Don’t go looking for a female co-founder for your startup

Last week I sent out this tweet and got a few interesting reactions.

It did not take long to figure out that was a bad idea and unlike Facebook, and Instagram, there was no “edit” feature on Twitter. I had two options — (1) delete the tweet which could have been worse or (2) weather the storm of criticism that followed.

In a nut shell, a majority of the people who reacted to the tweet thought it was somewhat discriminatory and this holds to be true if read in certain context. Another group thought if it was a market where a female had a better grasp of things, then nothing was wrong with my tweet.

While I have no intention taking the easy way out by claiming the latter, I did learn a couple of things from this experience:

Neutral Out. Filters In.

If I were to do this again, I’d actually remove the “female” from the tweet and engage with as many that held the skill and experience I was looking for in a co-founder — b2b sales and biz dev. Although I added “female” on the tweet as filter should in case there was a pool made of both genders had the required skilled, the filter was meant to be internal and not out there in public with the tweet.

In hindsight, the female filter may have just done the opposite, deterring female co-founders who would have been open for the gig if the focus was on the skill set and not gender. So the lesson there is to keep an open mind and have a neutral stand when looking to attract talent. When you have equally qualified people, then go ahead and apply filters internally.

Diversity is not an “or” but a “more” game — Nubi Kay

Diversity Advocate Indeed

Having moved from one startup ecosystem where I’d be part of the majority to another where I am now in the minority, it did not take long for me to pick up the mantle of one that advocates for diversity. Having seen little representation of ethnic minorities in the Irish startup ecosystem, I established the Umbala Project to increase awareness of opportunities, participation, and recognition of those making strides.

That said, this little twitter drama made me realise, diversity is not an “or” but a “more” game. In addition, wanting more of something doesn’t automatically translate to having less of another, and so the right approach will be to: Invite all > Select the best > Filter for preference.