I wrote an op-ed for @theinformation on being a solo female founder & why investor dogma around co-founders is yet another reason the industry is so awful at funding women. Can you believe only 2.1% of VC dollars this year have gone to women?! thein.fo/1a7650c8647efd… Image
People told me repeatedly I needed a co-founder so I kept trying and trying. (I literally even moved to London to try Entrepreneur First, a co-founder matching program!) In the end, all of it was a huge waste of time, energy, and money. And mental health, honestly.
It was super demoralizing to keep being told I somehow wasn't good enough, that I needed to keep searching. That I was doing something wrong. And then to be put down and condescended to and so disrespected by some of the men I tried working with.
One candidate I was considering as a co-founder accidentally emailed me his diary full of sexist thoughts about me. Yes, I have the receipts. Yes, I'm sure you have lots of questions, lol.
Some people thought surely I must be able to find a co-founder from my networks in the Valley and having been at Stanford, Google, Facebook, Quora, Pinterest... Hard enough to find a good match, but sadly I think sexism was also automatically a disqualifier in many cases.
As a side note, it was also very upsetting though completely understandable to hear from female and BIPOC colleagues that they were too burned out from the industry to stay in it or to try to do a startup. And they had to prioritize their mental health recovery. Fair.
I know I'm incredibly privileged. I'm so so close to being the type of founder that the Valley loves -- except I'm a woman. And somehow just that makes so much of the "standard" advice totally irrelevant. Imagine how much more useless it is for people further from the archetype.
There are already so many barriers that make it harder for us to succeed. Having to defend against irrelevant advice only makes it worse, and still being judged against expectations that don't make sense for us, is a huge drag on our ability to perform.

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More from @triketora

29 Nov
still mad sometimes when i think about asian american cliques who tell me i’m “not that asian” or “not asian enough”. when did you get to decide who’s “asian” enough? what does that even mean?
some have cited the fact that i don’t exclusively date asian. and SO WHAT? how is that a criteria? if it’s about culture, half of y’all don’t even speak an asian language, definitely can’t read, don’t know the history or culture. how are you judging?
i think y’all saying i’m “not that asian” is your registering offense that i’m not a meek asian woman who conforms to your ideas of who i should be - a traditional wife who will be subservient & fawn over your male superiority. well, sorry not sorry.
Read 4 tweets
27 Aug
icymi tl;dr i did an ama on reddit last week and it turned into a complete cesspit of toxicity with 4k+ comments from the troll brigade demonstrating perfectly why i'm working on @blockpartyapp_ and also why silicon valley culture is so fucked blockparty.substack.com/p/ask-me-anyth… 1/
[thread content warning: violence, trauma, harassment]

obviously the great irony is that i got harassed by these thousands of reddit trolls because i am working on anti-harassment software with @blockpartyapp_. it was horrific and traumatizing blockparty.substack.com/p/ask-me-anyth… 2/
some people have accused me of planning this all as a publicity stunt, bc duh "what did you expect." you know what, i SHOULD have known better, esp since @ekp got harassed out of reddit 5+ years ago trying to clean it up, but i was naively optimistic

blockparty.substack.com/p/ask-me-anyth… 3/
Read 36 tweets

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