3.05.2010

Witty Irishmen

I had the incredible opportunity last night to hear Rory O'Driscoll of Scale Ventures speak about the venture capital industry. Phenomenal speaker. The man is effing brilliant -- he kept throwing out references to macroeconomic concepts in relation to his work and he always had a couple of answers to each question depending on how you looked at the issue.

A couple of gems stuck with me:

"Relying on people to do the right thing for other people is not a scaleable process."

"You don't need to cap your upside going in. Life will cap your upside for you."

"You know I'm not lying now because we're talking with money."

Brilliant Man.

3.03.2010

Told You I'm Not the Only One

Even SF Weekly thinks SF is a tough city for women looking to date men.

This week they featured an article about a pick-up artist who tried to teach SF women how to pick up men in the city...and found it more difficult than he expected.

Read for yourself: Girl Game

Some favorite excerpts:
...being a single, straight woman in this city can be an exercise in frustration and humiliation. All around the city, successful single women complain about not being able to find quality partners.

Although there's no hard data to prove it, anecdotal evidence abounds.
One possible explanation is that in San Francisco, men who aren't gay, married, or damaged by a previous owner are decidedly cagey when it comes to dating and relationships. "Men are more timid here to ask women out," says Emily Morse, a local radio show host who regularly discusses sex and relationships. "They also seem to think dating just isn't cool."
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"I've never had as much trouble finding people to date as I have here," a woman wrote. It was the first response to an SF Weekly tweet calling for women fed up with the dating scene in San Francisco and willing to subject themselves to a pickup artist's workshop. "I moved to the city after a nasty breakup, expecting to casually date people," she continued. "I couldn't even get laid at first."

Plenty of other responses zoomed in, many including pointed complaints about male-female relations. "I've never seen so much dating down in my life," a woman wrote, referring to how many couples she knows that seem to include a smart, attractive woman and an average, barely tolerable guy.
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In San Francisco, though, women have to deal with a lot of ambiguity. "We don't even know what it is," Valencia said of some men she has encountered around the city. "Is it gay? Is it straight? Is it a friend Is it a foe? Is it looking for a job? Is it looking for a place to crash?"
Another contributing factor to the dating doldrums: "There's no pressure to grow up here," she says. "The way I act now is pretty much the same way I acted when I was 24. It's culturally reinforced here. Nobody cares that you're in your late 30s and have roommates."
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But as someone who has lived in New York City, she has noticed that in San Francisco, men are not very bold in approaching women.
"Here, there are all these group get-togethers," she says. "Men prefer to see women a few times before asking them out." And, as in any other city full of young, ambitious people, San Franciscans seem less interested in settling down than in exploring their options.
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Maybe it was because we were out on a Wednesday. Maybe we had chosen the wrong bar. But that particular scenario — having just a couple of attractive men to fight over, finding out they're gay, then hitting on them anyway — seemed a perfect representation of what it's like for a single woman in San Francisco.
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Valencia said her mother has a theory about men. "A good guy is like a good bra," she used to say. "He should uplift and make you look beautiful. He should fit really well. He should flatter you and never poke you in the wrong place or make you uncomfortable."
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Dating's hard! (said in an incredibly whiny voice, of course)