I love how, after giving all these statistics about the success of these women-owned businesses, its 12th, un-numbered point highlights the fact that there are all these—
grants, programs, and accelerators dedicated to helping women access resources that historically were only available to men.
As if there were ever a magic cash machine or special resources available only to men.
not one company in the S&P 500 was started and grown by a female.
How many of them were started and grown by a single man, ie not inherited or grown up from an older company?
(There are probably a couple, but the point is that they're rather the exception than the rule — and such that do exist are probably quirks of technology and fate.)
(There are probably a couple, but the point is that they're rather the exception than the rule — and such that do exist are probably quirks of technology and fate.)
Which of those that you found were not tech-related?
It's not improbable that a single person could start a company in a nascent industry and end up, 30 or even 15 years later, near the top of the pile. In an established industry? Much less likely.
First, it's quite telling that about half of the names you listed are all tech-related, and most of those made their money from (or were helped by) Internet technology.
TCP/IP has existed since about 1981, the web not until '94-ish and in any case, large scale roll-out of the Internet didn't begin to take place until the mid to late '90s.
For commercial purposes, we're talking about an industry not more than 20 decades old, well within the working lifetime of one individual. Those entrepreneurs who called it right (and we seldom hear of those who called it wrong!) made out like bandits and got ridiculously rich.
Luck played a big part in many of them:
Gates got lucky to win the contract for PC DOS from IBM after Digital Research (publishers of CP/M, the then-dominant minicomputer OS) fucked IBM around for too long;
Zuckerberg never planned to get rich, at least, not that way — in fact, he started out by hacking Harvard's student records to get the initial supply of names and photos — and FB just, by chance, became a medium that nobody knew there was a market for†. FB and the likes would not have been successful, BTW, without some some crucial changes in law in the early 2000s, notably the DMCA (immunity against IP infringement) and the Communications Decency Act (the significance has nothing to do with decency but rather 47 USC §230 which immunises platforms against liability for defamation by 3rd parties), but FB was already well enough developed to really take the platform to the next level when those laws came in.
Lucas got lucky when United Artists declined to fund the film and were stupid enough also decline the associated IP rights, too (but fair play, Lucas bankrolled it so he deserves the profits)
Whether Soros is lucky, shrewd or playing with a marked deck is a matter of opinion. He made billions on shorting the GB£ when we left the ERM. Even if he had inside information, speculation involves a huge level of luck.
Bezos, Page, Brin, Jobs and Wozniak were lucky insofar as they were in the right place at the right time. The rest of their success was entirely their own, however.
† okay, well that's not quite fair. FB was hardly the first social media platform, MySpace probably being the first successful example, but FB benefited from the right timing in a way that most others didn't.
For every stellar successful businessman such as those listed above, there are tens if not hundreds of failed businessmen. You should know all about the apex fallacy, because feminists perpetrate it every time they bitch about the lack of female CEOs (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is what OP is all about).
Second, why are women not proportionately represented as founders of high profile companies? NB: it's not that they're not there, but you might not be looking for them, or they may not be in your neck of the woods. Case in point, Anita Roddick, foundress of The Body Shop (originally British cosmetics chain, bought by L'Oréal in '06 for just over £650m).
Well, the higher the risk the higher the returns. Naturally, the big risks that pay off are destined for the top. But the appetite for risk between men and women is different: men have a wider s.d. and therefore there will always be one or two men in the long tail that are willing to take greater risks than any woman.
Inclinations to parenting are most likely irrelevant in the tail of the distribution. In fact, pretty much all stereotypes go out the window in the tail because specimens in the tail are, by definition, highly unusual and hugely deviate from the majority in respect of that characteristic.
So, statistically speaking, it would be surprising if women were proportionately represented.
Anything that is possible will happen if you wait long enough and it's a fallacy of causality to assume than 'man' (or any other identity or demographic) precedes 'great wealth'. It's one thing to retrospectively observe that all the really successful one-man bands (so to speak) happen to be men, but quite another to prospectively assume that, given a chance, women could do just as well and that therefore any inequality of outcome is evidence of inequality of opportunity.
It's equally fallacious to assume that giving women a hand up will generate more high-profile CEOs in the future. It might but, frankly, what's between your legs is very far down a very long list of criteria and circumstances that make for successful businesspeople.
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I love how, after giving all these statistics about the success of these women-owned businesses, its 12th, un-numbered point highlights the fact that there are all these—
As if there were ever a magic cash machine or special resources available only to men.
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How many of them were started and grown by a single man, ie not inherited or grown up from an older company?
(There are probably a couple, but the point is that they're rather the exception than the rule — and such that do exist are probably quirks of technology and fate.)
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Of course. But u/furchfur implied the possibility that women — anyone — could have created an S&P 500 company ab initio by themselves.
If men couldn't do it, why should anybody expect women to?
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Of course. And I wrote:
Which of those that you found were not tech-related?
It's not improbable that a single person could start a company in a nascent industry and end up, 30 or even 15 years later, near the top of the pile. In an established industry? Much less likely.
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Okay, two separate issues here:
First, it's quite telling that about half of the names you listed are all tech-related, and most of those made their money from (or were helped by) Internet technology.
TCP/IP has existed since about 1981, the web not until '94-ish and in any case, large scale roll-out of the Internet didn't begin to take place until the mid to late '90s.
For commercial purposes, we're talking about an industry not more than 20 decades old, well within the working lifetime of one individual. Those entrepreneurs who called it right (and we seldom hear of those who called it wrong!) made out like bandits and got ridiculously rich.
Luck played a big part in many of them:
† okay, well that's not quite fair. FB was hardly the first social media platform, MySpace probably being the first successful example, but FB benefited from the right timing in a way that most others didn't.
For every stellar successful businessman such as those listed above, there are tens if not hundreds of failed businessmen. You should know all about the apex fallacy, because feminists perpetrate it every time they bitch about the lack of female CEOs (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is what OP is all about).
Second, why are women not proportionately represented as founders of high profile companies? NB: it's not that they're not there, but you might not be looking for them, or they may not be in your neck of the woods. Case in point, Anita Roddick, foundress of The Body Shop (originally British cosmetics chain, bought by L'Oréal in '06 for just over £650m).
Well, the higher the risk the higher the returns. Naturally, the big risks that pay off are destined for the top. But the appetite for risk between men and women is different: men have a wider s.d. and therefore there will always be one or two men in the long tail that are willing to take greater risks than any woman.
Inclinations to parenting are most likely irrelevant in the tail of the distribution. In fact, pretty much all stereotypes go out the window in the tail because specimens in the tail are, by definition, highly unusual and hugely deviate from the majority in respect of that characteristic.
So, statistically speaking, it would be surprising if women were proportionately represented.
Anything that is possible will happen if you wait long enough and it's a fallacy of causality to assume than 'man' (or any other identity or demographic) precedes 'great wealth'. It's one thing to retrospectively observe that all the really successful one-man bands (so to speak) happen to be men, but quite another to prospectively assume that, given a chance, women could do just as well and that therefore any inequality of outcome is evidence of inequality of opportunity.
It's equally fallacious to assume that giving women a hand up will generate more high-profile CEOs in the future. It might but, frankly, what's between your legs is very far down a very long list of criteria and circumstances that make for successful businesspeople.
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