The technology world has been widely criticized 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.

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