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Investors Who Back VC Funds Are Worried About Valley Culture (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Limited partners in venture capital funds are having conversations about how to prevent themselves from investing in the next Binary Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that has collapsed over allegations that one of its co-founders sexually harassed female entrepreneurs. This includes the largest LP trade group -- the Institutional Limited Partners Association -- which tells Axios that it is planning to address these issues this summer, as part of the development of its new ILPA Principles 3.0 document. Silicon Valley, and venture capital in particular, has swept sexual harassment under the rug for decades. Binary Capital, coming on top of the situation at Uber, has grabbed that rug and begun to shake it vigorously.

14 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Funny thing is.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    To be fair, this happens to every niche thing that gets big. There are always a few hardworking folk who get it off the ground, followed by a torrent of bottom feeders seeking gold that ruin the party. The gender politics bit is at right angles to this, and is mainly thanks to awkward my little pony fucks, trying to bang the fat purple haired cows that may decide to mount them, if they are lucky. Basically, losers trying to get laid being played by broken chicks with personality disorders.

  2. Re:Funny thing is.. by lucm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's always been women with terrific math/programming skills. That's nothing new. What's new is that the industry is now bloated with incompetents, it's like a gold rush. And it attracts (in part) immature men and gold digging women. The Julian Assanges, the Ellen Paos. They're the bloat.

    There's no deep social movement, no revolution with long-term impact, no real disruption. The number of competent people in tech hasn't changed over the last 25 years, there's just more incompetents around who think they belong.

    Same shit happened in finance and real estate. Just wait, the pendulum is coming back at some point.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  3. So stop locating there by Kohath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are other, nicer places with better culture.

  4. Re:Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This comment brought to you by the Taliban. Banning women since 1991.

  5. Re:Funny thing is.. by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've said this before, but there are many incompetent males that get hired in computer, but the women who are hired are almost always well above average. There will be equality when incompetent women get hired at the same rate as the incompetent men.

  6. Re:You'll never fix the sexual harassment problem by Darinbob · · Score: 2

    Silicon valley is not very liberal, it's very much libertarian.

  7. Binary Capital by mentil · · Score: 4, Funny

    Binary Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that has collapsed[...]

    So, Binary Capital went from 1 to 0?

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  8. Tech Culture Does Protect Some Harassers by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is more like the baizuo want to push for cultural takeover of SV because they consider it a strategic asset.

    Yup, and they'll defend bullies to do it, as long as those bullies express the right politics. A good example happened just this weekend:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    TL;DW - A feminist panelist at a conference recognizes a critic in the audience and uses her position behind the mic to berate and insult him. The conference acknowledges this as violation of their rules, yet apologizes to her (without ever even contacting the attendee she abused) and still allows her to sit on a second panel about (no bullshit) dealing with harassment and bullying. One of her fellow panelists (IMO one of the kindest and most innocuous humans on the internet) has been anxious for months just knowing he'd be in same room with her and walks on eggshells around her, terrified of what might set her off. Sure enough, after the panel she immediately accosts him and cusses him out.

    The conference eventually releases a public statement making excuse after excuse for her behavior. That's what it means to reach Cruise/Travolta status in your cult, I suppose.

    1. Re: Tech Culture Does Protect Some Harassers by geoskd · · Score: 2, Informative

      he's a harasser that deliberately took up the front rows with a gang of his cronies in a transparent play to intimidate her, and she wasn't having his shit.

      People are not allowed to have it both ways. You can't play the victim and then undertake the same behaviors you are complaining about in others. It makes you a hypocrite. People will put up with a lot, but will not tolerate a hypocrite.

      What she should have done is simply ignore them, and if they start to make a scene, let the crowd take care of them. If the crowd wont do anything about it, then surely the local and possibly national news media will.

      If your boss behaved the way she did, you would make damn sure to watch your back, and a large percentage of your co-workers would be actively looking for a way to get rid of him/her. She may have started out as the victim, but now shes just another part of the problem.

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
  9. Re:Obligatory creimer spam by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    The New York Times had an article about sexual harassment in Silicon Valley.

    Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html

  10. Re:Easy by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2

    Sounds like you would fit in great in the middle east.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  11. This isn't even vaguely new by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have been in the tech world for more than 3 decades. I have also seen the VC scene in many places from big to podunk. I would say that the VC types that I meet come in 3 main flavours. Arrogant bean counters who know what is good for you. Arrogant assholes who think they are god. And Arrogant thieves who pretty much have to rip you off to make themselves feel better.

    My favourite was at a recent tech talk by a woman (who gives government money to VCs) (Canada) who said that she won't give money if the founders make too much (over 100k) but that she was leaving government to become an advisor to a start-up that had recently raised around 5m. I asked her if she was only going to take 100k. She pretty much yelled at me that I had no understanding of the real world.

    Her theory was that if you give the founders more than 100k in salary they become distracted spending it.

    I was wondering how I could expose her in some way for the corruption she was displaying by working for a company she had just given government money to when I witnessed one of the tech people who had attended her talk, keying the living crap out of her car with the words, 100k over and over.

    It was a brand new higher end BMW BTW. On a funny note, there is nothing funnier than some podunk tech "titan" who sells some company for 10-20 mil and starts giving TED style keynote speeches that are the tech equivalent of spiritual mumbo-jumbo while wearing clothing that they spent much time and money on trying to look really casual. The contrast with the person who usually gives a too long winded introduction and wears an ill-fitting off the rack suit just makes it all funnier.

    Then all the desperate start-up types try their damnedest to "network" with the speaker who basically holds out their hand for their ring to be kissed.

    I love how they play up their serial entrepreneur business creds when their actual history is: fail-fail-fail-fail-lottery-fail-fail-fail-fail.

  12. VCs CREATED that culture, and now complain. by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    VCs created the toxic culture in the valley, and now they are crying about how it harms the viability of their equally toxic business model? I hope they all line up and die in a fire, one at a time. The inrush of shitheels is due specifically to VCs handing out money to anyone who can get their crayon sharp enough to draw up a business plan.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Here's the thing by Ryanrule · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not a tech problem. This is a finance problem. Stop hiring the asshole children of rich assholes.