From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: It’s true about men also. Unless you come from our kinds of backgrounds, you don’t reach this community. If you come from an average background, you don’t have much of a choice than go through the bootstrapping route. We belong to a very privileged elite class of people who have access. Most of the industries don’t have that access.

Aparna Dhinakaran: Maybe we agree to disagree on this one.

When you ask women entrepreneurs if they are facing personal bias, it’s not an easy topic to talk about. You’re trying to build your business and you’re not trying to alienate people in this process. You need to be able to handle the cards and deal with them the best you can. On a day-to-day basis, I try to not let that impede me.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely.

Aparna Dhinakaran: I have a male co-founder. There’s a very tangible difference between how people interact with him and with me. I see it day to day. Of course, I can chalk that up to maybe he’s older or whatever it is.

When you ask me outright about facing personal bias, I see someone who is different. I see myself in the experiences that I have. Me and him talk about this. It’s something that we outright acknowledge what the differences are. How do you even lean into it? Acknowledging it is a way to make people want to be on your journey. It’s a hard question to answer.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, this is why the conversation is important. One of the issues that you are experiencing in this journey is you are with a male co-founder who has done it before.

Aparna Dhinakaran: There are so many of these day-to-day things. These are patterns and subtle interactions that you pick up on. One thing that I learn is I tend to believe the women who I talk to. I think it’s similar sometimes to people who are picking up on subtle patterns. I try to convince myself first that it’s not. It’s easier to do my job that way.

Sramana Mitra: There is a personal choice and there is a society-level choice. The question that I don’t know is, if in sales scenarios, customers are not buying from female founders.

Aparna Dhinakaran: It’s especially hard to talk about this. It’s not an easy question to answer.

Sramana Mitra: It’s not an easy question, but the conversations need to happen. Part of the industry moving forward and society moving forward is that these conversations need to happen.

Aparna Dhinakaran: I feel like it’s easier to have these conversations with someone who’s going through it as well. That’s why you don’t hear about it until it’s a big sensationalized story. The nuanced day-to-day stuff, you can’t explicitly call that bias. Maybe someone just had a bad day. It’s very hard to pinpoint it and call it out. Most of the time, choosing to ignore it is how some people deal with it.

Sramana Mitra: For most of us who’ve had to travel this path, we have no choice. We have to move forward. In moving forward, you have to take whatever comes and figure out how to deal with it. It was very nice to meet you.

Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize
1 2 3 4 5 6 7