The male advantage in mathematical and spatial orientation has been replicated in many different countries. So that pretty m uch rules out the cultural explanation.
Except that many different countries have a similar cultural attitude towards females.
And again, taking a correlation between gender and math scores and extrapolating a genetic predisposition of a gender to fail in an entire class of industries is a stretch to say the least.
But then you have to go back to the original question: what is it about maleness and femaleness that makes it possible that in so many societies around the world, the same patterns exist? You can't have culture without brains to create it. And the brains of males and females in different cultures seem to be producing similar patterns.
Women have babies. Doing that has a profound impact.
Think of that fact as a marketing funnel. Some number of women will make a prioritization decisions. Some will choose to focus 100% on child rearing. Others will focus on career. Other will balance both.
Of the women who focus on career, some are in work environments that are family-friendly and will thrive. Some strive. Others are in environments where not being able to do hackathons or do conference calls at 9PM will close doors to career advancement.
Unless you're a well-researched person who can cite real research, genetic arguments are just anecdotes or vague facts interpreted through a journalists' lens. We should focus research in this area on the anti-patterns -- house husbands. What happens to men in their careers when they take a few years away from the workforce? My guess is a story similar to what we see with women.
"Gender inequality is a problem that needs to be avoided"
Why is gender inequality a problem that needs to be avoided? The economy needs tech startups. What difference does it make that the vast majority are started by men? It would be equally good if most tech startups were started by women, but they aren't. Who cares? The "gender inequality is bad" meme seems to be an unquestioned default that most people hold in their heads. The first thing people will always assume is that any uneven statistical distribution of people in a profession will be due to discrimination. But that's usually not the case. Usually, it comes down to a far simpler explanation. There are significant average motivational differences between men and women when it comes to math and the hard sciences that will always ensure a gender imbalance in engineering-related fields. Statistically, it has little to do with ability (except at very elite levels). Far fewer women than men enjoy thinking about and discussing technology. It's a simple fact of the world that's easily observed in the ever day conversations that men and women choose to have. And it will forever ensure a statistical gender imbalance in tech. Most women aren't interested in technology and women (and men) who are in technology, who keep pushing for this fictional perfect male/female balance would do well to show a bit of respect to the majority of the female population that chooses to be interested in other things that females are typically more oriented towards.
The answer to why there are more female founders in New York than the Valley is easy: Valley startups tend to be a lot more tech-heavy than NYC startups as a whole. And women in general aren't drawn to deep technology. I find it interesting how whenever issues of women and technology come up, everyone gets all pc and pretends not to know what the root of the gender gap is. But then if you ask them to count the number of women they know who are fascinated by technology, mathematics and deep, impersonal abstraction, they can't. Human nature doesn't change just because we pump a few billion dollars into figuring out how to get girls to love STEM. It'll never change. Tech heavy centers like Silicon Valley will always have a preponderence of male entrepreneurs and less tech heavy centers like NYC will always be more appealing to female entrepreneurs. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls.
Human nature doesn't change just because we pump a few billion dollars into figuring out how to get girls to love STEM. It'll never change.
If women's interest in CS is purely fixed by human nature, how do you account for the precipitous drop over the past decades? Women got 37% of the CS degrees in 1984 but get way fewer now.[1]
To understand what really motivates people, it's much better to look at what they do in the real world. Sure, there have always been women getting CS degrees, but how many of them go out and become programmers or tinker with technology, electronics and hardware late at night because they want to? The people who do that have been the engines behind technological advancement and growth throughout human history. And they've been mostly males. Saying that men tend to be more interested in technology than women doesn't mean that women's interest in CS is purely fixed. It just means that there will always be statistically more males tinkering with technology than females. And those statistical disparities will always ensure that the majority of tech-heavy, companies, and inventions will be led by men.
that's great dude but you didn't actually answer the question.
"If women's interest in CS is purely fixed by human nature, how do you account for the precipitous drop over the past decades?"
a 37% drop over a few decades is a pretty dramatic change.
your argument is based on zero data and a whole bunch of rhetoric. not only that, it completely ignores the question.
if it's all about human nature, how do you explain a dramatic recent change? (and realize that if you really want to take the discussion to the grand, sweeping level of human nature, three decades becomes a tiny, tiny timespan for such a sharp drop.)
>if it's all about human nature, how do you explain a dramatic recent change?
It's difficult to tell if you're trolling or if you truly don't get it. At no point did the parent poster claim that 100% of a person's likelihood to found a tech start-up was nurture.
Consider this situation:
Nurture (U) and Nature (A) are both factors in a person's likelihood to start-up (L). If L = UxA, then a 37% drop in U would cause a 37% drop in L regardless of differences in natural abilities.
A good starting point if you're interested in the interplay between nurture and nature in human psychology is Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.
Comparing 1984 to 2002 in CS is ridiculous. Nothing dropped precipitously. CS grew astronomically, and it attracted more new males than females, but still there are far more women doing CS now than then.
As a woman in a technical field who is fascinated by 'deep' technology, and mentors other girls to foster their own interests towards a technical career, your comment serves to isolate and offend. Please keep divisive gender-based comments out of this forum unless you have some very hard data to back this up.
Your post is the first one that mentions being "better". Plenty of women don't think computer projects are better or for better people than non-computer projects. In fact, men of the past twenty years were more likely than women to pursue computer projects, a trend that is changing now in part because computers are becoming more sophisticated and capable of more modes of interaction, some of which women find more interesting than men.
Not that I particularly agree with his argument, but your comment really doesn't follow from what he said, unless you think that being interested in deep technology makes someone 'better', rather than just different.
There are two main problems with that thought. First is that, more often than not, lack of interest is used as an excuse to imply lack of skill. Which is why I used to wording "aiming towards". And second, falsely attributing lack of interest in itself can be considered offensive to many people. Maybe you wouldn't think it's offensive yourself, but it's clear many people do. On the very least, it's discriminating.
To make both points a bit more clear. Imagine that if I told you, that "it's not that I think you're bad at coding. But I just think that you're not interested in hard problems. You rather solve easy ones instead." I'm not (directly) attacking your skills, I'm just falsely discriminating your interests. But hopefully you can understand why this sentence would sound offensive to many people.
I can see how someone might take offense, but at the same time accurate statements aren't always palatable.
I'm not sure your comparison is completely fair - you make it purely about deep technical problems vs 'easy' technical problems. My experience when I was a CS grad student was that the women there were interested in very difficult, important problems (particularly UX, for example), but weren't generally fascinated by, say, fundamental data structures research. Obviously there's notable counterexamples, and I am speaking in generalisations.
The reason I distance myself from the comment that sparked this discussion is not that I think it's wrong with respect to what men/women are, on average, interested in (it's hard to argue with basic statistics), but because I have no idea whether that's purely because of cultural influences or it's something more fundamental as well.
Other highly technical areas, such as medicine, don't seem to have this problem. The average doctor has a better handle on science and mathematics that the most computer professionals ever had.
"Computer professionals" are not regulated or licensed, so the term may be too ambiguous to have a meaningful discussion.
But your average engineering or computer science major at a reputable program has to take far more difficult math than your typical premed.
Look through the requirements for medical school admission, and you'll see many do not require more than a single year of calculus.
UCSD, for instance, even provides an easier track of calculus and physics for biology majors, perfectly acceptable for medical school, but unacceptable for math, physics, or most computer science or engineering majors.
Yes, I know that anyone is allowed to read a book on PHP and hang out a shingle as a "computer professional", so if you're including them, then sure, I guess the average doctor has a better handle on math. And honestly, I'm glad that this kind of freedom exists in the world of software. But I hope you realize that the math background of a typical CS major from a good university greatly exceeds what is required to go to med school.
Math is one letter of the STEM acronym that you threw out there. CS is a essentially a branch of applied math, so sure, you have a deeper math background if you have a BS from a rigorous program.
I guess your point is that girls can't hack diff eq? Whatever -- most CS majors know jack about organic chemistry, biology, or other premed programs in undergrad, and know nothing about what is taught in med school.
I guess your point is that girls can't hack diff eq?
No, and it's remarkable that you would conclude that this is my point when all I have addressed, in any way, is the difference in mathematics requirements for college majors typical of "computer professionals" (CS and "related fields") and pre-med or life science programs.
most CS majors know jack about organic chemistry, biology, or other premed programs in undergrad, and know nothing about what is taught in med school.
Right, and most premeds or physicians know very little about differential equations, mathematical optimization or stochastic processes. I didn't claim that CS majors have a better background in life sciences than physicians, but you did make the claim that your average doctor has a better grasp on math than most computer professionals ever had.
I graduated last May with a degree in CS. I had several friends who were Bio (Pre-Med). The math I was required to take started at a number higher than their highest math requirement. Likewise with statistics -- I saw some of their stat class work, and seemed like a joke to me. Incidentally, in my statistics course, we talked about how doctors don't (as shown by studies) grasp basic principles.
EDIT: I went to a fairly small, but locally very well respected school.
count the number of women they know who are fascinated by technology, mathematics and deep, impersonal abstraction
Classic nature vs nurture debate. You have no evidence to support the claim that women are inherently less inclined towards tech (instead of say, conditioned by society to be tech averse).
These social conditioning arguments are always non-sequiters. At some point you have to ask yourself, what conditions society? Something has to create the condition where people begin to notice that engineering and tech is kind of a male thing and, say, nursing, is kind of a female thing on average. Something must have created that original pattern for people to notice it. It doesn't just come out of the ether. Once the pattern exists, it's probably reinforced, but you can't tell me that with all the effort that goes into getting girls into STEM, the tide wouldn't have been turned by now had the phenomenon been based purely on nurture. Plus, you see this pattern all over the world. And it's always evident that there's bias in this argument because nobody gets upset when somebody points out that most elementary school teachers are women. And that leads me to think that there's a lot of people (of the female variety) who deep down believe that what men do is superior to what women do. And that's sad, because it's entirely untrue.
Something has to create the condition where people begin to notice that engineering and tech is kind of a male thing and, say, nursing, is kind of a female thing on average.
Yes, our disagreement is about the cause of those conditions. You've observed a correlation between sex and interest in STEM, but that correlation does not prove that sex is intrinsically linked to interest in STEM. Do you also consider black men to be naturally averse to education because black women graduate college 2:1 compared to black men?
but you can't tell me that with all the effort that goes into getting girls into STEM, the tide wouldn't have been turned by now had the phenomenon been based purely on nurture
It does not follow that women are less inclined towards STEM because efforts to increase women in STEM careers has not "turned the tide"
Women are just as mentally capable as men with regard to STEM, trying to link a nebulous concept such as "natural interest" to sex is absurd.
Talk to a woman from Russia or Eastern Europe about how women don't learn college-level math or how personal individual preferences have anything to do with educational outcomes.
There's still an element of stigma around online dating. When you combine that with the fact that nobody wants to admit to others and especially to themselves that they settled, this site is a trainwreck in the making... assuming it isn't some sort of a prank or something. Nobody intentionally goes out looking for ugly people to date.
I've found that writing about something forces you to investigate all the possible ideas and nuances around the topic in a way that you may otherwise not do. It's a great way to really understand something. It's trained me to think more logically. That's part of the reason I blog.Plus, it's what got me my current job.
The British Empire lasted over 300 years. America as an Empire has been around for only around 100. The American Empire is like the British Empire squared because of its endless capacity for self-renewal. It's like a starfish that regenerates limbs. One of the things that makes it so dynamic is the great universities and their relationship with business. No Chinese university is even in the top 200 in the world. Of the world's top 20 universities, all but three are American. Of the top 50, all but 11 are in the U.S. And then you think about a concept like the "new economy". It's an American invention. Most of the best startups and the best software are made in America. In just about every measure of soft power, nobody compares.
I'm not sure universities and start-ups matter that much.Israel is great at doing start-ups , probably better than the u.s.(at least at start-ups per capita). but usually the start-ups get bought by multinationals, so they get the job creation and economic power that comes with those innovations. not necessarily Israel.
While historically most big multinationals were centered around the u.s., this might be changing. The shift in multinational jobs to outside the u.s. is one datapoint. and the rise of strong non u.s. multinationals is another.just look at the Chinese green energy sector.
And take into account that change today is much faster then at 19 century Britain.
How do universities and startups not matter? They're incubators of knowledge and wealth creation. And regarding multinationals, most of the biggest multinationals are either Japanese, American or European. Places like China and Indonesia do a lot of the manufacturing for them, but most of the wealth still flows back to the countries where the knowledge for that technology is developed. Most of Apple's wealth is concentrated in the U.S because that's where Apple's knowledge creators are based. Same with Nokia or Toyota or any company. The world isn't totally flat despite what Tom Friedman thinks. Pockets of innovation will always exist. I think India is a better example of a developing power with a strong innovation base than China is.
1. while money flowing back to companies is important , job creation and unemployment are important components of economic power in my view.
2. There are several dozen Chinese companies that will eventually join the exclusive 500 club. That could happen within the next 10 years or even less. Currently, 15 Chinese companies are already in that club, including several telecom operators, four banks and State Grid, China Life, BaoSteel, and SAIC, the Shanghai based auto maker. They are all state-run.
3.The company who scales up a technology usually wins most of the money , not the inventor(Google didn't invent contextual advertising, just did it better and at bigger scale).And if the startup is in one country , and the big company in another as usually happens in israel ,most of the gains do not come to the inventing nation.
4. Chinese companies can buy startups if they want.Chinese companies recently surpassed Germany's to become the world's No 2 in terms of acquisitions, having spent $21.8 billion on such moves. I think there's less into software companies and more into other stuff.
I remember reading the Friedman piece several weeks ago and thinking to myself, "This guy drank the China kool-aid too." It's part of the whole American declinism notion that pops up every ten years or so and I've never believed it. We were there with Japan in the 80s, The Soviet Union, the EU, and now China (and India too). It's easy to believe China is going to be the next superpower if you look at its growth relative to the U.S over the last decade. But the thing that's always made me skeptical about any country replacing the U.S as the world's lone superpower any time soon isn't our resources. It's our sense of mission and purpose in the world. It's something that nobody else has. Only we have it because it's in our cultural fabric. It's not something you create on purpose. It grows organically out of a hapenstance of historical events. It informs everything else about us. You see it when you travel to other countries and come back. Americaness is optimism and hope. It's a source of our soft power, which is extremely attractive to the rest of the world. It's why everyone wants to be American but nobody secretly wishes they were Chinese or Nigerian or Brazilian. China or Russia or the EU or India don't have that sense of mission and purpose in their psyche. No amount of military hardware or GDP growth can compensate for that.Superpowerdom is unsustainable without it. So China could be a paper tiger.
Except for China. They actually have a very similar concept of destiny and mission.
I think the issues with China are going to be much more practical. They remind me a lot of the Soviet Union. A closed society that is very effective at giving the appearance of prosperity, while under the covers things are very different. They'll be able to keep it up for a decade or two, but over time the whole thing crumbles as the base was never truly well built.
Our biggest advantage lies in the risk taking aspects of our culture. We're a people that celebrates the type of risk that leads to true innovation. The cool thing: It's not just the U.S. anymore. Europe has caught on as well.
I do think the United States is going to weaken (relatively) in the coming decade. We'll still be a world power, but I think we'll be sharing that with a re-awakened Europe.
Well you'll find that a history of being the "superpower(s)" and then wasting it all by bombing the crap out of ourselves results in a slightly different point of view in the world (from the EU).
Empire building was Europe's "sense of mission and purpose in the world" we made the natives "civilised". It was our belief of divine right and our ridiculous optimism in regards to war and "glory" (it will be over by Christmas) that led (in part) to our downfall.
Definitely not everyone 'wants to be an American'.
The only people that 'want to be American' in very large numbers are those that currently are below the standard of life that America offers, and plenty of those people would still be quite happy to be European, Japanese or even Australian.
As for your sense of mission and purpose in the world, that might be more of a problem than a part of the solution.
Far away from where? I'm 6 hours from Singapore, 7 to HK or 9 to Tokyo, and - more importantly - they're mostly straight up so there's no jetlag. I think you live far away from everything! ; )
Wow. I don't know where I got confused but for some reason, I thought you were Canadian. Oops. I love Europe, though - been to all of those cities except Brussels.
Let me know when you do make it down under - beers are on me!
I've lived in Canada for 5 years, I still have a 'token' paper presence there but I'll wind that down this year because I definitely won't be going back.
Also plenty of my domain names are still registered to the Toronto office.
Friedman is one of the worst sources of opinion I've ever read. The World Is Flat (which is, admitedly, his only substantial work I've read cover to cover) is filled with unwarranted conclusions and groundless generalizations and altogether horrible metaphors. I've learned to just tune out when he's mentioned.
I found The World is Flat to be a useful insight into conservative economic thinking. I also interpreted it as an attempt to persuade the conservative political and economic base to take a more global look at their activities using their own language, rather than as an accurate treatise on globalization.
In that context, I was able to get past his obeisance to the corporate superpowers of America and his other inaccuracies, and see points that may be valuable. Even though I frequently disagree with their opinions, Friedman and another conservative, George Will, are two of my favorite editorialists. Maybe the fact that I'm neither liberal nor conservative contributes to my enjoyment of their writing.
yea really. the original story cites him as a middle east expert... who cheered and approved of the invasion of iraq. now that's a record to be proud of.
EDIT: i do agree with him though that the US should invest in sustainable energy.
> It's our sense of mission and purpose in the world. It's something that nobody else has. Only we have it because it's in our cultural fabric.
Really, you believe that stuff? That sounds like some kind of propaganda or something you would tell a child. Do you think the Chinese tell each other "We have no purpose in the world, we are a silly nation, we'll never amount to anything."? On the contrary!
Yes, we are what we are because of culture, but mostly because we won WWII, and happened to have lots of nukes, tanks, ships.
It's our sense of mission and purpose in the world. It's something that nobody else has.
Whether that's true now is debatable in my opinion. I think the American dream has been perverted into a lust for enhanced mediocrity. People where I live seem to want to get a job with good benefits, a decent house, and a nice TV, so they can just get through their lives by watching sports and reality shows. Everyone wants to be the best middle-class, Prozac-popping average Joe they can be.
You know, there is nothing wrong with leading a quiet life and enjoying the little things. Waking up next to your wife every morning, having breakfast together, packing the kids off to school, having an honest job that pays the rent and doesn't induce tortured battles in the darkest chambers of your soul every day. You are the embodiment of mission and purpose parent was talking about, but make no mistake, that does not mean mission and purpose is in any way more honorable than peace and quiet. Live and let live.
I suppose my post was more inflammatory than necessary. I don't really have any problem with people who know what makes them happy and manage to achieve it. What I don't like to see in the community around me is people who have no desire to see the "big picture" or how they fit into it, trusting their senator/boss/etc. to do that for them. People seem to me to be lacking a concept that they are part of a bigger system, except when the media reminds them of the fact.
True of most people, but this tends to be true of most people in every circumstances.
What seems to be different about America is that we provide the opportunities and to a degree the encouragement for those who do not want to be like that to succeed, or at least make valiant efforts and often make some progress in those efforts.
That's a good test when viewing these arguments for the "next superpower". I'd always ask the author; what do you feel made the USA successful in the past? Why has that changed?
Most of the American declinism supporters still cite WWII as the only reason for American economic ascendancy. I'm skeptical that markets take 65 years to correct.
65 years to correct?
Consider the British Empire in 1914 and then again in 1971. It's more or less the same for all European nations. We lost our minds, a generation, many of our cities and all of our empires. 65 years is not going to correct that, it was a one-way street.
Do you have ANY understanding of the state of Europe's economy following WW2? We were heading for WW3 after the US pulled the mat on the debt repayments. Luckily Marshal understood this and hence the Marshal Plan prevented WW3 in Europe.
Ok, but all those empires, what were they built on? They were built on the megalomaniac greed of a bunch of predatory monarchs and their clerical stooges. None of it came from the people. That's very different from today's US.
Only if you think that our democracy is a sham. I don't think that's entirely the case, and I don't see how that prevents broad access to the resources needed to start a startup.
Our democracy is at most only 50% a sham. I think if we're looking for scapegoats for all of the problems of society, we should go a higher level and blame corporate personhood itself rather than individual sociopathic executives.
What has changed is the easy part. It is Richard Hilton vs Paris Hilton. Born to power and an easy life has made the US soft. The average US citizen demands that the government fixes their problems.
Ironically your post has shown the true power the US has. Abnormal levels of patriotism. America has declined. Drastically. Look at what the middle class has today compared to years prior. Did you know there was a time that middle class in the US meant you had servants? Money has vacated the middle classes and flooded into the upper classes in the last 20 or so years.
I grew up in the US and I live in western Europe now. I don't see myself ever going back long term. I feel like my standard of living here is much better.
I tend to agree with you, albeit reluctantly, but let me ask you this: If another country, say China, had that sense of purpose, would you know?
We don't speak their language (at least I don't), so we cannot watch their version of Hollywood movies or read their version of Hacker News. Therefore I wouldn't be too confident in my beliefs. They might turn out to be cliches.
It's easy to tell. You just need to use what I call the boast test. It works on countries just as well as it does on individual people because countries are made up of the sum character of the people. Basically, it says that the harder someone tries to let others know about their abilities, the less animated they are by a deep sense of purpose. People with real, deep power and deep purpose don't boast. They're calm. But you know they have power. A second rate power like Russia is eager to boast about their military capabilities. China's Olympic spectacle last summer was a classic example of this notion. The only recent power I can think of that had that sense of calm was Great Britain. They just had the right stuff. And they changed the world. Churchill's speeches could have been written by any U.S. president. The EU sort of has it, but it's not willing to back it up with muscle...not necessarily war...but just declaration of purpose in their leaders. Maybe it's because they're secular. I don't know. But they don't really have it. No one does.
If not boasting was a test for anything the US would fail miserably. Just listen to all the ridiculous shock and awe rhetoric from the Iraq war or cultural pearls like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(movie).
I think we need to know much more than official grandstanding and parades in order to judge wether enough individuals in a particular country are driven by a will to innovate and succeed and are willing to take some risks as well.
It's not so much that China is going to be the lone superpower - it's going to be more of a multi-polar world again as the US is still light years ahead at least in terms of military tech.
The US will eventually decline economically relative to China, but the US has other advantages, besides military tech. The US has exported its political model to Western Europe over the past 100 years. A lot of middle-class people in China want to live in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, and will do so as fast as those countries let them in. The English-speaking countries will let them in the quickest, perhaps to buy those empty houses. Such emigration out of China, coupled with their one-child policy, means China will hit a demographic wall quicker than Japan ever did.
And of course, because of Western countries' tradition of federation and democracy, the US and Canada can slowly merge with the EU, treaty by treaty, just as fast as it needs to to counterbalance China. NATO is just the beginning of this. I'd imagine Russia will eventually, perhaps in 20 or 30 yrs, join the EU, Euro, and even the Schengen zone one day. Such a combined US/Canada & EU/Russia would have well over a billion people, with most people probably speaking English, and be centred around the Arctic Ocean, which by then would be the best land on the planet because of climate change.
But who's China going to federate with? They've had trouble keeping their Western provinces in check, and keeping their own people inside the country. They'll probably get Mongolia, maybe even Burma, within 50 yrs, but none of their other neighbors will trust them enough to let them too close. Russia will look to Europe to help defend its Siberian resources before it lets China in. Perhaps their immigrants to the West will stay loyal as part-time spies, but their children certainly won't.
In 50 yrs, a combined US/EU/Russia will be top dog, with China lagging in 2nd place, and Japan, India, Brazil, in the third tier.
You reckon? Who do you suppose gets the most bang for their military buck? Who's got the bigger manufacturing base, which is what all big wars come down to in the end?
The USA still has the superior military, yes. But even now, it would be a very nasty fight indeed. In ten years' time, when China has handsomely exceeded the ship numbers of the US Navy, it's anyone's guess who would win, and let's hope we never have to find out.
It would be interesting to see stats on the composition of groups that YC has funded since inception; ie, percentage of all programmer groups vs programmer/biz guy vs all biz guys, etc. Any insights PG?
I would say about half the groups have one or more non-programmers. I remember 2 that had no programmers, though I may be forgetting some.
The optimal configuration is one or two programmers plus one person who can sell really well. Best of all is when the person who can sell is also a programmer.
Just out of curiosity, how did those groups with non-programmers develop their product? Did they go out and find programmers? What did they spend most of their time doing?
One group found programmers, the other (in the current cycle) is doing something that doesn't require significant amounts of hacking, at least at this stage.
I would be especially interested in seeing percentage of single founder applicants (vs total applicants) and percentage of single founder companies accepted (vs total companies accepted).
I imagine it's not that high. If I were in PG's shoes, I would be more reluctant to fund single founder groups too for the simple reason that startup ideas go through countless iterations and it's very hard to mold an idea if you have no one to bounce ideas off of. Sure, you could get the opinions of family and friends, but they'll tell you anything because they don't have a stake in the idea.
My guess is that the percentage of single founder applicants is enormous, while the percentage of single founder accepted companies is minuscule. I just wonder how big the gap is.
@icey what makes you think it's enormous? I would think that most people who have a business idea they're confident enough to pursue have it because they've discussed it at length with someone else who's also interested in the idea.
Just a gut feeling. There's no real cost to applying, so why wouldn't a single founder apply?
Given the number of people that post about looking for a cofounder here, I'm just guessing that a lot of people don't have one, but feel that they've got a good enough idea to make a business. Some of them really will have what it takes; but I'm sure the proportion of single founders that apply is quite different that the proportion of single founders that are accepted.
The problem with charging for news is that news as it's presented is unspectacular. Most people, if they don't have to-- won't pay for unspectacular information because chances are they can get it somewhere else because it isn't hard to produce or duplicate. I can get the same information from the NY Times at the Washpost. I do like their opeds though. I read David Brooks a lot. But I still won't pay for David Brooks' insight because it doesn't make me money or save me time or do something to make my life easier. That's the only kind of information you can form a business model around.
