Video Of The Week: Opening Keynote Of The Women's Entrepreneur Festival
The Gotham Gal and her friend Nancy Hechinger have put on the Women’s Entrepreneur Festival for five years now. It’s become an annual celebration of women and entrepreneurship. It was held in NYC this past wednesday and thursday. Here’s the opening keynote the Gotham Gal delivered (it is the first 12-13mins of this video. the talk afterward is also very good):
Comments (Archived):
Very inspiring!
“The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared woman in the world.” — Kat Gordon.The thing is, though, we’re constantly told in MVP that we have to “validate product-market fit” so men and women alike do need to validate our ideas and how we build our systems. I think Kat Gordon means the woman who doesn’t seek permission to go right ahead and execute her vision is FEARSOME.There are lots of points throughout the video that women will nod in agreement with: “That happens to us. We do solve problems differently because we see and experience it differently as consumers. We wish they would build the system like this…”Two observations at the start about “Women are happy to be led” and “They will admit they don’t know the answers” speak to key differences in male-female behavior. Women actually have great leadership and command — mothers lead and guide their kids towards becoming intelligent, successful and happy adults, and manage the household budget. Plus it’s a strength for all of us to not to egotistically assume that we know all the answers. In this respect, women are more open to DISCOVERING options that may work rather than being adamant and dogmatic that their answer is the only way.Re. women need to be technology and eCommerce entrepreneurs, it’s worth reading Sheryl Sandberg’s views: “Women control the vast majority of consumer spending in this country, yet when asked in a survey if advertisers understand them, 90 percent of women said no.We are already seeing brands and advertisers who understand this and are achieving great success. In December, BBDO’s agency in the Philippines debuted an ad for Pantene shampoo that highlighted the double standard placed on working women: She’s “pushy” while he’s “persuasive.” She’s a “show-off” while he’s “smooth.” “Don’t let labels hold you back,” the ad says at the end.* http://www.adweek.com/news/…In my own case, I realized that the most value I could add to inclusion in technology is to MAKE THE CHANGE AT CODE LEVEL.The reason is because I’ve been through the awareness cycles before.Ten years ago Aurora (http://www.aurora-ventures…. asked me to keynote a seminar on ‘Women in Technology’. Four years ago, Astia asked me to speak at their ‘Do IT Right’ workshops for female entrepreneurs. Over the years I’ve been to Arianna Huffington’s WIE (Women, Inspiration, Enterprise) and Astia conferences as well as been published in Women 2.0 and syndicated on Forbes.com.Yet, in 2014/5 this is the reality:* Technology — http://fortune.com/2014/08/…* Finance — http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7…* Investment experiences of female founders — http://www.wired.com/2014/0…Women can do more than “lean in”, raise awareness and constantly support each other. We can CODE IT OUT.What do I mean CHANGE AT CODE LEVEL?So…. a lightbulb went off in my mind that a lot of data tools, metrics and code structures have been parameterized by male developers which is why everything is fitted into Probability and Logic Box models. In Chinese terms, that’s the Yang part of our intelligence.Naturally, for the better functioning of the world (men and women working in synch) there would also need to be Yin data tools, metrics and code.The Yin, I determined, revolves around subjective biases (e.g. of the type Sheryl Sandberg refers to) since the Yang is governing the objective logic in programming functions.So that’s my journey towards inventing and making systems that work better for men and women.The biases aren’t just gender-based. They’re also age-based, culture-based, education level based, and more.The biases and our inability to measure them coherently has held back men and women alike as well as Machine Intelligence, its ability to understand language and how we do economic modeling and predictive analytics.Yes, I didn’t ask for permission to go ahead and build this vision. And I did go through times where the fear of not being able to do it was palpable.But every founder and inventor drives forward because they believe in better systems and a better world.
The wellness marketplace loosely defined as self empowerment across every vertical from food to fashion to fitness is estimated as 90%+ women, some $2T a year in spending.Believe it.The world is changing and getting better not because of more powerful women but because of a truly dynamic and culture, gender, racially mixed world.
The blending of ingredients in Lulutonix as a metaphor for the blending of cultures, genders, and races. Interesting.
Globally, they control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending (U.S. dollars). In the next five years, it is expected that this number will rise to $28 trillion — Boston Consulting Group.* http://www.catalyst.org/kno…* http://she-conomy.com/repor…
Good stuffWellness is a strange market and is driving more and more cross gender dollars.The ingrained fashion brands are opening up men’s stores and even more important, the vernacular of wellness, of self healing, of nutrition, of just joy is changing.
That’s a blog post ^^
Fred writes much better blog posts than me and is much more disciplined about it.
But if you collected your comments and republished as blog posts, you’d have a great collected works. 🙂
Jim’s right. Just doooo it!
That’s what I thought when I read it just now
Who are you Twain Twain? Any relation to Mark?
I’ve met Twain Twain IRL. No relation to Mark.But here’s an inspiring quote from Mark for the commenting community:”Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”
Haha, a friend did give me the collected stories of Mark Twain and on the inside cover she wrote “To my beloved goddess friend. Happy birthday, sweetheart and happy reading. Thanks for your friendship and everything else — you are scintillating (underlined).”I think she meant my then chili red hair, lol.
Your point about making changes at the code level brings to mind this tweet by Pax Dickinson (who recently co-founded a startup with a woman entrepreneur) yesterday: https://twitter.com/paxdick…
I believe in THINK + DO, SHOW + TELL, MEN + WOMEN.It’s as valuable for a woman to be able to code a solution and solve a hard problem as it is a guy to be able to do it.The whole tug-o-war, battle of the sexes is a waste of energy better spent on figuring out how to bring out the strengths in both genders and how to combine those strengths, imo.
“Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternization with the enemy”.- Henry Kissinger
Haha, exactly right.
it’s worth reading Sheryl Sandberg’s views: “Women control the vast majority of consumer spending in this country, yet when asked in a survey if advertisers understand them, 90 percent of women said no.I would take those survey results with a grain of salt. Direct response advertising is constantly analyzed and quantified. If the advertisers weren’t making money from their ads they’d stop running them.
Direct response advertising is constantly analyzed and quantifiedAgree nothing heals like cold steel (quantifiable results). There are many examples of this in business segments which are very well oiled and mature “machines”. In fact one of the short cuts to figuring out how to spend your marketing and ad dollars is to simply mimick what others are doing that appear to be successful. Competitors put an ad in a card pack? You should to rather than the billboard which they don’t do.In my first business out of college I observed that competitors placed yellow page ads and analyzed books dating back probably 5 or 6 years. Went to the library if I recall. Seeing the same “small business” competitor placed ads year after year I thought it was a good bet to place an ad as well. Best decision I ever made. Likewise if you sell ads to business (I was involved in that in a different business) the easiest way to sell an ad is to show them their competitors do so. So true that even adjusting for lemming effect you’d have to conclude that they had the same experience as well or thought the same way “good shortcut if you don’t know the exact answer”.Now that said of course things do change and if you aren’t paying attention you could be throwing dollars down the drain since people tend to take a great deal of time to change course.
Lots of people in this world are satisfied with local maximums when it comes to their data. For example the spam you receive in your spam e-mail box is data driven to achieve results and it does in the sense that it gets people to buy whatever the prescription pills are or to transfer money to unscrupulous parties. However I think most business people would see that as a pretty myopic view of success. The thing about advertising is that at certain prices and scale you can make money from a certain segment of consumers, but it does not mean they’re tapping their full potential market.
Yes, I didn’t ask for permission to go ahead and build this vision. And I did go through times where the fear of not being able to do it was palpable.But yet you continued on with the mission.This is probably a good example of why Gotham Gal says that women have a higher investment return than men do. The women who are funded stand out in some way and don’t take no for an answer.As a result they are above average just for that fact.If women are more likely to be scrutinized and vetted (because they are women and don’t fit the model that investors are used to) then it stands to reason that the ones that make it to the funding stage, or convince others to believe in them, would have a higher chance of success.
It’s tough for both genders. What I’ve learnt along the way is that being on a mission is different from just building a lowest common denominator app.
Was she choking up there at the end? Wow, I love that passion!I’m so so so excited that she referenced superheroes in her talk, because I think they’re immensely important. The abundance of male superheroes available to boys and the lack of female superheroes available to girls, I believe, has had a tangible impact on the mindset of girls and women. I’m a bit obsessed about this and have been blogging about it all week as part of the Your Turn Challenge 🙂 http://bit.ly/1wuxBirIt's thrilling to hear her talk about revolution and superheroes all in one talk about women entrepreneurs. She’s absolutely right that we’re at a tipping point. This is when resistance gets its most fierce. We have work to do, battles to fight and minds to change. Time to roar!
Wonder Woman featured here as well:http://www.ted.com/talks/am…Really enlightening…from a researcher with her own inspiring story.
Good one, thank you!I’ve mentioned it before but, ICYI, the new Batgirl is paving the way for a revolution in superheroes that are actually written and drawn for *girls*. Highly recommended.
Holy crap, Jim. That’s one fantastic Ted Talk. Thanks, again, for sharing that.
Yup!! Stand tall, stand confidently!http://www.letmusicinspire….
For the 21st Century 🙂
Hey we’re so powerful we can control the weather!
Or fly & flame!
Lynda Carter, FTW. I bet the new Wonder Woman movie is going to suck though.
Geena Davis is a real-life superhero for women as is the Gotham Gal:* http://seejane.org
I *love* what the GDI is doing. I’ve had my eye on that since nearly the beginning. And +++ about Gotham Gal. She walks the walk.
There’s no shortage of female super heroes (super heroines?): http://www.superherodb.com/…
Those are nearly all female superheroes for males. They do not represent the female power fantasy. They represent the male fantasy.
She-Hulk represents the “male fantasy”?
She-Hulk is derivative. As are so many female superheroes. And she sure doesn’t represent the female fantasy. I don’t know what the hell she represents.I love how men always want to challenge me by calling out one or two characters they think prove me wrong. “What about Ms Marvel?” I want *more* and *better* for girls. They deserve it.Here’s a fun read on the topic:http://www.comicbookresourc…
I love how you are so quick to generalize. I represent all men now?If you want it, create it.But, chances are, if there were a market for your kind of super hero, it would already exist. Super heroes are a big business. Marvel and other studios aren’t going to leave any money on the table.
But, chances are, if there were a market for your kind of super hero, it would already exist.To be fair part of Joanne’s point is that the people in charge are men and not women (the Pampers story and also everyone also knows the Spanks story) consequently many ideas are never taken seriously.I’ve long thought this way before it’s been popular to think this. As a man I am going to pat myself on the back here.I’ve always said that there are so many things that would make a women’s day easier if men had to do what women had to do or experience what they did.For example many home appliances are (as only one example) stuck in “satisfice” mode simply because they aren’t a pain point for men.At least the type of men that work in positions at those companies making the products. So they have no “seat of the pants” feel for the necessity of the product and it never gets approved or invented or thought about.Taking both the Spanx idea and the Pampers idea (Joanne’s illustration) this means that back in the day there weren’t enough men who were in charge of changing diapers that they would have either greenlighted and/or approved that idea. If it were the pain point and the need would be obvious.Here is my example that actually led me to this thinking:Back when I was in my first marriage and after when I was single I always did my own wash (long story for a different day). [1] It quickly became obvious to me that it would be way more efficient to have two washers and 1 dryer rather than only 1 washer and dryer. Yet almost nobody does this and houses aren’t built to accommodate that setup (actually I’d have more than that for a family).This relates to men’s sensitivity as well. I constantly fought battles with my father who never empathized with anything that he didn’t have a particular problem with himself (narcissistic) “what’s the big deal” he would say (in a way that said “what you say doesn’t matter”). On the other hand my mother was more likely to empathize even if she didn’t have the same problem. More likely to seem to want to agree with what I was complaining about that needed to be fixed.[1] Ok here it is. My first wife folded the clothes in the kitchen while cooking and she would talk on the phone. So the clothes smelled of cooking and food. No way to get her off the phone hence “I will do my own wash”.
I was referring specifically to super heroes, of which there are hundreds, and the genre has been around since the 1930s.
See my comment above.
And which could use a little disrupting 😛
If you end up creating your own super hero character, this could be her kryptonite.
That’s just fucking classic Dave
Actually, the Kryptonite for both sexes is the same:
Yep! And it goes even deeper for products that are solely about psychology, fantasy, dreams and emotions.
Like romance novels? Some women are really in to romance novels.I think that I’d actually be in a good position to be able to greenlight products that appeal to women. I’m a big fan of reality tv, gossip and all sorts of minutia. I call it “my gay side”. My wife thinks she is quite lucky to be married to someone who will listen to a story and actually dissect and discuss, not dismiss. (If I may say so and brag about myself).
Heh. The true test is if you get worked up about “Project Runway” ;-)But you sound like someone to party with!
I didn’t say you represent all men. But you did happen to repeat the same experience I’ve had 99.99% of the times that I’ve had a discussion about this with a man. Just an observation.Who says I’m not creating it? ;-)Honestly, I don’t know how Marvel would know if there was a female market for comics, considering they’ve made little to no effort to actually appeal to one. Male-dominated companies leave money on the table all the time due to cultural blindness.DC Comics has actually discovered that when the story and the art are done right, female-targeted comics sell. The new “Batgirl” is doing very well.
Notwithstanding what I said in my comment below (supporting your point by saying “men in charge”) to be fair we don’t know if Marvel researched this at all and nixed for good reasons or actually tested it out. They might have. All we know is that they never launched.I think Dave’s point is similar in a way to the fact that it’s pretty obvious that women don’t react visually to porn in the same way as men do and hence Men do buy magazines of naked women but there is only Playgirl for women. Maybe there is more; that’s the only one I know about. And I think a large segment of the buyers of that are actually gay men (total speculation on my part so feel free to correct me).
I’ll concede that there’s a chance that Marvel did market research that told them to ignore females. I’ve read a lot about them, and by them, (by the way, I absolutely salute Stan Lee and the others as artists) and would bet against it, though.I applaud your willingness to liken female superhero art to porn. I am not advocating comic porn for girls, just to be clear 🙂 I’m advocating strong female superheroes whose stories inspire and empower, without compromise.
I’m advocating strong female superheroes whose stories inspire and empower, without compromise.As a man I was never into that entire super hero and comic book thing. If I read a comic book when I was a kid it might have been one time or two at the most. I’m not into that entire fantasy genre at all (didn’t like Hunger Games at all but like “Twilight” for some reason). No love of Star Trek either.Otoh I did like Kung Fu on TV (which is fantasy as well) and it did drive me to take (as many people of my generation did) karate lessons. Wasn’t a fan of Bruce Lee though.
The Master of the Flying Guillotine was one of my favorite classic Kung fu movies.I’m not a fan of superhero movies because, in most cases, neither the heroes nor the villains can die. That takes away the drama and suspense.
That takes away the drama and suspense.Hitchcock killed off Janet Leigh in the beginning of Psycho – never had happened before (a star so early in the movie) and one of the best Kung Fu episodes was when he was weak and fell for some women “on the range”. [1] Obviously if you kill a main character you don’t have a series.But of course you are right there are many reason that you can’t kill the golden goose.[1] Must of made an impact on me because I saw it a long long long time ago.
female superhero costumes redesigned by women artistshint: less cleavagehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/don…
Another great share. You’re cranking out the hits today.
#becauseawesome
Maybe your observation has been that men have responded to you logically? E.g., you claim there’s a paucity of female superheroes, and they’ve given you evidence that’s false?If you’re creating it, great. More (super) power to you.”Honestly, I don’t know how Marvel would know if there was a female market for comics, considering they’ve made little to no effort to actually appeal to one.”Little effort? Marvel’s X-Men movie franchise included plenty of female characters: Storm, Dr. Jean Gray, Rogue, the one played by Jennifer Lawrence. Marvel’s Avengers franchise has Agent Carter, Black Widow, etc. Their Agents of Shield TV show has a mostly female cast. And that’s not to mention the female market for male super heroes. You don’t think women have been buying tickets to see Chris Hemsworth as Thor or Chris Evans as Captain America?”The new “Batgirl” is doing very well.”So when you dismissed my mention of She-Hulk as “derivative”, that was just goal post moving?
I’m saying there’s a shortage of female superheroes who have been created for female consumption. The vast majority have been created for male consumption, including those Marvel characters you mention. Are you actually arguing the other way?So when I say there aren’t female superheroes for girls, I mean that there aren’t any that have been created to appeal to girls. Because, as you say, the audience is male.My derivative comment is part and parcel of that.Yes, Batgirl is derivative. But they’ve finally made her such a great character that she’s selling well. She is an *exception*. My question is, why can’t that energy and effort now be put into an original, standalone, showcase character that girls can go crazy over? I think they’re testing with Batgirl.I’m confused what we’re debating here. Am I missing your point? It feels like your point is that I’m building a straw man, or that I’m whining about a situation that I should be perfectly happy with. Am I misreading your comments? What exactly is your point?
Ok I was one of those kids who read American comic novels (Marvel, DC Comics) and watched lots of superhero cartoons, including Animé. I even worked a summer for the founder of Forbidden Planet and got a collector’s edition of ‘Dark Knight’ by Chip Kidd.However, being Chinese, my female role models were about more than Cinderella / Lara Croft / Katniss Everdeen.Check out some female kung fu. It’s about 3mins 30 secs:* https://www.youtube.com/wat…
That. Was. Awesome. Thank you.
the male gaze, eleventy kajillionhttp://www.itinthed.com/163…Where were the superheroes for girls that weren’t quite so overdeveloped and under-dressed?
Exactly!
That’s a great share. Thank you, Laurie.
thank ***u***what about this is difficult to understand?why does it seem to be important to some people to deny this perspective when it’s explained to them?
I’m not quite sure what they’re fighting for or against. I guess when the status quo really works for you, you may not want people shaking it up.
good guess.
“Marvel et al. won’t leave money on the table” is not exactly true. I went to an inventor conference talk on why there are no “new” brands. The answer is mainly that there is not enough energy going into developing them, especially because they’re hard to launch.
Was she choking up there at the end? Wow, I love that passion!Interesting I took that as nervousness in her voice I am now going to replay and see if I still think that.(Replays the end)Good catch. You are right. At the very end the Katniss story was something that brought tears to her eyes. She even touched her face in response and if you see the facial expressions it’s obvious as well.Now (as a man), I will find some rationalization for why I missed this [1] It’s actually my “thing” to pick up on these types of nuances and I pride myself in doing so (both vocal and visual). The “rationalization” is really my way of not apologizing or blaming myself which is part of what Joanne say’s women do to much of (and I agree).[1] I was deleting email while listening, I wasn’t studying it in a way that I would have uncovered this without specifically having my thinking cap on (and it’s typically always on).
Yeah, I’ve seen GG speak a few times (IRL and on video). This was the first time that I asked myself, right away, “is she nervous?” I’ve never read her as nervous. So for most of the talk I was thinking maybe she had a cold or something. But at the end, I couldn’t help but see emotion. If that’s what it is, I love it.
Purely emotional
I think every commercial and every sitcom since 1998 is about the female superhero mom who holds the house and office together despite being surrounded by pudgy, incompetent men. And she does it with a knowing smirk!God the pandering gets so old.BTW Barbie is a superhero in my house.
You and Dave are like Old Faithful. Thank you for giving me everything I need for my Day 7 Your Turn Challenge blog post 🙂
How exhausting.
Ha ha ha! I totally anticipated every bit of it. I love it when they prove me right.
http://i.giphy.com/RwyjvYyC…
WILLOW!!!!!!!
Not just Willow. #evilvampwillow
#DARKWILLOW
PERFECTION!
What Andy wrote about how men and women are portrayed in sitcoms and commercials is true in almost all cases. But you are impervious to facts. He could post dozens of examples supporting his point and you’d dismiss them with some bit of sophistry.That could be one of your super hero’s powers: able to ignore copius facts in a single bound.
Gem.
Kirsten I think you’re onto something. If all your premises are correct, you are literally sitting on a goldmine.Instead of “advocating” for a female superhero….create one! Why do you need a bunch of white male execs to implement your idea?If it’s merely us old guards of the patriarchy suppressing female heros…. And the insatiable demand of 11 yo girls at the ready… You’re sitting on a billion with a few easy moves. Prove us wrong!And she won’t even be scared off her mission by a bad bowling shirt!!!!
Definitely not waiting. Already doing 🙂
Yesssss
https://www.pinterest.com/p…
In our house, we just let them be themselves. They had Barbies, American Girl dolls and whatever. We tried video games, but it didn’t compute with anyone but me. Raise em to be confident. The rest will take care of itself. (I have two daughters, 24, 21) If they choose to stay home with kids, cool with me if that’s the lifestyle they want-and can afford. If they want to work, that’s cool too. Men are rarely confronted with that choice.
A minute of Mr & Mrs Incredible. He’s strong and they get along:* https://www.youtube.com/wat…Barbie doesn’t fly, do martial arts, have laser vision, no super-strength, no telekinesis, no teleportation, no ability with weapons, no weather control, no ultrasonic hearing, no body morphing and no superpowers generally.Ergo Barbie’s not a superhero.If she is, then so’s the Ken doll — in which case are guys going around hero-worshipping him instead of Dark Knight, Superman, Spidey, Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, Cyclops, Professor X etc?
In our house Barbie is a wealthy inventor and set the record in the 400m. She is most definitely a superhero. Not every little girl needs a comic book writer to tell her what superhero means.
“We have work to do, battles to fight and minds to change. Time to roar!”Don’t know about the roaring but I think the corporate backed cultural marxist propaganda machine has got the rest covered. Just sit back and put your feet up. Because you deserve it!
Perfect start to the weekend. Watched it with my wife. I have worked with women extensively and cant agree more to each line she says. Unfortunately my Mom travelled back to India yesterday ,or we would have been the perfect trio watching this together. I know she would have enjoyed every bit of it. She spent 30yrs of her life after joining a tiny private school making it one of the biggies in India and finally retiring as the vice principal. Thanks Joanna. Loved the passion in your speech.
If women entrepreneurs are getting funded 50% less than men, AND they are generating 35-40% better returns than men; that is one heck of an amazing ROI stat.
Badasssssss
I genuinely hear the Gotham Gal and so many millions of men and women who are fighting for systems change, and there are two things I believe in:(1.) If we can measure it, we can understand it and change it.(2.) Do everything with your head, heart and soul because they’ll make a difference.Here’s how female developers solve problems and build differently from men.The first two images show what male Google and WPP-SurveyMonkey developers build. We can all recognize that the user interaction and form+data structures are the same across other Web properties.The other images show a bit of my system (the gender perceptions bit). We can all see its implications for understanding ourselves better and providing better services based on that deeper understanding.Now……if I’d asked male developers to solve this problem…..they’d have built a Rocket Internet-type copy or variation on the existing Google, WPP-SurveyMonkey, Buzzfeed, Square, Amazon etcetcetc type user interaction and form+data structures. That’s what happens with groupthink and “echo chambers” of all-male teams (and also in teams where women aren’t enabled to speak up and fix problems and teams where female developers build in conformity with male mindsets).I also know because I did validate that my system’s different by comparing it with examples on Quora, Stackoverflow, meetups, HackerNews etcetcetc (which are also predominantly male) and a lot of research BEFORE I started coding.That’s the advantage of my corporate strategy experiences and coding since childhood: competitive differentiation is a core skills set and I can build it.I did seek out male mentors and their frames of reference were based on THINGS THAT ALREADY EXIST and what Steve Jobs referred to as: “The world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world.”Well, here’s the thing: every woman lives in a world built by men. A lot of that world and its tools are great because men are indeed great. However, some of the tools built by men aren’t so great and they can be a whole lot better for everyone.That’s why we need more women who can code and make stuff.Now… “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw.The existing systems didn’t make sense to me……And I happen to know that the “push the button” method has its origins in the rhesus monkey experiments of the 1970s whilst the tick boxes are from the 1930s — aren’t we supposed to be more intelligent and advanced than that already?!!!So, being a round peg who doesn’t believe any of us round pegs should force ourselves to fit into logic boxes, I invented and coded a different and better system (and it’s patent published).
This reminds me of an old saying: “The size of a man is measured by the size of the problems that anger him.”.I would expect that applies to women as well?
Women can be “kick-ass” too:* https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Lieutenant: I think we can handle one little girl. I sent two units, they’re bringing her down now.Agent Smith: No lieutenant, your men are already dead.https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Aw yissss!
Lynda Berry says it: we are the unexpected. @fredwilson:disqus and other investors may appreciate this: when Gotham Gal talks about female founders returning 35% higher ROI, it’s because women are the outliers to the probability curve that male investors “pattern recognize” around.Women don’t conform to the standard deviations of ROI (+/- 5% average value back to investors that male founders do) because how we think and solve problems doesn’t fit within the constraints of that curve.We, naturally are, where Paul Graham calls “the outer edges of the fractals”.The value women deliver isn’t just quantitative and that’s why the system of validation by numbers has worked against all of us.Every one of us also delivers QUALITATIVE VALUE.So that’s why I made a system capable of measuring quantitative AND qualitative values.Then, in the future, people won’t just be benchmarked by “Oh they delivered X% ROI, N times sales, 5:1 debt:equity” etc. People will be benchmarked by “Our customers said our products, service support and brand values are phenomenal (+3), considerate (+2) and helpful (+1) whilst they said our competitors are average (0), rushed (-1) and even rude (-2).”Yin (qualitative) + Yang (quantitative) = feminine values + male valuesThat’s closer to our natural unexpected intelligence (men and women alike) rather than to the expectation curves of probability and its amiss “pattern recognition”.Forwards to the future we go!
Pattern Recognition: One of the many things that’s awesome about William Gibson is the women lead characters in his books.The new book is particularly good.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult.
:*). Funnily enough……..Gibson is in my slides.The differences between men and women isn’t about the success of women meaning the failure of men.It’s about systems where men also speak a different language and don’t understand each other.The pattern recognition language of William Gibson doesn’t currently map over to the pattern recognition language of the AI researchers, Quantum Physicists and economists who’re writing the mathematical codes of the systems and losing the meanings and contextual intelligence en route.That’s why the world needs a system that coheres the two:Perceptions (language) + Probability (mathematics) = Insights.
awesomerelated: rebecca solnit, author of a major book in her field, at an academic cocktail party, being informed about a major book in her field, by a man telling her about it who is unable to hear that he is speaking to the authorMen Explain Things To Mehttp://www.amazon.com/Men-E…the book that the lead essay references:Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridgehttp://www.amazon.com/Motio…
one more gibson–William Gibson @GreatDismalKey iconic for Molly was C. Hynde on first Pretenders album cover, as I’ve said countless times
OMG! Now you mention it…so true!!!* https://www.youtube.com/wat…#GONNA USE MY STYLEGONNA USE MY SIDESTEP GONNA USE MY FINGERS GONNA USE MY, MY, MY IMAGINATION’CAUSE I GONNA MAKE YOU SEE THERE’S NOBODY ELSE HERE NO ONE LIKE ME I’M SPECIAL SO SPECIAL #Gotham Gal should so rock the next WE Festival with ‘Brass in Pockets’!!!
reading from The Peripheral — like the sequel to all previous https://www.youtube.com/wat…
men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women– a room of one’s own
#becauseawesome”the market is perfect” is objectively not truethere are market failures in everything that fails to offer women their own images of themselves
Good for her for organizing this. Big undertaking and a lot of work. I am pro-woman by treating them the same way I treat everyone else.
Thanks for sharing that terrific video.Two points in particular resonated:(1.) A lust for making meaning out of your work.(2.) Entrepreneurs do more than anyone thinks possible with less than anyone thinks possible.I started my journey as an entrepreneur after my Dad died, following a coma. It made me want to do and make something meaningful with my life.And it occurred to me that the signal:noise problem in his brain was similar to the signal:noise problem in the “Global Brain” that is the Web. It was an issue of the instruments not being able to tune into the signals because of the noise.The more small steps forward I made by being hands-on and simply persevering with it, the more I discovered that my system literally WILL ENABLE US TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHERS’ MEANINGS as well as enable the machines to understand us and our values (and thereby, hopefully, not be a Skynet that assigns a probability, % and 5-stars to the value of human life).Gotham Gal talks about the importance of fostering positive cultures for men and women.The thing is that culture and meaning can’t be measured by probability, % and 5-stars or other data metrics that are being collected. They’re not quantitative and logical.They’re about our language, how we qualify, our hearts & souls.And entrepreneurs can do more with less than even they can imagine when they’re on a mission.
Thank you.