of Women Leading Tech Start-Ups: a dearth of women in top positions at emerging tech firms...... Y Combinator has had just 14 female founders among the 208 firms it has funded. ...... in start-up land, where the good idea is supposed to trump social status and everything else, the lack of women in positions of authority stands out...... some techie women are – in true start-up fashion – attacking the problem with meetups, money and social networking ...... Ms. Ziv said she tries to encourage women to integrate more forcefully into male-dominated tech events such as the New York Tech Meetup....... Mr. Wilson, who said 3% of investment pitches he fields are from women, said he has become more attentive about the challenges of women tech entrepreneurs

FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!
Tech, Women, Diversity



Gender in tech is one of those topics where I feel like progress is being made simply when people are willing to talk about it. You will come across defensive men, sure. You will come across women who have internalized the wrong order. And there are people who are simply not interested in the topic any more than they are interested in calculus or robotics.

What's interesting to me with this debate is that the startup world is supposed to be meritocratic and the gender ratio is not that much better in the startup world either. That seems to surprise a lot of people, but not me. Gravity is in effect in Nevada, but it is also in effect in California. That is how I feel.

Men and women could create microcosms of progressive realities. Major social changes will hopefully take place. But they will not take place on their own. I personally see a clear politics, policy angle to this.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking coding might be a specialized skill, but politics is just common sense. Politics is also a specialized skill. (September 14 Will Birth The New Woman)

I just hope we can keep the topic current, and keep making steady progress. This is not a men versus women thing. Sexism is not good for men either.

My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes

Image via CrunchBasePeople kept saying, but you can already do that. You can set up filters and all. To that I said, Geocities allowed for a lot of what Blogger allows for, but you needed a Blogger to come along. Simplification gets in the crowds. Your average user wants multiple inboxes, not complex filters that you have to keep tweaking like you were some kind of a software programmer.

Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way

And now we have it. It is here. Multiple inboxes are here in Gmail. This is my idea of Google "getting" social. Before this the inbox had become scary to many people. Now the inbox is back with a vengeance. Email is the original social application.

The Official Gmail Blog: Email Overload? Try Priority Inbox

At this rate I am going to be sitting on the Google Board some day. I'd love to.

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FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare

I am very proud of this blog post of mine: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter. It is one of my popular posts. It keeps getting page hits from showing up on search results.

What I missed out on was FourSquare. I erred in thinking Google Wave was the next big thing after Twitter. (Whatever Happened To Google Wave?, Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown)

I was there in the hall when FourSquare presented at the NY Tech MeetUp, and I totally did not see the promise that day. The idea of checking in felt just so lame. And over time I have realized that checking in is so fundamental to the mobile web.

I was not the first person to say FourSquare is the next Twitter.

I erred again in thinking maybe Venmo is the next big thing after FourSquare. (Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?)

I have not done a background check on this yet, and maybe someone else has said it already, but I am today saying it loud and clear, I think FoodSpotting is the next FourSquare. (Soraya Darabi)

Calling FoodSpotting the next FourSquare totally fits into my original fractals talk. The math just feels right. FoodSpotting has hinted at going into other verticals as well, and I can't wait to see what those might be.

I think I am one of the very first to state it so very explicitly, although others have said FoodSpotting is like FourSquare. There is a check in feel to how the app works.

Tweet 1
Tweet 2

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Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe father of Quantum Mechanics Max Planck said once, people don't change their ideas, they die with them. When I think of Mike Arrington of TechCrunch and gender relations, I get reminded of that Max Planck quote. This guy will never "get" it. That's the impression I get. Like Hillary says in her autobiography, how her father was still homophobic all the way to his deathbed. Gays are just wrong. I feel sorry for Mike Arrington. This guy is missing the forest, he is missing the trees. Those who manage to cross over get to experience the richness that women bring to work and to organizations and to excellence that the sexist pigs miss out on. It is like they are color blind or something. They just can't see. It is almost biological. It is as if Mike Arrington was born with a tail and there is no surgery for it.

When Mike Arrington humiliated the female CEO of Yahoo on a public stage in New York City a few months back, I literally cringed. Sexism is the only word that describes the experience. The Yahoo CEO is older, much more accomplished, she is a role model to women. There are so few women CEOs out there that you become a role model whether or not you want to, and Carol Bartz strikes me as someone who really does not want to. But what you gonna do? You are a woman. So put on the pin. You are a role model now.

Months before that Mike Arrington hounded Anu Shukla who has been a trailblazer. Some of her cutting edge company's work is equivalent to the ongoing click fraud with Google's AdWords, but that does not change the fact that Google's money minting machine is a revolutionary product. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)

Mike Arrington is dripping with sexism.

And I actually like the fact that the guy is the founder of the top tech blog in the world. That tells me the only reason at least half of the excellent work done out there has not been done by women is sexism. I dig it that this dude's product is so very visible. On a non sexist planet, the founder of TechCrunch would have been some Maya Arrington.

Sexism is like communism, it is like Islamofascism, it is an ideology, it is a worldview. And Mike Arrington is dripping with it.

Tech, Women, Diversity
Mike Arrington: Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.
Fred Wilson: Women In Tech and Women Entrepreneurs Discussion

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Finally TechCrunch "Gets" Disqus

Image via CrunchBaseI just noticed that now TechCrunch has Disqus served up in its comments sections. At first it had the in house thing. Then they had IntenseDebate, then they went back to the in-house thing, and now finally they got Disqus. This "outsourcing" is a smart move. Now I am much more likely to read more TechCrunch articles and to comment on them and to share my comments over Twitter.

Mashable has always had Disqus. My blog has Disqus.

Smart move, TechCrunch. Let us all welcome the latecomer.

On Disqus And Disqussions
Content, Microcontent, Blogging, Microblogging
Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social

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Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social

Google has heard my prayers. Recently I blogged saying Google does not need social envy, what it needs is a really good blog search engine, and super Twitter results. (A Ridiculously Good Blog Search Engine, Google Does Not Need Social Envy) And Google has delivered. It is work in progress, but it is a good start.

I love Google the way some people love Apple. Google gives me goose bumps. Google gives me that you ain't seen nothing yet feeling.

Official Google Blog: Google Realtime Search: A New Home With New Tools: giving real-time information its own home and more powerful tools ...... www.google.com/realtime .... you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. ..... we’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance.

Google has done what I asked Twitter to do: to offer tweets as conversations, threads like in Gmail. (Towards Threaded Conversations On Twitter)

Blogger Buzz: Improvements To Realtime Search: The blogosphere is a dynamic environment that changes almost as quickly as the world that we live in..... richer and fresher results than ever before.... search live updates, recently-published blog posts, and news from around the web in brand new ways. Now you can restrict your search to include just updates from a specific geographic region or just nearby you. You can also check out complete conversations from Twitter. You can also now set up custom alerts for Realtime updates to be sent directly to your inbox once a day or week, or as soon as they happen for instant blog post fodder.

Google still has a lot of work to do in terms of presenting results. You can't expect people to read every tweet. You want to give them the option to read thousands, perhaps millions of tweets at once. It is called visualization. Make it fun to dig through the Twitter archives. (Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once)

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Paying For Phone Calls Was Always Ridiculous

Image via Wikipedia

David Pogue: New York Times: Google Shakes It Up Again With Free Phone Calls: Google .. shook up Web searching and advertising. It shook up free, Web-based e-mail services .... shook up the way companies go public. .... Calls to American and Canadian phone numbers are free ..... Calls to other countries are very cheap ...... If you have a free Google Voice account too, then you can get incoming calls, too. ..... it’s increasingly clear that one day, the Internet, not the outrageous cellphone companies, will connect our calls. The ultimate, of course, would be free calls from a phone, to a phone ...... even closer to the “free calls from a phone, to a phone” ideal. Now it’s free calls “from a computer, to a phone.” .... What if Google released an app like that for Android phones, or the iPhone? .... for the first time in history, make unlimited free phone-to-phone calls.... It would completely change the game .... the Internet-as-phone-company paradise that almost certainly awaits us.

Paying for phone calls was always ridiculous. And it still is. Now that we have computer to phone free calls, Google should go ahead and stop pretending, and I know it already has the technology. Get this ported to the smartphones, and we already have it.

The reason you should not call someone or not talk to them long is because you don't have time, not because you don't have money.

Google Voice Blog: Make And Receive Calls In Gmail

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I Was In Chicago? Facebook Places Messing Up

I wanted to set the record straight. I have not been in Chicago this past day. I have been happily camped out in New York City. Although there is a check in on my behalf that shows I was in Chicago. I think I just got my personal introduction to Facebook places.

Dennis Crowley, Facebook, And The Location Ecosystem
Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost

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Dennis Crowley, Facebook, And The Location Ecosystem

Image via CrunchBase

TechCrunch: Foursquare’s Crowley: The Giants Are “Generic,” We Are Fun. I Wonder Who He’s Referring To…: Crowley discussed the opportunity for places, outlined his plan for the next iteration of Foursquare and knocked Google for its social awkwardness. .... Crowley’s painting the picture of Facebook as a generic-borderline-boring service, versus Foursquare, the hip, edgy, playful alternative .... Facebook is so huge (500 million large versus Foursquare’s 2.8 million) that its check-in service has to be simple and minimal to accommodate such a huge and diverse group— anything too quirky or outlandish runs the risk of alienating factions. While Foursquare cannot dream to compete with Facebook’s installed base, the startup can certainly differentiate itself by offering a creative, more dynamic product that is less utilitarian and more personality-driven ...... he does believe that Facebook has a major role to play in the location ecosystem. Facebook can aggregate check-ins from different services and introduce new users (millions upon millions of them) to the world of check-ins. Thus, if Facebook stays in its corner, the relationship could be a very symbiotic one for Foursquare, which saw a record number of sign-ups on Thursday. ...... when it comes to creating the most engaging, valuable location experience, Crowley is ready for a fight. ..... We’ve been thinking for awhile, what’s act two for us? And act two is OK let’s take all this information about what people are doing, what people want to do, and let’s build this back into the app in a way that’s manageable for people and easy to share.” ..... Our social graph is more representative of the people that you meet in the real world ..... Facebook is literally everyone I’ve ever shaken hands with at a conference or kissed on the cheek at Easter. Twitter seems to be everyone I am entertained by or I wish to meet some day. Foursquare seems to be everyone I run into on a regular basis.

Not surprisingly, Dennis Crowley is on the spot on Facebook's entry into his space. He is not threatened. He should not be. Instead he seems all set to ride the Facebook wave.

Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost
This Is Not Happening: King Dennis

I might be one of the first to talk publicly in terms of a FourSquare IPO. I am a fan of the company. When FourSquare goes IPO in a few years, New York City will have finally arrived on the tech scene. You don't get credit for other forms of exits, not in my book, not for a city this big and glamorous.

If search is the starting point of your big screen web experience, and I love Google like some people love Apple, then Google is your company. For many people social is that experience.

The thing is FourSquare is not a big screen web company. Location is such an obvious starting point when you are out and about that the simple nugget is a genius idea. I almost feel stupid saying that. Because, I mean, what is so revolutionary about location? There have been places since times immemorial. There are so many places mentioned in the Bible, for example. Jesus was checking in.

You could argue there is only re-invention, there is no invention. Einstein was not the first to ponder about time, but it is like he added a whole new dimension to the world of physics. Suddenly we started thinking about time just like we had been thinking about space.

(Sweet disclaimer: I have never thought of Dennis (@dens) and Naveen (@naveen) as Einsteins. They are both smart guys, but genius is a whole different ballgame.)

Dennis is a born entrepreneur. How do you know that? You just have to look at his hair. The same applies to his Michael Jackson co-founder.

How My Grandfather Became Mayor The First Time

In The News

New York Times: Roommates Who Click:theirs was a match made on URoomSurf.com, a Web site that does for dormitory life what eHarmony and Match.com have long done for romance .... “My sister woke up her first night of college and drunk people were poking her, asking where her roommate was.... “The ones who choose their own roommate tend to stay together

BBC: Swedish Rape Warrant For Wikileaks' Assange Cancelled: Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations "at this moment is deeply disturbing"..... The current whereabouts of Mr Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, are unclear.... there were two separate allegations against Mr Assange, one of rape and the other of molestation

New York Times: Facebook Feels Unfriendly Toward Film It Inspired: the filmmakers, who portray Facebook as founded on a series of betrayals, then fueled by the unappeasable craving of almost everyone for “friends” — the Facebook term for those who connect on its online pages — that they will never really have..... “It’s crazy because all of a sudden Mark becomes this person who created Facebook to get girls or to gain power,” said Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who left in 2007 to join the Obama presidential campaign. “That’s not what was going on. It was a little more boring and quotidian than that.” .... “it’s a sign of Facebook’s impact that we’re the subject of a movie — even one that’s fiction.” .... Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” and on the legal protection provided to free speech .... “The Social Network” appears to be mostly about emptiness.... much of the film, including many of the details of Mr. Zuckerberg’s personal life, are made up and “horrifically unfair.”

TechCrunch: Facebook Kept Thousands Of Check-Ins On Lockdown For Months. Impressive

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Esther Dyson On The Future Of Search

Image via WikipediaProject Syndicate: Esther Dyson: The Future Of Internet Search

You don't get what you actually want to finish your task; you get a list of pages that might lead you to it. ..... search is getting interesting again. ..... Larry Page’s innovative ranking of Web pages not just by their content, but also by the quantity and quality of other pages that link to them ...... To “map” travel properly, the software needs to understand such things as time zones, flight duration, layovers, and the like, along with concepts such as coach or first class, deluxe and standard rooms, double vs. single, and so on. That is why there is a whole separate vertical market for travel ..... For a long time Google didn’t need to do much to remain the leader in Internet search ..... Medstory has a deep understanding of health care, including the relationships between diseases and treatments, drugs and symptoms, and side effects. Powerset, a tool for creating and defining such relationships in any sphere of interest, is broader but less deep. ..... around that time, Bill Gates uttered one of the smartest things he has ever said: “The future of search is verbs.” ..... They want to book a flight, reserve a table, buy a product, cure a hangover, take a class, fix a leak, resolve an argument, or occasionally find a person ..... Most resellers, a little nervous about Bing’s tool that sends users to book directly with airlines and hotels, are even more concerned about what Google might be up to. ..... last month, Google acquired Metaweb and its user-generated database Freebase. .....Most things don’t exist in isolation. They have complex relationships to other things, and by representing that information using verbs – for example, “the company that Google acquired” vs. “the company that Google competes with” – we can represent the world more accurately.

Here is Esther Dyson getting excited about Google's recent acquisition of Metaweb. Esther is the most famous person I have had the chance to meet at the NY Tech MeetUp. I find her tremendously exciting as a person. She is one of those visionary types. And she is such a simple, approachable person.

Google's Metaweb Acquisition

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The Web Not Yet Ready For The Video Format

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Los Angeles Times: Google TV Plan Is Causing Jitters In Hollywood: Many worry that Silicon Valley will upend the entertainment industry just like the Internet ravaged the music and newspaper industries. .... Google revolutionized the way people access information. Now it wants to transform how people get entertainment. .... enabling viewers to watch TV shows and movies unshackled from the broadcast networks or cable channels on which they air ....entertainment industry executives fear Google TV will encourage consumers to ditch their $70 monthly cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of watching video free via the Internet. ... Google doesn't yet know how it will make money on Google TV ....for the movie studios and television networks to use the limitless storage capacity of the Web to make their libraries of programs available whenever someone wants to watch .... Google touted the software as presenting a new opportunity to make more money from TV shows distributed online.... In demonstrations with network executives, Google TV confused one network's shows for a rival's. On another occasion, it listed the several ways a popular prime-time show could be watched online and on TV — except on the network's own website.

It's not just business models that seem to be struggling. The very first bottleneck is speed. Even with broadband it takes several seconds to load a static webpage. That is too slow. We need speeds that are 100X, perhaps 1000X.

There has been immense downward pressure on the prices of hardware and software. Software has become free for the most part. Hardware prices have come down drastically. But the ISP busines is so archaic, there the prices have been sticky. Capitalism is dysfunctional in the ISP business. Speeds don't go up, prices stay where they are. That is some major dysfunction.

I urge my president to please look into this.

Hulu Still Struggling With Business Model
Saavn's Great Business Model For Movies

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• Networks Proving A Tough Sell For Google TV (Surprise!) (wired.com)
• Google TV Is a Tough Sell (online.wsj.com)
• Tech's TV takeover: Why Hollywood should embrace Silicon Valley, not fight it (zdnet.com)
• Google Desperately Trying To Woo Networks To Support Google TV (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Entertainment industry flinches as Google TV charges in (knoxnews.com)
• Are You Ready For Google TV? (realestateradiousa.com)