Greetings.

I am Cheyenne Cartwright the co-founder of TCombinator, working in tandem with Allison.

I'd like to take the opportunity to address several matters here, point by point.

First, as callahad points out, there is some indirection going on. As people continue to debate the validity of our very existence, as transwoman, the point is being lost that we seek to give viable startups a helping hand by way of investment, a business model that has already proven effective in itself.

Second, our business is being mischaracterized as focusing on our identity. Our business is focused on viable startups, and it is targeted at trans folk. This is a very important difference which is easy to illustrate.

If our business were focused on our identity, especially within the boundaries set by culture at large and how it stereotypes us, then our business would not seek talent and solid ideas to fund. Instead, it would be, at best, a charitable organization aimed at meeting the basic medical needs of transfolk. Alternatively, and in keeping with the general assumptions about us, we would be exploiting trans folk as sex workers, something both I and Allison are intimately familiar with as our job opportunities, education, and even our families turned us out.

Third, generalizing a truth applicable to all humans based on one's own limited observations only manages to show how little observation was accomplished, and how poorly those observations were connected to a claim. Behaviors deemed "gender deviant" are as old as homosexual behaviors (as if we should even dignify the naturalistic fallacy with an endorsement). People say that "transgender" is new, and it is plain that it is only as new as "homosexual" is itself, since no one had that identity, or label, available to them until the late 19th century at the earliest. In any case, it does not mean that there have never been "trans" people until "recently". South Solowesi has, for many centuries, had 5 established genders, and both the kathooey of Thailand and the Hijras of India, along with scores of other peoples have been with us a very long time, and in some cases, before the Common Era.

Fourth, and very briefly, there is no arguing with people who unironically believe either that it is acceptable for everyone that one group be exploited to raise another group up, or that the simple act of being who we are, and daring to show our faces in the world by attempting to be citizens within it, means we deserve a subaltern place in society, that it is the cross we must accept.

Besides, we already do accept it, but we cannot be asked to accept it in silence, or accede to people's ignorant discomfort when it comes to whether or not we have access to housing and meaningful labor.

Beliefs like that are either hardened intractably, or lazy to the point where I doubt this comment will even be read, so I won't argue those points. That's me being realistic.

Even less attention is given to those who thought this post was an appropriate forum for dehumanizing jokes. I can only with you well, and that your companies are never embarrassed by having your identities linked to such talk.

What we want to discuss is business. We have a business model that is tried and true. It will be up to the market to determine the value of what our startups produce, and we accept that. We aren't particularly interested in apologizing for our efforts to move beyond survival sex work, or helping others to do so, nor are we going to have a discussion that assumes from the beginning that our identities, our selves, are up for debate. There are numerous comparable ventures for other minority entrepreneurs, precisely because of how discrimination impacts them, and how "the best person for the job" is often just a mask for the person who had the most privilege in their background to enable their own rise.

We welcome questions about what we want to accomplish and how we will do so, what we are doing now, even some questions about who we are. Just remember that we, like any of you here, are above invasive, cruel, dismissive, or inappropriate questions.