24 Women Allege Sexual Harassment By Investors, and Another VC Gets Demoted (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Friday technology investor Dave McClure tweeted a link to a statement from the new CEO of the start-up incubator he co-founded which announces his demotion after engaging in "inappropriate interactions with women in the tech community." The new CEO of 500 Startups says "I sincerely apologize for the choices he made and the pain and stress they've caused people. But apologies aren't enough without meaningful actions and change. Because of this, we made the decision a few months ago to change the leadership structure at 500." Meanwhile, McClure will attend counseling "to work on changing his perspectives and preventing his previous unacceptable behavior... As much as we want to be part of the solution, we clearly have also been part of the problem."

The same day more than two dozen female entrepreneurs told the New York Times about incidents of sexual harassment in the start-up industry, "often providing corroborating messages and emails." Several women told the Times they were warned that saying anything might lead to ostracism. Chris Sacca -- whose firm invested in Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter -- told the Times he was grateful for the courage of the female entrepreneur who told the Times how he'd propositioned her, and Sacca also wrote in a post on Medium, "I've learned that it's often the less obvious, yet pervasive and questionable, everyday behaviors of men in our industry that collectively make it inhospitable for women... It's the unrelenting, day-to-day culture of dismissiveness that creates a continually bleak environment for women and other underrepresented groups." The article also notes that Justin Caldbeck -- accused by six different founders of making unwanted advances -- worked at three different VC firms over the last seven years. The Times also cites a 2014 admission by investor Pavel Curda that he sent two women text messages asking for sex after a networking event, adding "The new accounts underscore how sexual harassment in the tech start-up ecosystem goes beyond one firm and is pervasive and ingrained."

Comments

Profit is a tax on productivity

[PopeRatzo]

Remember, a "VC" is someone who wants to get rich off of someone else's work and creativity. Parasites. They produce nothing but exploitation. It should not surprise that they seek to exploit everyone they meet.

Re:Profit is a tax on productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

VCs are just like banks: they have money which other people need for stuff. So they loan it out, albeit with a much higher interest rate. Not all of them are terrible, but many of them are.

Re:Profit is a tax on productivity

[El Cubano]

It should not surprise that they seek to exploit everyone they meet.

I think the best way to sum it up is: double standards, we haz them.

Certainly the /. community is more aware of this sort of thing in the VC/entrepreneurship community than the general population. But this sort of thing--people in positions of power taking advantage of those over whom they wield influence--is nothing new. Perhaps there are some industries, occupations, etc. where this is more likely to occur, but it still happens all over the place.

I was reading about a study that was carried out comparing the perceptions of, reactions to, and consequences of male educators sexually exploiting students versus female educators sexually exploiting students. The summary was that people generally tend to perceive it like this: male educator -> evil, female student -> victim; female educator -> troubled, perhaps unhappy with home life/relationship; male student -> "way to score, champ!" This extends to news coverage, trial testimony, even conviction rates and sentencing (men are far more likely to be convicted than women for the same offense and once convicted men serve considerably longer prison sentences).

The double standards in society extend even further. For example, in a divorce the default for custody of children tends to be custody to the mother and visitation for the father. Getting joint custody or full custody to the father usually involved proving some unfitness to parent on the part of the mother. This is starting to change to a more equitable arrangement, but it is a very slow going change. Another good is example is the way that people naturally react very differently to men and women in certain roles, like daycare worker or kindergarten teacher: female daycare/kindergarten teacher -> no issues; male daycare/kindergarten teacher -> alarm bells go off for many parents (he might be a child molester, after all).

I'll bet that there is even an element of social conditioning at play in the whole VC sexual harassment thing. Men are expected to to misbehave. Going back to the different of male/female teachers or workers interacting with young children. I'll bet that lots of parents have a talk like this with their young children: "Johnny/Jane, if your teacher ever touches your private place or makes you touch them, you need to tell mommy and daddy right away." Now, I don't know if it has been studied, but I am willing to bet that for every time this conversation happens in the context of talking to a child of a female authority figure that it happens 10 times in the context of a male authority figure. Result: children grow to expect that males will physically/sexually exploit others. Teaching that is certainly not the goal, but in the interest of protecting our children, we actually reinforce and further ingrain the stereotype.

I don't know what the solution is, but the VC/entrepreneur sexual harassment problem is not going to be solved only in Silicon Valley.

Re:Profit is a tax on productivity

[PopeRatzo]

And yet, we can see an explosion of new ideas in the late 18th century and in the 19th century.

We also see an explosion of new ideas about 2.5million years ago among the Australopithecus. And an explosion of new ideas in the Nile delta about 6000 years ago. And in the Eastern Mediterranean around 750 BC. And in the early Renaissance.

If you think capitalism is the only way to get new ideas in society, you lack imagination or have been utterly brainwashed. If you can't see how late-stage capitalism has actually worked against the creation of new ideas and innovation and the erosion of social structures and human well-being, you just haven't been paying attention.

Re:Profit is a tax on productivity

[LynnwoodRooster]

Bootstrap? I've launched a few ideas - some of them succeeded, some of them didn't - by getting them to prototype/proof-of-concept stage on my own. It can be done, typically, for a few tens of thousands of dollars. If you really are serious about the business, then you'll invest that over a few years of time on your own. And then you can go and start seeking angel seed funding to not only validate your idea (if someone outside your family and friends wants to toss some cash at an idea - it probably has a good chance of success) but help you refine the existing problems in your current solution and make the next pitch up. Start small - the grow. Works really well!

FWIW, one idea is still in limbo (still actively pitching it), another is starting to grow, one raised $50 million in series A and is a growing concern, and three others crashed and burned.

Money-grubbers are unethical?

[TimothyHollins]

Wow, are you seriously telling me that people who love money over everything else in the world would behave immorally? Noooo way.

That does not sound like the money-grubbers we have all come to respect and love (Bank of America, Fannie-Mae, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac)

How to avoid sexual harassment accusations

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Be rich 2. Be good looking

Re:How to avoid sexual harassment accusations

[KiloByte]

3. Don't sexually harass anyone.

That's a condition neither required nor necessary to get accused, and have your life ruined by that.

Listen to PopeRatzo

[Kohath]

Everyone should read PopeRatzo's comment and understand it.

Then think about how much better off you'd be without any of the products or services that were backed by VCs or motivated by profits.

Re:Listen to PopeRatzo

[PopeRatzo]

Then think about how much better off you'd be without any of the products or services that were backed by VCs or motivated by profits.

I'm not saying that profits are all bad, only that we should see them for what they are. Just as not all taxes are bad, since they allow us to have something like a civilized society with roads, indoor plumbing, common defense. It's when profits (or taxes) get beyond a certain border condition that they become socially and economically destructive..

So, I repeat: Profits are a tax on productivity.

I'm not the first person to realize this, of course. Way back in the early 1800s, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was saying the same thing.

Re:Culture of dismissiveness?

[Zemran]

To not believe that the problem is a serious as the media makes it out to be is not dismissive, it is an informed opinion and a valid one. Yes, there are complaints but in factories across the country workers are abused without the opportunity or ability to complain as effectively. Having worked in the sector for decades I see the problem as being grossly exaggerated by SJWs and professional complainants. That is not to say that people who do abuse other should be allowed to. You are welcome to disagree with me but the label "culture of dismissiveness" is as stupid as "Islamophobia" or "homophobia" which are both used to refer to people who are not afraid although terroristophobia might be more accurate.

Re:Culture of dismissiveness?

[Kohath]

The culture of dismissiveness relates to people saying sexual harassment isn't rampant or doesn't happen as much in the tech industry as people say.t.

Because that's the nature of news and storytelling. A story of one event gets repeated 1000 times. It's still one event, not 1000. It's news because it's rare, not because it happens to everyone 50 times a day.

Despite article after article, complaint after complaint, despite all the documented evidence, people, yourself included, either make excuses for why it happens or dismiss the accounts outright.

Myself included in fucking what?. I neither made excuses for [sexual harassment] nor dismissed any accounts of [sexual harassment] outright or otherwise.

Maybe people dismiss you and others like you because you casually make false accusations.

Hi!

[Rei]

"Hi, I'm Dave McClure. You may remember me from such investment proposals as "Shake your ass for this investment cash!" and "Why yes, your funds are in my hotel room - let's go up and fetch them...."

Too much insincerity for one article

[macraig]

Can we please spread that out across several articles at least? That's too much apologetic bullshit to digest in one sitting.

Re: Yet you pigs will deny there's a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking for sex isn't harassment, there's no way to know if an advance is unwanted until it's made.
It's when a rejected attempt is repeated or when the request happens in a formal business setting that it's a problem.

If it was Ryan Gosling investing the money and sending the texts, they'd be all over his dick.

idiots

[l3v1]

I just don't understand these guys. I'm a guy, I've been working in IT/CS-related positions all my adult life, mostly around and with guys, no surprise there. However, every professional experience I had with female co-workers and external project partners has been very positive, successful, and exceptionally smooth. As in all aspects of life, probably not all people are exceptionally talented and I might have been very lucky to work with such women. However, I have to say, everyone willing to gamble with their professional relationships for, how to put it, non-professional reasons, is simply an idiot and not worth having contact with.

Re: Yet you pigs will deny there's a problem

[quax]

Let me help you. Here's my million dollar tip:

Ask for a date first before you ask for sex.

You can thank me later.

Re:Yet you pigs will deny there's a problem

[epyT-R]

The skepticism you refer to exists mainly because feminists have created a credibility problem for women in these matters.

Re: Yet you pigs will deny there's a problem

[quax]

Marriage takes constant effort, and priorities change.

Yet, after so many years one thing is certain, my SO knows me better than anybody else and nobody knows her better than I do.

We are both flawed, but we rely on each other and know that we can. Right now our shared responsibility is the kids. Everything else is secondary. Who knows where things will go once the kids don't need us any more. But one thing is for sure, I will always respect and support her.