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Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

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Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#21
So they were dating? IAC is screwed. Dating an direct report is essentially sexual harassment in the eyes of the court.

I am adding "anti-fraternization" policy to my employee handbook today.

Seriously, does anybody know how to handle the hr on discovering a supervisor / direct report are dating?

I've been told that best practices is to immediately suggest one or the other resign, and if they don't, fire both for violating policy.

How does one handle this situation?

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just owned, but incubated by their employees. That completely blows me away that IAC is so, so good at rebranding for different audiences.

Yeah, the most interesting part of this article is that, if true, it seems like Tinder was kind of a pseudo-startup, a subsidiary of an established corporation given a more media-friendly backstory by positioning it as a startup. In retrospect I'm surprised that kind of thing isn't more common. (Or maybe it is?)

This sort of thing is, in my experience, quite common, but rarely successful. Large companies are aware of the innovator's dilemma and try to form skunkworks teams to find the Next Big Thing.

But the problem is that most seem unable to assemble the right people, and give them the right autonomy, to really enable them to behave in a startup-like manner. Instead it just becomes recruitment joke where recruiters say "it's like a startup in a big company!" while the candidate rolls their eyes.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#24

So they were dating? IAC is screwed. Dating an direct report is essentially sexual harassment in the eyes of the court. I am adding "anti-fraternization" policy to my employee handbook today. Seriously, does anybody know how to handle the hr on discovering a supervisor / direct report are dating? I've been told that best practices is to immediately suggest one or the other resign, and if they don't, fire both for vio…

This is usually handled in large companies by moving the lower-ranking employee out of the management chain of the higher-ranking one. At smaller organizations, someone is asked to leave.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#25

So they were dating? IAC is screwed. Dating an direct report is essentially sexual harassment in the eyes of the court. I am adding "anti-fraternization" policy to my employee handbook today. Seriously, does anybody know how to handle the hr on discovering a supervisor / direct report are dating? I've been told that best practices is to immediately suggest one or the other resign, and if they don't, fire both for vio…

Someone should tell Bill & Melinda Gates.

You can make all the policies you want but human nature does not care much for policies.

The best cure is an immediate transfer to another department of either of the two. That way you avoid all the claims of favoritism and possible fall-out in case the relationship goes sour. Also make sure that managers know that such relationships should immediately be reported to upper management. (Hard if the 'upper management' is in fact one of the parties). Any evidence of pressure from the higher-up should result in immediate termination. Again, that's pretty tough but it is much better than the possible alternatives.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the most interesting part of this article is that, if true, it seems like Tinder was kind of a pseudo-startup, a subsidiary of an established corporation given a more media-friendly backstory by positioning it as a startup. In retrospect I'm surprised that kind of thing isn't more common. (Or maybe it is?)

This sort of thing is, in my experience, quite common, but rarely successful. Large companies are aware of the innovator's dilemma and try to form skunkworks teams to find the Next Big Thing. But the problem is that most seem unable to assemble the right people, and give them the right autonomy, to really enable them to behave in a startup-like manner. Instead it just becomes recruitment joke where recruiters say "it…

[deleted]

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#27

So they were dating? IAC is screwed. Dating an direct report is essentially sexual harassment in the eyes of the court. I am adding "anti-fraternization" policy to my employee handbook today. Seriously, does anybody know how to handle the hr on discovering a supervisor / direct report are dating? I've been told that best practices is to immediately suggest one or the other resign, and if they don't, fire both for vio…

If it is possible, move one person to another role in the company so that one isn't reviewing the work of the other.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#28

So they were dating? IAC is screwed. Dating an direct report is essentially sexual harassment in the eyes of the court. I am adding "anti-fraternization" policy to my employee handbook today. Seriously, does anybody know how to handle the hr on discovering a supervisor / direct report are dating? I've been told that best practices is to immediately suggest one or the other resign, and if they don't, fire both for vio…

I seriously doubt having an "anti-fraternization" policy in your handbook will do anything prevent sexist harassment.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#29

While the allegations are shocking, it was irresponsible for the journalist to add the little bit in the very last paragraph on the third page about one of the founder's former startups having an FBI investigation as a kind of final pot-shot. How was that relevant to the thrust of the rest of the article? What did it add? Was it fair to include it without elaborating?

Worse still is the implication that he was complicit in the uploading or transmission of illegal images. Any messaging or image based app is going to have to deal with that - young apps are especially vulnerable to abuse because it's expected that they not have robust security or a large enough staff to close the floodgates.

While the dude's clearly a jerk, his first startup sounds like it died a death that was out of his hands, not a result of his being a predator.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the most interesting part of this article is that, if true, it seems like Tinder was kind of a pseudo-startup, a subsidiary of an established corporation given a more media-friendly backstory by positioning it as a startup. In retrospect I'm surprised that kind of thing isn't more common. (Or maybe it is?)

This sort of thing is, in my experience, quite common, but rarely successful. Large companies are aware of the innovator's dilemma and try to form skunkworks teams to find the Next Big Thing. But the problem is that most seem unable to assemble the right people, and give them the right autonomy, to really enable them to behave in a startup-like manner. Instead it just becomes recruitment joke where recruiters say "it…

Right, though that's a different case I think. You're talking about trying to replicate some kind of innovative startup environment within a big company. My read here is a bit different, that IAC had an idea for how to enter this space, knew what they wanted to build there and even assigned employees to start building it, but needed a better media story than "Match.com launches hookup app". So instead they cooked up a hot startup led by young cofounders launching a new "dating" app— but where the startup happens to be an IAC subsidiary and implementing the IAC market strategy, which is omitted from the branding.

In a way I think it's the opposite story of skunkworks. Those try to replicate a startup-like independence while also emphasizing the parent brand's ultimate credit for any output (e.g. ZFS was developed by a Sun skunkworks and proudly claimed by Sun). Here it looks like IAC wanted exactly the opposite: a fake startup that didn't really have independence and instead just implemented IAC's strategy for this vertical, but which emphasized its own brand and kept quiet about the parent brand.

One other area I can think of where that's fairly common recently is in fake microbrews launched by the big brewing companies. The recipes and market positioning are entirely dictated by the parent company, but there's a kind of microbrewing identity that is presented to the public.

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