This story is a lot less interesting than the story of the coworkers switching email signatures that's linked at the end imo, because that experiment started unintentionally.

Funny, we are doing the opposite.

Good for them. The startup scene is so incredibly rigged against outsiders [0], I don't see this as a problem at all. Every other startup founder is "doing whatever it takes". You think Mark Zuckerberg was 100% ethical in all of his actions? 80%? 50%??? It's not like this sort of fib could even hurt anyone.

[0] of any kind, be it the university you went to or the town you're from, but obviously women and minorities are the most visible.

Why is this propaganda on HN?

Because someone posted it. Follow-up question: Why is this on the front page? Because people upvoted it. Why did people upvote it? Your guess is as good as mine, maybe they thought it's interesting.

Can we now go back to discussing the content of the article?

Given the number of conversations recently about sexism in tech on HN, this seems perfectly placed given it's an excellent demonstration that it's still a problem.

Why do you consider it "propaganda"?

As (male) founder of collecture.io, I am happy to say that our experiences differs quite a lot!

Our newest addition to the team works primarily in sales. She's not the first woman on the small team, but she's the one that has most contact with the outside world (by mail and phone) and to be honest, not only is she doing a better job in that position than I could, but I guess that her being a woman gets her a lot of very polite and positive responses.

Maybe it's a small sample size, maybe it's a cultural thing (we are situated in Zurich, Switzerland), maybe it's something else.