The technology world has been widely criticised for its sexism problem. Now, two female entrepreneurs have revealed they had to invent a male co-founder in order to get their firm started.

Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer, who founded the online art marketplace Witchsy, created an imaginary third co-founder Keith Mann, which they would use to correspond with male developers and designers.

It came after developers and designers, most of whom were male, used a condescending tone towards them. In one instance, a developer opened an email with the phrase, "Okay, girls". Another attempted to delete their website after Gazin declined his offer of a date.

"It was like night and day," Dwyer told Fast Company after they started to send emails under the "Keith" pseudonym.

"It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but could also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with."