I can't imagine how utterly disheartened I'd be as an entrepreneur if I went to an investor's home and had an experience like that when starting out raising money.
Discouraging. Folks like "Masseuse" that most need to shape up are probably least likely to have the capacity to listen. Maybe it's because having wealth melts ones brain, or maybe a certain level of sociopathy is advantageous in accumulating wealth. However the cause-and-effect works out, I struggle to imagine a person who exhibits such behaviors being fixable through sound reasoning.
The battle to get scummy dudes to behave appropriately feels in some ways like the battle to get thieves not to steal. You can tell a thief not to steal, you can describe to them how a victim feels when their house is broken into, but it just doesn't register. A certain subset of the population lacks the empathy to respond to such appeals.
If the thieving analogy holds, the only way to fix someone like the masseuse would be to threaten punishment, but good luck creating/enforcing that.
The power dynamic of sex influences men's inappropriate behavior. The investor no doubt had a sexual fantasy when he invited the female CEO over to his house and began drinking wine and massaging her. He wanted his investment to be symbolic, to reduce her to a whore. This is misogyny.
The anonymity in that article doesn't help. It doesn't matter how much money you have the kind of behavior described in that article is unacceptable. I like to think that the majority of technologists and entrepreneurs are humanists and they are in it to make the world a better place. I also like to think that if the article wasn't anonymous there would be non-violent collective action to make it known in no uncertain terms that kind of behavior is unacceptable from anyone.
So here's what I think it comes down to: You're an investor. You're at demo day. There's this female founder, and you think she's hot. You interact with her purely professionally, but you still feel the chemistry, and you think she does, too. You want to ask her out, because you think there might be something there. So what do you do?
You resign from your role as a VC/investor. That's what it's going to cost. Then you can ask her out if you want (still respectfully, and giving her the complete freedom to say no if she wants).
But if asking her out isn't worth more to you than your job is, then leave things professional.
>But if asking her out isn't worth more to you than your job is, then leave things professional.
Quit your job just to ask a woman out?
Asking a woman out you recently met isn't sexual harassment.
Some advice to your specific example:
1. Don't do it during demo day. She's a founder, and that's her time to meet with investors.
2. If you are planning on investing in her company- potential conflict of interest. Don't get involved personally.
3. If you don't have any desire to invest in her company-don't mislead your intentions. If you follow up and ask her out, don't be ambiguous with a coffee/lunch meeting that could be construed as business related. Do something that is clearly a date-like activity.
4. Don't use your influence/position for personal advantage.
Yes I'm going to generalize here, but no woman, even if she isn't interested, is going to be upset if you asked her out, if you do so at the appropriate time, appropriate place, and in a respectful way.
You apply for a job or you build a startup and you want to be a professional. You want to do awesome things. Then someone else comes around, whether from a position of power or not and displays romantic or sexual interest towards you. No matter how polite it is, it irreversibly changes the previously professional relationship in a very discomforting way.
It's a dick move and it's shit like this why many women shy away from participating in technology.
Do you believe that this "dick move" is absent in other fields with lots of women? Specifically, do you believe doctors and lawyers ask each other out less than techies?
If "shit like this" is present in every field, it's a poor explanation of why women avoid technology but no those other fields.
Now if you want to rescue this hypothesis, you could point out that doctors aren't a bunch of low status nerds. But that's a naughty hypothesis, so I'm sure you won't go there.
If you don't understand why this needs to be done, you're part of the problem. If you think romantic overtures as an investor to a founder is 'ok', or should be ok, you're part of the problem.
EDIT: For those of you who think this is too harsh, you're proving my point. Sexism in tech will start to become less of a problem once people recognize that it's an issue. If you don't think it's an issue -- you're part of the problem.
> Sexism in tech will start to become less of a problem once people recognize that it's an issue.
I completely, totally, 100% agree. And not only in tech, and the same with racism, homophobia, and other related issues.
But I don't agree that simple ignorance makes you part of the problem -- although I do agree that ignorance makes it more likely that you will perpetrate these kinds of problems accidentally.
As a white, heterosexual, privileged man I don't have a very good instinctive sense for the problems that those less privileged than me face. Gradually, but mostly four or so years ago, I decided I should learn some more, and started asking people and searching the net.
When I did this, I found learning about this to be a much more grueling process than it seems it should have been. In particular, I found some people (not all) who were more eager to belittle me for my ignorance than to simply to explain the problems that they have faced, or refer to me to some resource that would.
At the core I think that both of us agree: that it would be a very good thing if more people learned about racism, sexism, and related issues. I believe that your comment detracts from, rather than supports, this goal.
Your first sentence is a bit off. I for one didn't know this needed to be done. I was under the general impression that investors that work with YC were high caliber and professional. It never crossed my mind that anyone associated with YC would be anything but that. Sad that my high level of expectations are so obviously wrong.
The only way to stop bullying is to stand up to bullies. I know it's difficult and there may be consequences, but I really believe the right way to handle this is to gather up a bunch of these stories and publish them with full disclosure of the names of people involved.
You don't change a culture of harassment by quietly warning people about who is a harasser. You change the culture by ostracizing people who behave that badly.
I perfectly understand intolerance towards sexual harassment but I wonder what qualifies as "inappropriate romantic behavior" in this context. You can not ask a founder "on a date"? What's if is the other way around?
EDIT: of course this is coming from a nobody. I'm just curious.
Correct: if your interactions with a founder are cabined by professional settings --- demo days, funding pitches, going for coffee to talk about their company --- romantic overtures are inappropriate. Similarly: if you're in process, at any stage, with a company, overtures to their founders are inappropriate.
Any kind of romantic behavior is probably inappropriate, due to the power/incentive imbalance. A founder is trying to get money, an investor has money, and romantic overtures are really difficult to separate from the "getting money" problem.
In either case, it's inappropriate. Professionally, it creates a major conflict of interest. Personally, it create a power dynamic where the founder may be indebted to the founder and facilitate unethical interaction.
The other responses are excellent, but I'll add my two cents. There is good reason to interpret this language broadly. Its really shitty when someone you assumed was interested in you as a potential investment (or as a coworker or mentor or contact or just an ally in office politics), turns out to just be interested in getting into your pants. Hitting on someone at demo day is just the tip of the iceberg. This goes all the way down to asking out someone on your team. This shit is just toxic up and down.
I think in this context, investor <--> founder is analagous to boss <--> employee, so I guess you'd have to take similar steps to manage it i.e. recuse yourself from investment decisions regarding that company.
I guess it would be equally awkward. In such a case, the people involved should at least wait until there is no more professional connection between them.
Furthermore, from a business standpoint, it's understandable that YCombinator doesn't want this kind of thing. It seems very dangerous for the company, without any advantage.
Sadly, I sometimes worry that explicit moves like this deter investors from working with female founders. If the risk is, "I have to watch every little thing I say/joke with a female founder lest I get blacklisted", if I was a VC, I might choose to avoid female founders altogether. Wonder if the better solution involves more carrot and less stick.
> If the risk is, "I have to watch every little thing I say/joke with a female founder lest I get blacklisted", if I was a VC, I might choose to avoid female founders altogether.
That's rich. People who think like that should really take some time to read a few first-person accounts on sexism and misogyny in tech industry. Once you've read about how women have to worry about their appearance and behavior on a daily basis just to be able to somewhat tone down the sexism they're exposed to, men's complaints about how they might have to start worrying a bit more become laughable.
To illustrate, here's an excerpt from the Forbes story making rounds on Twitter [1]:
Unlike my male peers, who could wear anything from jeans and a hoodie to a well-tailored suit, I had to choose my attire carefully. Feminine but not sexy, structured but not form fitting, classy but not too expensive, lest I imply that I was bad at bootstrapping and not "scrappy enough," professional but not so stuffy that people would assume our product lacked creativity. My hair was almost always worn in a bun or pulled back conservatively.
During the ten years that I worked in international development, clothing was a tool to defuse gender, a strategy for gaining access to an almost exclusively male professional environment. We referred to it as "taking on the third gender." For all its self-regard as the most forward-thinking place on earth, it seemed I would need to use the same tactics in Silicon Valley.
> if I was a VC, I might choose to avoid female founders altogether.
If you're a VC, you should be adept at assessing risk. If you think that the "risk" of working with female founders outweighs the potential upside, you're definitely not going to be touching my money and I'd rather not have any of yours.
"Sadly, I sometimes worry that explicit moves like this deter investors from working with female founders."
Where did you read anything about gender in that reminder from Jessica? That was guidance on behavior. I'm sure YC has strong positions on racism, but that doesn't in any way imply that VCs should be concerned about working with founders from different races/ethnicities.
It's the same effect, I think, that has caused your comment to receive a number of upvotes but very little (i.e. zero at the time of writing) agreement in the child comments.
Personally, I see where you're coming from. I learn more about how sexism manifests itself in the tech industry every week, it seems. Even with good intentions and a lot of conscious thought about the issue, it doesn't seem extremely unlikely that some action I previously considered harmless could be taken the wrong way.
One day there may be a VC that only interacts with potential investments through the internet where no age, gender, height, orientation, religion, etc. is ever disclosed, both by the investor and investees. The only information to go off of would be the product/service, the business plan, and the integrity of the idea. Funny how this hasn't really caught on yet...
I have always been pessimistic about the glorification of Silicon Valley, but this puts me over the edge to be utterly disgusted with everything that is the Tech world.
It might as well be a giant cult, where the "priests" (VCs and/or wealthy individuals in general) get to have sex with the women (people) of their choice. I am absolutely disgusted. The level of hypocrisy in this industry is horrendous. Until the Tech community can clean up its own act, it need not apply for 'cleaning up the world'.
There is a systemic attitude justifying these actions in the minds of these individuals. Just because they may be extremal outliers does not mean that their thinking was independent of their environment.
EDIT: I would like to add: And just because you write software, or helped build a company, or invested in a company that created a widely adopted piece of software, does NOT make you some sort of (semi-)savior of the world. I strongly believe that much of the chauvinism we are seeing is derived from the already large (undeserved) egotistical foundation much of S.V. sustains/feeds/nourishes itself off of.
"Venture capital is a relationship-driven business: a who-you-know world rather than a what-you-know world. First introductions and producers are found through social rather than professional circles, and a good number of those social circuits just don’t belong in this century. Even if the VCs aren’t racist, many of the the social intermediaries and clubs one must navigate in order to get to them are." [0]
Something I've been wondering since the Forbes article - is inappropriate investor behavior illegal? The things described there would unambiguously be sexual harassment if someone's manager did them; it seems unfortunate if the only tool to fight investor/founder harassment is social pressure.
Depends on what behavior we're talking about, but the simplest answer is no - lots of inappropriate behavior is not illegal.
It's not an investor-founder story, but a related and eye-opening read is the story from the co-founder of Meebo, titled "Why I Now Believe the Glass Ceiling Is Real"[0].
>Y Combinator has a zero tolerance policy for inappropriate sexual or romantic behavior from investors toward founders.
This implies that some sexual or romantic behavior from investors toward founders would be considered appropriate. If that's not the intended message, inappropriate should be replaced with something like 'any and all'.
While I'm not in any startup circles at the moment I would be curious for some clarification. Is it ever acceptable for an investor to pursue a romantic relationship with a founder? After the founder is funded (by another investor), for example. Or if the founder initiates?
EDIT: anyone want to explain the down votes? I point out what I find to be a confusing point in the message and ask for clarification. I didn't even express an opinion on the overall matter one way or the other. I simply asked for clarification and made what I thought was a useful suggestion. In what way is anything I wrote offensive or otherwise worthy of being down voted?
Not working with them is a great step. Will you also publish names of people who act inappropriately (assuming it is safe and legally in the clear) so others can steer clear as well? Not only would that be further discouragement, it seems like an area where keeping the knowledge internal isn't a competitive advantage and would likely lead to a backchannel of gossip floating around (I hear x can't work with yc companies anymore)
This reminds me of HR departments that send out emails to the entire company telling them to watch their asses on their sick time because BY GOD some single person misused it and it will not happen again.
OK YC how about counseling the person that did it instead of treating everyone else like trash.
While everybody can understand the anger, the bad behaviors of some individuals must not be generalized to a profession, can it? Maybe "Demo Day attendees" would be more appropriate than investors.
People actually do this?! (I'm sure there is precedent since JL took the time to write the post, but it's still mindboggling to me that someone would actually try it)
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|11 years ago|reply
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/07/what-it...
[+] [-] mmaunder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wbharding|11 years ago|reply
The battle to get scummy dudes to behave appropriately feels in some ways like the battle to get thieves not to steal. You can tell a thief not to steal, you can describe to them how a victim feels when their house is broken into, but it just doesn't register. A certain subset of the population lacks the empathy to respond to such appeals.
If the thieving analogy holds, the only way to fix someone like the masseuse would be to threaten punishment, but good luck creating/enforcing that.
[+] [-] hashberry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkarapetyan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|11 years ago|reply
You resign from your role as a VC/investor. That's what it's going to cost. Then you can ask her out if you want (still respectfully, and giving her the complete freedom to say no if she wants).
But if asking her out isn't worth more to you than your job is, then leave things professional.
[+] [-] balls187|11 years ago|reply
Quit your job just to ask a woman out?
Asking a woman out you recently met isn't sexual harassment.
Some advice to your specific example:
1. Don't do it during demo day. She's a founder, and that's her time to meet with investors.
2. If you are planning on investing in her company- potential conflict of interest. Don't get involved personally.
3. If you don't have any desire to invest in her company-don't mislead your intentions. If you follow up and ask her out, don't be ambiguous with a coffee/lunch meeting that could be construed as business related. Do something that is clearly a date-like activity.
4. Don't use your influence/position for personal advantage.
Yes I'm going to generalize here, but no woman, even if she isn't interested, is going to be upset if you asked her out, if you do so at the appropriate time, appropriate place, and in a respectful way.
[+] [-] tptacek|11 years ago|reply
Good call.
[+] [-] DrJokepu|11 years ago|reply
It's a dick move and it's shit like this why many women shy away from participating in technology.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|11 years ago|reply
If "shit like this" is present in every field, it's a poor explanation of why women avoid technology but no those other fields.
Now if you want to rescue this hypothesis, you could point out that doctors aren't a bunch of low status nerds. But that's a naughty hypothesis, so I'm sure you won't go there.
[+] [-] elleferrer|11 years ago|reply
This is very true.
[+] [-] ctide|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: For those of you who think this is too harsh, you're proving my point. Sexism in tech will start to become less of a problem once people recognize that it's an issue. If you don't think it's an issue -- you're part of the problem.
[+] [-] impendia|11 years ago|reply
I completely, totally, 100% agree. And not only in tech, and the same with racism, homophobia, and other related issues.
But I don't agree that simple ignorance makes you part of the problem -- although I do agree that ignorance makes it more likely that you will perpetrate these kinds of problems accidentally.
As a white, heterosexual, privileged man I don't have a very good instinctive sense for the problems that those less privileged than me face. Gradually, but mostly four or so years ago, I decided I should learn some more, and started asking people and searching the net.
When I did this, I found learning about this to be a much more grueling process than it seems it should have been. In particular, I found some people (not all) who were more eager to belittle me for my ignorance than to simply to explain the problems that they have faced, or refer to me to some resource that would.
At the core I think that both of us agree: that it would be a very good thing if more people learned about racism, sexism, and related issues. I believe that your comment detracts from, rather than supports, this goal.
[+] [-] geuis|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] impendia|11 years ago|reply
I would revise to: If you don't understand why this needs to be done, you should read more and learn more until you do understand.
[+] [-] cjensen|11 years ago|reply
You don't change a culture of harassment by quietly warning people about who is a harasser. You change the culture by ostracizing people who behave that badly.
[+] [-] tuneladora|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: of course this is coming from a nobody. I'm just curious.
[+] [-] tptacek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkurt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadders|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcatek|11 years ago|reply
Furthermore, from a business standpoint, it's understandable that YCombinator doesn't want this kind of thing. It seems very dangerous for the company, without any advantage.
[+] [-] DrJokepu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kluny|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simplemind|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeMage|11 years ago|reply
That's rich. People who think like that should really take some time to read a few first-person accounts on sexism and misogyny in tech industry. Once you've read about how women have to worry about their appearance and behavior on a daily basis just to be able to somewhat tone down the sexism they're exposed to, men's complaints about how they might have to start worrying a bit more become laughable.
To illustrate, here's an excerpt from the Forbes story making rounds on Twitter [1]:
Unlike my male peers, who could wear anything from jeans and a hoodie to a well-tailored suit, I had to choose my attire carefully. Feminine but not sexy, structured but not form fitting, classy but not too expensive, lest I imply that I was bad at bootstrapping and not "scrappy enough," professional but not so stuffy that people would assume our product lacked creativity. My hair was almost always worn in a bun or pulled back conservatively.
During the ten years that I worked in international development, clothing was a tool to defuse gender, a strategy for gaining access to an almost exclusively male professional environment. We referred to it as "taking on the third gender." For all its self-regard as the most forward-thinking place on earth, it seemed I would need to use the same tactics in Silicon Valley.
[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/07/what-it...
[+] [-] yid|11 years ago|reply
If you're a VC, you should be adept at assessing risk. If you think that the "risk" of working with female founders outweighs the potential upside, you're definitely not going to be touching my money and I'd rather not have any of yours.
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
Where did you read anything about gender in that reminder from Jessica? That was guidance on behavior. I'm sure YC has strong positions on racism, but that doesn't in any way imply that VCs should be concerned about working with founders from different races/ethnicities.
Just don't be a jerk, and you'll be fine.
[+] [-] elsigh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srcreigh|11 years ago|reply
Personally, I see where you're coming from. I learn more about how sexism manifests itself in the tech industry every week, it seems. Even with good intentions and a lot of conscious thought about the issue, it doesn't seem extremely unlikely that some action I previously considered harmless could be taken the wrong way.
[+] [-] mkal_tsr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatforce5|11 years ago|reply
Best take him to the gym and do manly guy things like working out and hanging out in the steam room to prove his masculinity.
[+] [-] LandoCalrissian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StandardFuture|11 years ago|reply
It might as well be a giant cult, where the "priests" (VCs and/or wealthy individuals in general) get to have sex with the women (people) of their choice. I am absolutely disgusted. The level of hypocrisy in this industry is horrendous. Until the Tech community can clean up its own act, it need not apply for 'cleaning up the world'.
There is a systemic attitude justifying these actions in the minds of these individuals. Just because they may be extremal outliers does not mean that their thinking was independent of their environment.
EDIT: I would like to add: And just because you write software, or helped build a company, or invested in a company that created a widely adopted piece of software, does NOT make you some sort of (semi-)savior of the world. I strongly believe that much of the chauvinism we are seeing is derived from the already large (undeserved) egotistical foundation much of S.V. sustains/feeds/nourishes itself off of.
[+] [-] chillingeffect|11 years ago|reply
[0] http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-th...
[+] [-] davidtgoldblatt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimeracoder|11 years ago|reply
Depends on what behavior we're talking about, but the simplest answer is no - lots of inappropriate behavior is not illegal.
It's not an investor-founder story, but a related and eye-opening read is the story from the co-founder of Meebo, titled "Why I Now Believe the Glass Ceiling Is Real"[0].
[0] http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2013/10/11/elaine-wherry-w...
[+] [-] avalaunch|11 years ago|reply
This implies that some sexual or romantic behavior from investors toward founders would be considered appropriate. If that's not the intended message, inappropriate should be replaced with something like 'any and all'.
While I'm not in any startup circles at the moment I would be curious for some clarification. Is it ever acceptable for an investor to pursue a romantic relationship with a founder? After the founder is funded (by another investor), for example. Or if the founder initiates?
EDIT: anyone want to explain the down votes? I point out what I find to be a confusing point in the message and ask for clarification. I didn't even express an opinion on the overall matter one way or the other. I simply asked for clarification and made what I thought was a useful suggestion. In what way is anything I wrote offensive or otherwise worthy of being down voted?
[+] [-] dkasper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peeters|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coreyja|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] god_bless_texas|11 years ago|reply
OK YC how about counseling the person that did it instead of treating everyone else like trash.
[+] [-] highCs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerryhuang100|11 years ago|reply
https://www.secret.ly/p/pivdbsyntyokipbsamvffpbvfy
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|11 years ago|reply
Overall, I think it's good to make this explicit. People rarely harass / victimize up the power hierarchy.
[+] [-] coffeemug|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]