F*** Pattern Recognition

Thanks. Oftentimes could relate, even being a 30-something male. ;-) Coming from a literature background and learned some things on the way, it sometimes feels strange.

But the moment, I was able to contribute to a open-source project I was thrilled.

There's some point in one's early musical education where you learn that all music follow patterns. And you think "how limiting," because the only patterns you know are major scale folk melodies and 3-chord rock. But as your pattern library grows, you appreciate how even the most avant-garde music follows patterns too, and without grokking the patterns you couldn't hear everything.

Company pattern recognition must seem limiting to someone who's only seen a small number of companies. But people who've seen 10000 companies can appreciate a range of patterns that would astonish someone who's only seen 100.

There are investors who focus on just one kind of company or founder, which is reasonable for part-time investors who want to leverage their particular experience. But in order to expand the universe of startups, YC specifically looks for promising new kinds of teams (though OP wouldn't be the first 40ish female founder new to programming to go through YC.) I hope Ms. Byerley will give us a chance to help her.

tangentially related (and thank you for posting!)

German Women Find Break in Startups Denied in Corporate Chambers

"Women are changing entrepreneurship in Germany...” said Samuli Siren, a managing partner at Berlin-based Redstone Digital, which finds investors.

Women “are adapting and reinventing the idea of the startup, which is changing the game.”

“It’s important for women to share their entrepreneurial experiences with the public to encourage and motivate other females...”

http://www.garp.org/risk-news-and-resources/risk-headlines/s...

As a 41 year old male who didn't attend an Ivy League school (and never even bothered finishing his B.S degree), I can relate to this as well. I mean, we're not trying to raise money so I don't know for sure how VC's will react to us, but from the various informal interactions we've had with various investors and other people in the "startup world" I definitely get the feeling that people don't take us seriously because we don't "pattern match" for them.

But then again, we're going against the grain intentionally in many areas, so it's not entirely unexpected. For one, we're not doing a Social-local-mobile-daily-deals-ride-sharing-uber-for-X application. We're doing enterprise software. BORING, right? We have also consciously chosen to bootstrap while continuing to work dayjobs so far. We'll quit our dayjobs when the time is right, but it's downright insulting when people act like we aren't "serious" or whatever, because we're still working so we can, you know, pay the light bill and buy food.

I can't get past the author's painful misuse of the concept of pattern recognition. That is literally the only thing the human brain does.