The last Mr. Co-founder I had was a sham for the very reasons mentioned here. All talk, very little output with a side of excuses at every sit-down. I was too young and naive at the time to realize what we had was less of a partnership and more of an "I'll treat you like someone I found on canYOUbuildthisforme.com." Definitely a good thing to not be impressed by talk. Not every person who can administer a server can write code to run on that server. Wish I'd known that back then. Lessons learned. :)
One of the lessons I've learned in life is that there are some people that will impress you very much when you first meet them. They will talk a lot about how much they're doing and what's going on for them and it will sound very impressive.
After knowing them for a while I start to see that they are just full of it. This has happened multiple times that I find there is a strong inverse correlation between the amount of talk someone does and the amount they actually get done.
People who has shipped stuff has a portfolio/track record of stuff to show, thus they don't feel the urge to sound overly impressive when meeting someone the first time. imho
Once in a while, I write my blogs using "she" for the entrepreneur. That's how I try to balance things out.
If you know of a non-pedantic way to write and be gender neutral, I'm interested. "He/she" is really annoying to read. I sometimes use "their" as a replacement for "his or her", although it's not grammatically correct. Any better ideas?
Maybe a legal disclaimer at the end of the blog stating that any use of "he" can be replaced by "she" (kind of like a a great constitutional amendment to pass).
PS: note that the use of "Mr. Right" seems to imply that the original founder is a woman, so that startup would be 50/50, not bad considering today's reality.
If you know of a non-pedantic way to write and be gender neutral, I'm interested.
Just use "he." No, hear me out.
I hope it's fairly obvious that "language is usage is language." Given that, one could very well keep using the plural pronoun as neuter[1], and, if it gains enough popularity, it will be grammatically "correct."
An alternative is to continue using the traditional neuter pronoun, which is also the male one. My disruptive proposal is to use it for all situations, especially when the antecedent is obviously female. Don't have separate pronouns for the sexes, and all pronouns become neutral automatically.
Another alternative is to use the pronoun "one." It may be awkward, especially with echoes of the passive voice, but, for me at least, it's more comfortable than hijacking a plural pronoun to use in the singular.
A final alternative is to use "it," but, besides a potential for being derogatory, it carries a significant risk of injecting confusion about what or who is the antecedent.
Disclaimer: I am male.
[1] I'm not entirely comfortable with "gender-neutral", since I'm aware, as I'm sure the OP is, that there are non-English languages that have a concept of word gender separate from sex. My first language, Russian, even has a neuter gender, so even that's not entirely satisfying a word.
I don't think it's sending that message at all. And if the title of a few blog posts encourage you not to seek out a woman as a co-founder, should you really running anything anyway?
