We were pleased to host a thought-provoking evening of conversation at Marketsite last night: the New York Tech Meetup and NASDAQ’s Conversations with Women in Tech event. (Watch the webcast here.)

NYTM managing director Jessica Lawrence opened the event with our headline quote, setting the tone with this message: There’s no achievement gap, and there’s no ambition gap between men and women in the tech world. There is, however, a comfort gap — but hopefully frank conversations like last night’s, about where the community needs to go from here, will move the tech community towards a new set point where men and women can work together to develop ideas, recruit broadly and build great companies.

Below the jump, a few standout quotes from each of the five other speakers who took the stage (Rachel Sklar, Founder, Change The Ratio; Tara Hunt, CEO, Buyosphere; Anil Dash, Co-founder, Activate & ThinkUp; Amy Quispe,Senior at Carnegie Melon & HackNY fellow; and Cindy Gallop,Founder, IfWeRanTheWorld/MakeLoveNotPorn) to share their thoughts on the status of women in tech and where the community needs to go next.

Rachel Sklar, Founder, Change The Ratio: “Nora Ephron said, ‘My religion is ‘get over it.” I actually do that every day, and that’s so clearly what Nora Ephron did. Criticism we get as women in tech, or women in any industry we’re in — we need to take it, use it, build our brand off it, and then get over it.”

Tara Hunt, CEO, Buyosphere: “We need to think about how we all are biased, and how the worlds we live in perpetuate these biases. Think about when we say “she’s being self promotional,” or “of course he’s a coder.” We need to think about what kind of bias we have that’s impacting the men in tech, the women in tech, and the future of the women and men in tech.”

Anil Dash, Co-founder, Activate & ThinkUp: “There’s this weird idea out there that the bar for men — like the Google motto — is just, “Don’t Be Evil.” That’s a really low bar. I wake up in the morning and I’m not evil. I come home at night, still not evil. I have a cat that’s mostly not evil, a dog that’s not at all evil. Don’t be evil is the lowest bar you can possibly set for someone. For the women and the men out there: you should not settle for the bar being that low.”

Amy Quispe, Senior at Carnegie Melon & HackNY fellow: “When you see people, men or women, that you think will be good in the tech world, you have to go tell them, ‘You are exactly the person that does this kind of thing, because you are a smart, creative person that likes to solve problems.’ Say that over and over.”

Cindy Gallop, Founder, IfWeRanTheWorld/MakeLoveNotPorn: “All of us are building better worlds. But the best possible world is one we can all build together. A better world for women is a better world for men.”