2015 Schedule
Interactive: March 13–17  •  Film: March 13–21  •  Music: March 17–22

The Cult of Technical Founders and Its Discontents

Saturday, March 14
12:30PM - 1:30PM

Hilton Austin Downtown
Salon E
500 E 4th St

This panel will be a wide ranging discussion of our cult of the technical founder and how it may be aggravating our diversity crisis. While much has been made of technology's diversity issues and the need for more young women and people of color to be technically trained, is this obsession with technical skills the wrong way to inspire the next generation of young founders? Is our prioritization of technical talent and the obsessive cult of the technical founder breeding a startup culture that doesn't appreciate the diversity of talents required to succeed?

From Y Combinator's preference for at least one technical cofounder, to the boom in teach-yourself-to-code classes, startup culture telegraphs its preference for hard skills in its CEOs and founders. But are we accidentally alienating the next Steve Jobs (notably not an engineer) with our rhetoric? If a founder sets culture, is an engineering-centric founder pool harmful to building and sustaining diverse startups?

Hashtags

#sxsw #Technical

Presenters

Alexandra Cavoulacos

Founder & COO

The Muse

Alex is a Founder of The Muse, where she crafts plans to conquer the world one feature at a time. In her spare time, Alex can be found on her road bike or tracking down the best froyo in New York C...

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Julie Fredrickson

CEO & Co-Founder

Stowaway

Kathryn Finney

Managing Dir

digitalundivided

Mattan Griffel

CEO

One Month

Details

Access
Interactive Badge, Gold Badge, Platinum Badge
Type
Solo / Dual / Panel
Theme
Startup Village and Business
Level
Intermediate

Thanks to our sponsors

Miller Lite Esurance AT&T IFC Mazda USA Monster Energy McDonalds logo CapitalOne logo PepsiCo logo Austin Chronicle

Music sponsor

Sonic Bids

Interactive sponsor

Phillips logo