Howard Schultz, likely one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, talks about making bold moves that not everyone agrees with, and about having courage in your conviction.

Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator and Founders At Work fame, yesterday wrote a great blog post about what stops female founders. Much of her advice really hits home for women... especially the part about not blowing your savings on clothes and going out.  Seriously - when I was 25, I thought that's what my Microsoft paycheck was for! :)

However, I find this advice slightly ironic coming from the founder of YC, which almost exclusively funds founding teams of engineers.  And the real issue of course, is that there are very few women engineers to begin with.  Fewer and fewer women choose to pursue engineering degrees because honestly, even by the time they start college which is when many female students would take their first CS class, their male classmates have been programming for 6 years and are many miles ahead. And what student in a top school (male or female) would want to pick a major where they have no chance of being the best?  

This is problematic, as most investors are extremely biased towards engineer-founded startups.... sometimes despite the product idea or the team's experience... simply based on the fact that they are talented engineers and "will figure it out".  This puts non-technical founders (male and female) in a hugely unfair position, because even a great product concept, domain expertise and brand do not give you the same credibility with investors as a CS degree from a top school.

I wonder how many female founders are not at work, despite having every other criteria on Jessica's list, only because they are not engineers?