Building the Future Without Us: SF’s Obsession with Innovating Without Women
My reflections on SF's startup ecosystem—where innovation thrives, but women remain strikingly absent.
I just wrapped up an energizing weekend in San Francisco for #TechWeek, where I connected with some incredible founders and investors and dove deep into the West Coast startup scene.
It was my first time attending tech events in SF, and I’m leaving with mixed feelings that are hard to shake. As a current Harvard student, I’m no stranger to intensity and competition, but the vibe here felt… different. Maybe it’s too intense even for me, or perhaps too transactional. As a non-traditional female tech entrepreneur, I found myself questioning whether I truly fit into this ecosystem.
So, I decided to share my reflections. If you’ve ever felt the same—or if you have a fresh perspective—I’d love to hear from you.
Here’s what stood out to me about the SF tech scene, after meeting with 50+ founders and investors: how they build, live, and thrive.
SF = Startup World
As a New Yorker turned Boston transplant at Harvard, I’ve noticed something funny about road trips along U.S. Route 1 from NYC to Boston: the billboards. They’re a mix of fast food ads, "Praise Jesus" signs, hospitals boasting the best medical care, and occasionally, a few strip club promos. Those billboards say a lot about the demographic population in these areas and what’s being marketed to them.
But as I drove from SF’s airport to my hotel downtown, the landscape was wildly different. This city isn’t just alive—it lives and breathes tech.
Every billboard? Tech companies. AI startups. Co-working spaces. Innovation is everywhere.
It’s a completely different world compared to NYC and Boston, where only a handful of founder communities exist. In San Francisco, though? Founder hubs are everywhere. Incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces—they’re accessible on every corner. It’s an entire ecosystem designed for building, learning, and thriving.
This is exactly what we need more of in Boston and New York—especially for women. The sense of community in SF is real, where founders collaborate, share ideas, and genuinely help each other grow. It’s inspiring. It’s powerful. And it’s what we should be replicating across every city.
How Obsession Fuels Innovation
I visited my friend Grace, who’s living in a hacker house—basically a male-dominated space where founders live, work, and sleep under the same roof. It’s the ultimate example of work-life integration, or as I see it, work-life overload. You don’t see this kind of intensity anywhere else.
Teams of young founders—most in their early 20s—are laser-focused on building their startups, living and breathing tech 24/7. Their drive is incredible. Honestly, these founders have accomplished 10 times more than I have, and their knowledge on so many topics left me speechless. But while I admire their brilliance, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. They're missing out on so many key experiences—college, fun, just being young—because everything is consumed by their hustle.
If I had to sum up SF in one word, it would be obsessed. Here, people are single-minded in their focus to solve a problem or dominate a niche. Eating, sleeping, even basic social interactions all take a backseat. It’s all about building, raising capital, and then building more. That’s the SF founder life.
What really struck me was how quickly people in SF dive straight into business. Forget small talk or building meaningful connections—it’s all about the pitch. A simple “How are you?” turns into a rehearsed, 3-minute pitch of their AI startup. While this might be great for networking and getting intros to investors or advisors, it made everything feel superficial and transactional.
This fast-paced, competitive culture might be why so many big tech products miss the mark on human-centered design. When the focus is always on hustling and pitching, there’s little room for authentic relationships or understanding people beyond their startup. This obsession with building can lead to great innovation, but often comes at the cost of meaningful connections and, too often, the creation of ethical tech products and services.
Where Are All The Women?
I completely understand why most of the world’s biggest and most powerful tech companies were built in SF—the intensity and focus here is unmatched.
But let’s talk about the real elephant in the room. Almost everywhere I went—from Sweetgreen to TechWeek events to hacker houses—I was one of the only women in the room. The tech bro culture is very real, and you can feel it.
No one directly told me I didn’t belong, but the intimidation was palpable. It’s hard not to feel out of place when nearly every major tech product or service you’ve ever heard of was founded by a man.
Here’s the reality: Women dominate in academia—70% of high school valedictorians are women, and at universities, we outnumber men. At Harvard, for example, the Class of 2027 is 53% women.
We’ve also made huge strides in other sectors—women now make up over half of law students and are rapidly making up more of the finance and consulting workforce.
Yet in the startup world, it’s a completely different story.
In 2023, women accounted for just 13.2% of startup founders, down from 15.1% in 2022. And this gender gap isn’t just staying the same—it’s getting worse.
Over the past several years, men outnumber female founders by a ratio of nearly six to one. Even in Y Combinator’s 2024 batch, only about 21% of companies had a female founder, and statistically, solo female founders make up less than 1% of all YC founders.
So what do these statistics tell women?
That we need a male co-founder to attract capital or resources for our startups?
Absolutely not.
The startup ecosystem is one of the most male-dominated spaces, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Every revolutionary product or service doesn’t have to be built by men—we can change that narrative.
Yes, we have female investors and engineers, but here’s the hard truth: until we have equal representation of female founders building the revolutionary products and services we can't live without—just like the ones designed by men—nothing will truly change.
The good news is, we’re getting there—slowly but surely. We’ve got Girls Who Code, Girls Who Invest, and Girls Into VC—all of them helping women build the hard skills they need to break into tech and investing.
But what we need now are more women taking that final leap into entrepreneurship.
We need to leverage the business and technical skills we’ve gained and start building.
We need to show up, take up space, and start creating.
Not when we feel “ready” or “confident enough”—because let’s be real, we’ll never feel fully ready. It’s about showing up as we are, being fully committed, and learning by doing.
At WWV Labs, we’re here to help push those boundaries. Join us and become a part of the movement to change the lack of female representation in the startup world!
So to all the hustlers out there: Let’s hustle. Let’s build. And let’s change the game.