&gt;A lot of the applicants probably read her as some kind of secretary, especially early on, because she was the one who&#x27;d go out and get each new group and she didn&#x27;t ask many questions. &#x2F;&#x2F;<p>Yet elsewhere it&#x27;s noted that one of the candidates pointed out that Livingston asked the fewest but most pointed questions. This makes me wonder if anyone ever did think that Livingston was &quot;some kind of secretary&quot; [and what&#x27;s wrong with that] or if that assumption just plays to the conclusion that sex rather than, say, hot-headed assertiveness or attention seeking is the reason for the disparity in public perceptions of Livingstone and Graham. [I&#x27;m talking speculatively, I don&#x27;t know either of these people].<p>Given the nature of the essay I find this, in the footnotes, quite peculiar:<p>&gt;No one understands female founders better than Jessica. &#x2F;&#x2F;<p>Why does she only understand female founders the best - that would presumably be because females are inherently different in some characteristics pertinent to being founders? Why is this not &quot;No one understands founders better ...&quot; is there someone who does understand founders better but for some reason is unable to understand female founders as well as they do male founders.<p>Surely this is the answer to the question posed on notability if others are better at understanding founders who are male, for some reason, then as more founders are male [it seems, I don&#x27;t have stats on this, just going with my perception of the consensus] it would stand to reason that those best able to understand the largest cadre of founders are most notable - this understanding we&#x27;re told is the vital element in the field after all.<p>The inclusion of the word &quot;female&quot; here is the key one way or another.<p>&gt;The person who knows the most about the most important factor in the growth of mature economies—that is who Jessica Livingston is. &#x2F;&#x2F;<p>It almost looks like Graham is saying, but perhaps not wanting to say, that the sex of his co-founder is the key element in reaching a broader base of founders?<p>I&#x27;m not at all saying Livingston isn&#x27;t the best person in the World in this role, but Graham&#x27;s footnote leads away from that conclusion.<p>On a slightly different focus:<p>&gt;There are successful women who don&#x27;t like to fight. &#x2F;&#x2F;<p><i>People</i>. There are successful _people_ who don&#x27;t like to fight; unless you&#x27;re saying their sex is the reason they don&#x27;t like to fight or that this characteristic is peculiar to women then why do people have to force sexual bivalence all the time. The inference that follows that all [successful] men do like to fight is doubly unhelpful IMO.