Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Reminder To Investors

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 290 posts

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#151

Post by ebiester »

trose wrote: post #130
cjensen wrote: post #116

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…

Devil's advocate: We should be careful about doing this as we could end up harassing someone over a false claim or overreaction. In this case, maybe some discretion is necessary. I do support public humiliation in cases that are well documented and blatant.

Look at what the investor has to lose, in most cases: very little, historically. Bad behaviour has historically been excused for the investor class.

Look at what the founder has to lose in a false accusation: not only will their startup likely not be funded, they may have trouble getting work in any capacity. (Historically, women who have made sexual harassment charges have had trouble getting future jobs.)

She has more incentive to cover it up than to expose the harassment.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#152

Post by axlprose »

rayiner wrote: post #139
axlprose wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. Feminist ideology has permeated many levels of public institutions today -- not all, of course, but quite a few. There's a reason it's seen as the 'correct'/default viewpoint to take today; if that weren't the case, then it'd be less surprising when someone declares themselves not a feminist. There might be a long road yet ahead for feminists, but I don't think it's fair to diminish their vast and ob…

It's something that everyone knows to pay lip service to, in the same way that everyone pays lip service to being "green." But are you going to say with a straight face that environmentalists are in a position of power?

We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not? Sure we have nut-job deniers and all that, but compared to many countries that legitimately do not care about "being green", the US is doing rather decently (although arguably still not good enough, but it all has to start somewhere). Holding "power" is not a zero-sum game -- having slightly less power than another slightly more predominant ideology != 'not' having power. Just because we have a democratic president does not mean republicans have no power.

Similarly feminist ideology has made itself into the american public's view of the 'ideal', and anything that opposes it as unquestionably 'bad' -- to say there's no power in that sort of collective consciousness about any issue is ignorant. Just because it's not ideal yet absolutely does not mean it's not in power -- even powerful things take time to reach their full potential. When behaviors like this YC post talks about hadn't had any negative ramifications before, but now do, that's power.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#153

Post by StandardFuture »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #144
SkyMarshal wrote: post #70

Possibly prompted by this anonymous Forbes piece making the rounds on Twitter recently: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/07/what-it...

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 uncertai…

>they are in it to make the world a better place

No, saying that you want to make the world a better place, and saying that whatever you are working on makes the world a better place, is entirely (100%) different from actually taking the necessary actions to solving known and common world problems and actually making the world a better place. The level of hypocrisy in tech is beyond ridiculous.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#154

Post by rayiner »

dsirijus wrote: post #129

Not insignificant, but major amount of relationships and subsequent marriages have sprung from flirts and advances at work, obviously frequently including power-disbalanced positions. [1] While this particular (and pretty stringent at that) declaration of code of conduct is probably conducive to business and PR goals of YC, I'm far from convinced it will be advancing health of relationships between individuals concer…

YC isn't about building romantic relationships, it's about building companies. Mixing business and romance is a losing proposition for women, because the latter taints absolutely everything. One of the awesome things about being a guy is that I can look around at, e.g., my classmates from grad school, and be quite sure that their "mental file" of me has a lot more about my intellect and character than about my looks. If someone has my back in an argument about what our team should do, I can comfortably assume it's because they respect my position, not because they're romantically interested in me. These are things men can take for granted that women cannot. And when you allow romantic advances in professional contexts, you make it all that much harder.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#155

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#156

Post by yummyfajitas »

DrJokepu wrote: post #57

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 awa…

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.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#157

Post by yummyfajitas »

rayiner wrote: post #139
axlprose wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. Feminist ideology has permeated many levels of public institutions today -- not all, of course, but quite a few. There's a reason it's seen as the 'correct'/default viewpoint to take today; if that weren't the case, then it'd be less surprising when someone declares themselves not a feminist. There might be a long road yet ahead for feminists, but I don't think it's fair to diminish their vast and ob…

It's something that everyone knows to pay lip service to, in the same way that everyone pays lip service to being "green." But are you going to say with a straight face that environmentalists are in a position of power?

When is the last time an A-C level exec at a tech company was fired for being insufficiently green?

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#158

Post by chc »

angersock wrote: post #43
lisper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to understand WHY this is so: if you're an investor you are in a position of power over a founder. It is not possible in such a situation to make a romantic overture that is not tainted by the possibility that you are looking for a quid-pro-quo even if in fact you are not.

You know, I'm rather surprised that there hasn't/isn't a fund or group set up explicitly for that purpose--just being up front that yeah, there's tit-for-tat, if you want funding you may have to deal with this nonsense. I further wonder how close that would skirt the lines of laws against prostitution. I imagine such a thing would be amazingly toxic and hopefully collapse into a vortex of bad. EDIT: It's an offensive…

I think the downvotes are not born of disagreement (you're not really taking much of a stance here to agree or disagree with) so much as because this comment seems needlessly lowbrow and serves no clear purpose but to fantasize about a world in which even more ugly things exist.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#159

Post by sillysaurus3 »

mkal_tsr wrote: post #148
simplemind wrote: post #100

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.

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...

This will never happen because investors don't strictly invest in ideas. They also invest in people. Pg would fund any Zuckerberg idea, not because of the idea, but because of Zuckerberg's qualities. Or, put differently, Facebook minus Zuckerberg may have failed. Their early years were tenuous, and one wrong decision about what users would or wouldn't tolerate may have broken their momentum.

You can't assess that via the internet. You have to meet them.

Re: A Reminder To Investors

#160

Post by rayiner »

axlprose wrote: post #152
rayiner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something that everyone knows to pay lip service to, in the same way that everyone pays lip service to being "green." But are you going to say with a straight face that environmentalists are in a position of power?

We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not? Sure we have nut-job deniers and all that, but compared to many countries that legitimately do not care about "being green", the US is doing rather decently (although arguably still not good enough, but it all has to start somewhere). Holding "power" is not a zero-sum game -- having slightly less power than another slightly more predominant…

> We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not?

Only to the extent that it doesn't get in the way of the hundred priorities ahead of global warming on the list. And all the pollution that isn't associated with a hot-button issue like global warming isn't even on the radar. Coal, for example, is something that's so damaging that there aren't even nut-job deniers arguing otherwise. Yet, during one of the debates of the 2012 election, Obama was arguing with Romney about which of them was more pro-coal.

> Similarly feminist ideology has made itself into the american public's view of the 'ideal', and anything that opposes it as unquestionably 'bad'

People are quite willing to embrace ideals but take little to no inconvenient action to work towards those ideals. Feminists have "power" in the same way environmentalists do. They can win a tiny victory here and there by making particularly egregious acts public,[1] but that's the extent of it.

[1] In 2012, environmentalists in Chicago were successful in shutting down Fisk and Crawford, two coal plants in Chicago that a study showed were costing the public $127 million per year in health costs: http://elpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/MidwestGeneration.... Only 598 more to go!

Post reply on HN