Can a venture capital blacklist stop sexual harassment?
SANJOSE, Calif.—Badly shake nov era flood of female founders accusing investors of sexual harassment, Silicon Valley’ s venture capital community is searching for a new kind of pitch — one that will end unwanted workplace come-ons, groping and off-color jokes.
Investors and entrepreneurs are crowdsourcing solutions, launching startup sand creating online tools to tackle the issue. At least three groups, including prestigious Mountain View-based startup accelerator YCombinator, are compiling black lists of bad actors by inviting founders to file complaints online. Another startup is working on an online platform to provide resources and legal help to sexual harassment victims, while a group of venture capitalists is drafting a universal code of conduct for investors.
“What everyone’ s looking for right now is tangible, actionable steps for what’ s next, and I think that’s what we’re providing.” said Lisa Wang, co-founder of She Worx, a global community of female founders. Wang, who has been the victim of discrimination and harassment herself—from VCs assuming she was a male colleague’ s assistant, to an investor pro positioning her during a business discussion—recently posted a form on the She Worx website where women can report inappropriate behavior.
The push for a solution comes after more than a dozen women came forward to accuse V Cs of sexual harassment in recent weeks, allegations that have cost several investors their jobs. Binary Capital founder Justin Caldbeck resigned in June after six women accused him of making unwelcome advances ranging from late-night texts to groping. A week later ,500 Start ups founder Dave McClure re signed after publicly apologizing for coming onto multiple women in work related settings. And last month, Frank Ar tale, a Seattle-based managing director at Ignition Partners, resigned after he was accused of misconduct. Earlier this month Greylock revealed that the firm’ s chief operating officer, Tom Frangione, resigned in July over what a spokeswoman called “behavior which would represent a significant lap se of judgment .” The claims were internal and did not involve a founder.
Online resources and reporting tools can be helpful for women who don’t know who to turn to when they are harassed, but they’ re only the first step in solving the broader problem, said San Francisco-based employment attorney Men aka Fernando.
“At the end of the day, this problem is not going togo away ,” she said, “until companies, CEOs in tech and elsewhere, VC firms, can look in ward and are able to understand that this is a problem that they have and that they need to make it a priority.”
Stamping out sexual harassment has become the top priority of the National Venture Capital Association, said NV CA President and CEO Bobby Franklin. The NV CA earlier this month took the unusual step of holding a special board meeting to address the issue —the first time the association has called an unscheduled meeting in atleast 10 years.
“We are spending lots of time and attention on this ,” Franklin said.
The NV CA last month put out a public call for suggestions and since then has received dozens of responses, Franklin said. At this month’ s meeting, the board agreed to seek expert input on those ideas and to pursue partnerships with organizations who want to be involved, such as the Institutional Limited Partners Association.
But some experts wonder whether the industry—in which just 11 percent of investing partners are women, according to an NV CA study—is going far enough to preventsexual harassment between V Cs and founders. Many venture capital firms have policies that don’ t specifically cover inappropriate behaviorbetween founder sand V Cs, because founders aren’t the VC firms’ employees. That means the harassment can fall into a gray area, without clear reporting channels or re course for founders.
“It’ s against the law, and especiallybecause it’ s turned out to be such a rampant issue, it should absolutely be part of their policies and their training,” Fernando said.
Better Brave, a new San Francisco-based startup, in July launched an online platform designed to better inform sexual harassment victims of their options. Users can find information about what behaviors qualify as harassment, a guide on what to do if they’ ve been harassed, or they can connect with a vet ted employment lawyer for a free consultation.
“If you talk to the targets of harassment, they’ re almost always unsure of what to do or who to talk to, ”saidco-founder GraceChoi.
Meanwhile, the recent slew of sexual harassment scandals prompted one group of seven female entrepreneurs to create FairFunders—aplatformwhere founders rate and review investors.
“They don’t have to go waste time pitching to investors who won’t give us fair treatment,” said MountainView-basedfounder Layla Sabourian, who hopes to launch the platform publicly in aboutamonth.
Sabourian could have used that type of feedback to weed out biased investors wheneducation tech startup Chef Koochooloo. When investors found out S ab our ian was am other, she says they often doubted her commitment to her startup and asked questions such as, “Which did she love more, her company or herkids?”
Meanwhile, She W or xis looking for patterns in its growing database of bad actors. The group hopes to pinpoint founders who have accused the same investor of harassment, and then connect those founders to each other, and maybe to a reporter — the idea is that women will feel moreout if they aren’ t alone, said Wang.
Even so, some industry experts worry about the harm unsubstantiated accusations could cause. Bay Area investor Ben Narasin, formerly of Canvas Ventures, called the black lists a“terrible idea” ripe with the potential for abuse.
“It’s McCarthyism,” he said. “It sounds like an enormously dangerous step dow nady stop ian path.”