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>> "We believe the startup ecosystem should be open for all."

If so, then why're two of the three available dates filtered by the demographic profile of the founders?




I'm black and I found this to be odd.

How does this work exactly, do you need one black woman on the team and then you can go all 3 days. Does she need to be in a leadership role, can she just be the Secretary?


If you didn't see this previously, here's more on why we do Open Office Hours: https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-open-office-hours.

And to be clear, founders should apply. There's no harm in applying for more than one day -- but we likely would not do office hours with you more than once. We typically get so many applications for each day that we're only able to meet with a small percentage of the people who apply.


You see the problem here ? What's to stop someone from just getting a black female friend to call herself a founder to do the pitch.

I get wanting diversity, but when you do it like this your blatantly putting others at a disadvantage.

How about you work on increasing your available times which would allow more people to apply overall.


What's to stop someone from just getting a black female friend to call herself a founder to do the pitch.

Integrity? Self-respect?


Bring up "integrity & self-respect" when the larger issue is racism & sexism is disgusting.


Seriously? You're trolling their diversity efforts with absurd strawmen like the idea that teams will trick black women en masse into being fake token founders so that the real teams have an extra shot at office hours.

There is a disgusting "argument" being made here, but I'm not the one making it.


Racism & sexism is wrong.

When's the last time you experience a racist or sexist remarks or behavior?

When's the last time you confronted a racist or sexist?

You're welcome to call me a troll, but filters based on gender are sexist and those based on race are racist. Any other sub-topic to me is irrelevant, and points back to the real issue, this is toxic.


Kat, I've read the post you linked to above, and in fact read it before I posted my question above.

Possible I'm missing something, but is there any reason why my question is not being addressed?


Because those are groups to whom the startup ecosystem has not historically been open and available. The path towards "open for all" is to identify the current failure cases, and direct focused effort towards fixing them.


I'm Latino and it has been available to me. I don't want a "Latino Only" day any more than I would want a "Whites Only" day.

It feels belittling that anyone would think they're doing me a favor by banning the white competition. Real helpful, since my race is obviously a huge handicap. Right? Stopstopstopstopstop. Just stop. You're not giving me an equal opportunity to compete if the competition is segregated.


Yeah I found that strange too.




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