Hire women. I didn’t really understand why until hearing Elizabeth Lawley’s talk, Breaking Into the Boys’ Club: How Diversifying Your Team Can Expand Your Market. That’s when the reason first clicked.

Hiring women will make you rich.

Successful tech products that performed well with women (MovableType, Blogger, The Sims) had women playing key roles in design and implementation. To the extent that that’s true, you’d be shifting from a market of products designed by/for men to a market that’s much less crowded, and just as big. It’s actually better than doubling your opportunity because you’re both doubling the size of your market and shrinking the number of competitors.

I’ve worked with some great women in tech (director of the internet group at mastercard, sysadmin manager at mastercard, director of O’Reily’s internet group, CIO at O’Reilly) but I have almost no idea where you find these women.

Today, Gaba (lead tech for Babes in Toyland) sent us a link to some resources for hiring women.

All of this reminds me of a quip from my college advisor as they hired their fourth CS professor, “Today we’ve increased diversity by hiring a thin white male.”

Updated: Marc says not to forget Flickr (duh, i once sat awestruck on a panel with Caterina) and to check out Ben Trott’s take on Mena’s involvement in MovableType.