My eyes scanned the cafeteria. I muttered “there’s a fuc***g lot of testosterone here.”

Matthieu, my co-founder, followed my gaze and joked, “are you referring to yourself?” I chuckled, but I was shocked: the last time I had seen so many young white men was when I was a midshipman at the US Naval Academy.

It was now 20+ years later and we were at Y Combinator, about to interview for YC S14. We had answered their call-to-action for more female founder applications, but the sight that beheld me made me doubtful. I grew more skeptical during our interview. Their staccato, interrogation-style questioning made it difficult to communicate: how does one explain building block chain infrastructure in a few seconds? They asked about users: how many users will you have in two months? how will you get users? what are users doing now? how will you make money?

We had no users. We had no traction. We were nothing but two founders with a proof-of-concept.

We didn’t get into YC: Sam Altman told us they did not think we could ever inspire Bitcoin developers to build on top of us.