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YC is compiling a blacklist of venture capitalists accused of harassing women

165 points by sandmansandine 9y ago

mattmaroon 9y ago
Part of me worries that "accused" seems like a very low standard, and part of me has little idea how to better address the very real problem.
- tptacek 9y ago
  If that's true for harassment, it's even more true for other things that would put you on YC's shitlist; after all, genuine misunderstandings and misfortunes routinely kill VC deals, but if that happens with a YC firm you already have to know it's costing your VC firm reputation.
- clive_boosey 9y ago
  I accuse Paul Graham of harassing women. There you go - he needs to go on the list and be blacklisted now. He has been accused of harassing women now. It's a fact!
- jdavis703 9y ago
  Don't you "accuse" a restaurant of having subpar food or service when reviewing on Yelp? When I read restaurant reviews I take certain ones with a grain of salt, unless I hear the same problems coming up in multiple different reviews. These accusations can have a material impact on the restaurant, similar to the impact it might have on a VC. Hopefully, no person will take one review as a final judgment on a VC, but if a pattern emerges people should proceed with caution.
  - landon32 9y ago
    Yeah, I think a service like this becomes much more effective when both positive and negative reviews can be posted. Also would help a lot if you could see analytics on the review, like average rating from each gender. Then it would be much more clear who is biased.
  - panzer_wyrm 9y ago
    Hmm. Not sure about it. Food and service are somewhat objective. For a lot of reviews will average quite well. In the current climate if 99 founders says they are not harassed and one says they were, if it goes public the outrage machine will side with the one, reputation will be destroyed and there is no way for the accused to defend himself. That is how the world works currently. Like it or not. And most often than not there will be no court case in which he will be able to clear his name or be proven guilty and made to pay for it. Sexual harassment is both a terrible thing and being accused is also terribly potent weapon. Of course we cannot demand X > 1 reports. Because even one time is too much. See the problem? Zero tolerance is easy to abuse. Some tolerance is disregard for victims. Shitty situation all the way.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Reviewing a restaurant and accusing someone of sexual harrassment are not even remotely in the same ballpark of potential for long long-term damage to someone's reputation, family, career, and future.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      True. Up until about five minutes ago, accusing a VC of sexual harassment has substantially less effect than a bad Yelp review. That aside, his point stands. Personal testimony is evidence. Seriously people deciding whether to act on personal testimony have a variety of heuristics and tools for deciding to what extent they weight a particular piece of evidence.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      This is easy to dispute. A lot of restaurants operate on a razor's edge of profitability. More restaurants fold every year than VC firms. Restaurants tend to be operated by middle class people with weaker backup plans than venture capital firms, which are staffed by investment bankers, most of whom have Ivy League pedigrees --- in fact, most of whom collect 2/20 on funds invested no matter how bad the quality of their dealflow gets. Meanwhile, these same VCs that people on this thread are champing at the bit to defend routinely create blacklists of founders, which they'll share with competitors to fuck people over. If they don't like you, they'll take meetings with you, telling you the whole time that they can't wait to get you a term sheet, and then take your slide deck and their notes from the meeting and send them to portfolio companies and other VCs for competitive intel†. It's a little silly to think we're going to feel sorry for these people in this situation. Really, the distinction is that it's important to some people that we all believe a large fraction of sexual harassment complaints are bogus. It's got nothing to do with the impact of YC shunning you, and everything to do with the politics of the issue. † Ask me how I know this. But, I mean, you already know how I know this.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
tptacek 9y ago
YC has, from what I've been told, been doing stuff like this for years. Not just for harassment, but also for all the other bad-actor stuff VCs do to startup founders (think: stuff like ruthless term sheet recision). It's things like this that make it hard for me to be totally down on YC, despite disquieting things about its culture. It's hard to argue that it hasn't been an unalloyed good for founders.
- Gargoyle 9y ago
  >It's hard to argue that it hasn't been an unalloyed good for founders. I can't agree with this without knowing who is on what list and why. There's way too much room for bad judgement to get in the way. Having said that, I'm making a very minor point here, since of course you can say the same about every single business and who they will or won't work with.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    If you don't trust YC to be pro-founder, then you should be very concerned about YC, because they're enormously powerful. I can't convince you either way. It would be pointless to debate it. Reasonable people might disagree. I'll only say that I don't know any founders, including people who have gone through YC and not felt they got much out of it, that don't agree with me that YC is far, far on the "founder" site of the "founder vs. capital" spectrum. I have less respect for the argument that YC might be pro-founder but would prioritize some secret conspiracy to inflate harassment claims above the welfare of their portfolio companies. (I don't see you making that argument, just heading it off.) For what it's worth: I have no connection to YC, and am openly critical of Sam Altman.
    - elmar 9y ago
      When the exit its very low value and investors fight for the scraps YC donates is shares to the founders, in my opinion it doesn't get more founder friendly than this.
      - 9y ago
djohnston 9y ago
this is not going to end well.
- thinkingemote 9y ago
  I expect this thread to be flagged down quite soon. Many such threads are if they are lacking substance and/or attractive to flame.
  - djohnston 9y ago
    i didn't mean the thread, i meant the blacklist.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      It will probably work very well for YC. Corporations started the trend of multiculturalism despite the fact that it clashed with the widespread "melting pot" approach to different cultures at the time. Even though multiculturalism has hurt our society and led to a disdain of American culture, it helps corporations by increasing the labor pool, and thus will remain in effect. The same forces that have made multiculturalism the norm will make "multigenderalism" a norm: Money. Tech workers are some of the highest paid workers in America right now. With such a pushback against outsourcing(and with as much outsourced already as they can get away with), YC and lots of other big names are trying their darndest to increase the labor pool in some other way.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      I disagree, for reasons that are equally obscure.
dangerboysteve 9y ago
This should keep the lawyers busy for a while.
- smt88 9y ago
  How so? This isn't unlike Uber or Yelp ratings, where someone's reputation will affect their ability to make money. It's not perfect, but it at least provides some accountability.
  - clock_tower 9y ago
    Income will definitely be affected by getting on this list. See above, where tptacek says: "More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow, becoming persona non grata with YC will force VC firms to make personnel changes." But still, this will probably be good on balance. False accusations of this sort will certainly be something to watch out for, but now victims of real sexual harassment will have recourse.
    - smt88 9y ago
      I think you misread my comment. I agree that income will be affected. I agree it's not perfect and that it needs to be moderated and substantiated.
throwaway6497 9y ago
I am assuming the access to this list will be tightly guarded. So the only way to protect the women of the valley from these VCs is by having a partner friend at YC who will look up the list for you and give yay/nay answers?
- tptacek 9y ago
  More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow, becoming persona non grata with YC will force VC firms to make personnel changes.
  - throwaway6497 9y ago
    This is only way VC firms can be motivated to actively punish the bad actors. Unless, it hurts their dealflow, they are not incentivized to act. Pledges and warnings' only go so far.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    > since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow Do they though? It seems every demo day some VC posts up a blog about how they are not fans of demo day anymore for X, Y and Z reasons and that they're no longer attending. Don't get me wrong YC is great and all but you make it sound like most of the VCs need YC but so many companies outside of YC get funding I'm not convinced that's even close to the truth.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Yes, they do.
  - mbesto 9y ago
    > More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow Dealflow is everything in the VC community, but this is pure hyperbole. Statistically speaking, there are way more companies that drive VC returns that come from outside of YC than the ones that come from it.
charlieo88 9y ago
So basically a list of VC that want to be taken to a strip club to discuss funding? Wouldn't a list of VC that behave professionally be better?
KekDemaga 9y ago
"History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
- smt88 9y ago
  So you're suggesting that harassing women is in the same category of innocence as being a communist?
  - djohnston 9y ago
    no, he's suggesting that creating a "blacklist" of accused will inevitably end up with innocent names on the list.
    - smt88 9y ago
      These situations aren't good analogs for several reasons. 1. If someone's "crime" is just having communist ideals, then it's not a crime at all. It's actually protected by the Constitution, although that doesn't apply to an employment situation of course. Harassing someone is often a crime. 2. Hollywood's blacklist prevented people from accessing their primary source of income. The consequences were extreme. The people who might be affected by this blacklist are not people who will starve or die because they aren't getting enough deals. 3. Accusing someone of communism doesn't have the blowback for the accuser that's equivalent to accusing someone of harassment. It's embarrassing, risky, and shameful for someone to publicly talk about sexual harassment. There's a need for a mechanism to hold VCs accountable for bad behavior. There wasn't such a need for the Hollywood Blacklist. YC's proposal isn't a perfect mechanism, and it's definitely possible the wrong people will be held accountable. But nothing could be a perfect system in he-said-she-said scenarios. If YC is erring on the side of accidentally punishing VCs rather than allowing women to be harmed, I'd rather see the VCs punished, as they're the ones with vastly disproportionate power.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
scott_booth 9y ago
Smart PR move. The women will fall right for this.
noahmbarr 9y ago
I'm very supportive of these efforts to distance startup founders from investors who are unprofessional and/or abusive -- but: "She also tweeted that Y Combinator had disinvited an investor who was trying to replace a female chief executive with a white male" Should it be the best person for the job, male or female alike?
- tptacek 9y ago
  Here we're inventing a controversy where none necessarily exists; we simply don't know enough to discuss what's happening here, and so we shouldn't.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    Power corrupts, but it isn't instantaneous and it isn't as if there aren't good people who can resist that tendency. Y Combinator represents an aggregation of power, and so it's likely that someone, somewhere will be tempted to abuse such power. The "lowest cost" and most likely form of this would be through a false accusation of someone who only has marginal standing. You can say this for just about any organization which has power. This is why transparency is often a good check for power. In cases where transparency isn't practical, then there is the larger granularity of the market. Where this breaks down is in very acute concentrations of power. The realist view acknowledges that power is contextual, and that contextual abuses will happen. Sometimes the world is imperfect and you're going to have to leave for more peaceful pastures. Throughout all of the above, you can recognize "the good" in their magnanimity and their protection of the dignity and rights of individuals -- even extending this to the accused. I forget who said it, but the true test of character is not in how someone treats those they need, it's how they treat those they don't need.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I think it's very reasonable to be concerned about the level of influence YC has amassed. I'm not super concerned because I had raised funds in the valley before YC existed and I'm pretty confident that YC is a massive improvement for founders. But either way: sure, YC is very powerful. I would just push back on the idea that it's somehow out of bounds for them to have lists of potential business partners they won't want to work with in the future. Businesses do this all the time. All YC has done here is actually told us about one of those lists.
anindha 9y ago
This secret list might give less incentive for these issues to be publicized. Having these issues raised publicly helps change overall culture.
grandalf 9y ago
Could someone post a link to the article (paywall)
finkin1 9y ago
The general idea of creating lists of people who are bad actors is an interesting (and controversial) idea. On one side, there should be a ledger of people doing shitty things, even if the behavior isn't illegal. Who wants to work with assholes? No one. If there's a record of people's bad behavior then future founders can save themselves a lot of suffering by simply knowing to avoid these people. On the other side, what standards are used to put someone on this list in the first place? Are multiple offences required? Seems like without a process of submitting good evidence of people's poor behavior there's a lot of room for abuse. If this list actually becomes a tool that people rely on to select their investors I would start to be concerned by the potential abuse of power. I'm curious how others feel about this idea of putting people on lists.
- desireco42 9y ago
  I agree with you that putting people on the lists, especially because it is hidden and you don't know criteria can be problematic. That is, in theory the only thing against this. In practice, everything about this initiative is good.
- rezashirazian 9y ago
  Wouldn't lists like this lead to lawsuits?
  - patrickmay 9y ago
    > Wouldn't lists like this lead to lawsuits? Yes, yes they will: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/23/maajid-nawaz-is-suing-the-splc-for-calling-him-an-anti-muslim-extremist/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/23/maaj... I don't think Maajid Nawaz is going to win because he'll have to prove real damages from the SPLC (horribly erroneously, in my opinion) labeling him an "anti-Muslim extremist". Being put on a blacklist by YC might result in damages that are easier to prove, though.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      YC will have to make a discoverable false statement of actual fact. They're unlikely to publish a list, and what they do reveal to YC founders is unlikely to be phrased as simply as SPLC's statements about Nawaz. I think this is less likely to be legally complicated than you think. Consider: YC has been doing this for years already.
baron816 9y ago
I hope they're very careful with this. If even a couple of unscrupulous founders threaten a VC with false accusations in order to secure funding (ie blackmail), then VCs will stop taking meetings with female founders. Game theory can be used to make sure this doesn't backfire, so hopefully they consult a good game theorist.
Steeeve 9y ago
Every incubator maintains a list of who they prefer to work with. This really should not be news.
covercash 9y ago
There's a Reddit AMA happening right now with a current batch founder and they said, "There's an... internal investor database with founder grading and info-passing," so I wonder if that's where the blacklisting is happening. AMA link for those interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/6najyy/im_a_founder_in_the_current_y_combinator_batch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/6najyy/im_a_found...
surfmike 9y ago
Though this is a real problem to solve, what about false accusations? If all it takes is an accusation (or two) to destroy someone's career then I see a huge problem with this.
- bArray 9y ago
  I don't see why you've been down-voted, this is a serious concern. This sort of power can make or break somebody's career. I don't like the idea of somebody who works with me being able to destroy my career with no or weak evidence. At the very least there needs to be consequence for false accusations if the punishment is so severe (destroying the reputation of a venture capitalist). The process should also be open to scrutiny once judgment is passed. I personally don't like the way society is going. If I was a good looking woman with a warped moral compass, I would consider ganging up with several other women and blackmailing ourselves a few million dollars. As a venture capitalist with such a claim against you and no evidence to prove your innocence, you'll likely lose or be forced to pay up.
carsongross 9y ago
Accused?
danieltillett 9y ago
Well this is not going to encourage VCs to want to work with women founders. Even if you never harass anyone why take the risk of ending up on the banned list.
- s73ver 9y ago
  No, you don't. With that level of paranoia, you could say that you shouldn't drive anywhere, because you might get into an accident.
  - tbrownaw 9y ago
    I've heard of people who refuse to ever be alone with anyone of the opposite gender. IIRC they were megachurch pastors who had legitimate reason to fear that even a hint of an accusation would be a career-ending event.
    - danieltillett 9y ago
      I think Pence does this - refuses to have private meetings with women because of the risks.
      - monocasa 9y ago
        He got that from Pat Robertson.
      - Sleeep 9y ago
        No, Mike Pence does it for religious reasons, to avoid the abstract possibility of sexual temptation and to further the idea of men and women having separate roles in life. It's a popular practice among evangelicals (and other conservative religious groups, like fundamentalist Muslims and orthodox Jews). It's known as the Billy Graham rule. He also doesn't go to events where alcohol is being served without his wife; she will presumably protect him from any loose women. Also, as far as I remember he only mentioned meals, not meetings in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule
bassman9000 9y ago
Compiling an easily shareable list. What could go wrong?
dreta 9y ago
Not getting into "guilty until proven innocent"; all this is going to accomplish is attach a huge risk factor to women who are seeking investors making their life harder than it already is. Hell is paved with good intentions.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Guilty until proven innocent? This is disgusting, it will get abused If YC has their head in the right place, then such abuses will be figured out, and will effectively flag the abusers. If YC doesn't have their head in the right place, you really didn't want to do business with them in the first place. Hell is paved with good intentions. In some ways, the beginning of the 21st century really isn't all that different from the beginning of the 20th or the 19th!
nodesocket 9y ago
How is this any different than discriminating based on hearsay? I.E. what happens if you get on such a list without any resources to defend yourself? This experiment has been tried before (Mccarthyism). It did not end well! This also assumes that the accusing women are being entirely truthful, honest, and acting in good faith which unfortunately is not always the case.
randyrand 9y ago
Clearly few in the comments are in favor of this, but it's curious why. My supposition is that sexual harassment is too grey. It's ill defined. It's hard to know how to 100% avoid it when flirting with someone. If someone can define the exact point hitting on someone goes from acceptable flirting to unacceptable harassment, then we could all rest easy. But without that, it's incredibly worrying to accidentally do something that ruins your career. Is there a place for coworkers falling in love or making love in 2017? Maybe not. Maybe so. But I think it's sort of sad how much we are repressing human sexuality if not.
- mrkurt 9y ago
  This one is pretty cut and dried. When there's a power disparity between two people, flirting's not ok. You can be against investors and bosses making passes at the people who have to make them happy without wanting to ban workplace romances entirely. Big companies have been doing this for years.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
    - rosser 9y ago
      No. You're just not specifically subject to that test. If you're in their management chain, and you get involved with them, you've actually exposed them to significant risk.
      - randyrand 9y ago
        Ah dang, deleted my comment because I had a change of heart and didn't feel like going down this rabbit hole further. But for reference it was: > so as long as you're a lower level employee you're in the clear? Clearly the answer to this question is no. The flow chart of bad behavior is much larger than that.
  - throwaway_30761 9y ago
    This one is pretty cut and dried. When there's a power disparity between two people, flirting's not ok. Well, there's flirting and then there's flirting. Real-life example, which I observed from the sidelines: . Mr. A is a new hire. Mrs. B is the senior non-management team member. Someone gets flowers sent to them. Mr. C decides it would be amusing if they ended up on Mrs. B's desk, with a note saying they're from Mr. A. An hour or two later when Mr. A realizes he's just being hazed and still has a job, he decides to take the joke and run with it. This leads to several years of the most absurd and blatant come-ons you can imagine. Several years later, Mrs. B is the official team lead and Mr. A is reporting to her. The blatant flirting and absurd come-ons are still exactly the same as they've always been. . The only concern about whether this is OK, is if some outsider were to see and take it seriously enough to cause trouble with HR.
adrianratnapala 9y ago
The most startling thing here is the form headline takes: "X is compiling a blackist of Y accused of Z". Notice the word is "accused" and not "guilty". Now I am not going to accuse YC of running a star chamber: I assume (without knowing) that they are fairly responsible with their blacklist. But the principle is still worrying. Like most institutions, private companies are not able to hold trials and rigorously tell guilt from innocence, so whenever they set out to police others they must do so on some lesser evidence. It is our right to shun others because we suspect them without proof of something bad. Perhaps it is even our right to gang together and ostracise such, but society suffers when that is the norm.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I used to feel similarly, but see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621466 which completely changed my mind. Empirically, we seem to be too far in the direction of "innocent until proven guilty." This allows people to prey on others unchecked. It can swing back too far in the other direction, but a healthy balance is probably best.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Typical standards for these sorts of things are a presumption of innocence until shown otherwise, which can be to varying degrees of certainty: preponderance of evidence (i.e. "more likely true than not"), clear and convincing evidence ("quite likely true"), or beyond a reasonable doubt. I would hope that at least a preponderance of evidence standard is used, beyond just the leveling of an accusation. Considering the consequences for the accused, clear and convincing is probably a better standard.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    >Empirically, we seem to be too far in the direction of "innocent until proven guilty." You can't know this without knowing how many of the allegations are false.
  - multibit 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation
aburan28 9y ago
Is this actual a legal maneuver available to YC? This seems risky. Why not help fund the women's arbitration fees instead?
bsder 9y ago
Are they going to make it public? This is pretty much a deal breaker if they don't. People deserve the opportunity to defend themselves.
theEXTORTCIST 9y ago
from the article "Two other groups are also launching tech start-ups to help victims share their experiences." "One group of women has already founded a start-up, BetterBrave, that aims to be an online hub for female workers who felt they were sexually harassed at work. SheWorx, composed of female entrepreneurs, is planning an online database that would enable women and others to report unethical behavior by investors."
Overtonwindow 9y ago
All it takes is an accusation. A very powerful weapon indeed.
aaron695 9y ago
So best advice for VCs not to get on the blacklist, don't deal with women. Best advice for startups, deal with people on the blacklist, less competition.

Part of me worries that "accused" seems like a very low standard, and part of me has little idea how to better address the very real problem.

tptacek 9y ago
If that's true for harassment, it's even more true for other things that would put you on YC's shitlist; after all, genuine misunderstandings and misfortunes routinely kill VC deals, but if that happens with a YC firm you already have to know it's costing your VC firm reputation.
clive_boosey 9y ago
I accuse Paul Graham of harassing women. There you go - he needs to go on the list and be blacklisted now. He has been accused of harassing women now. It's a fact!
jdavis703 9y ago
Don't you "accuse" a restaurant of having subpar food or service when reviewing on Yelp? When I read restaurant reviews I take certain ones with a grain of salt, unless I hear the same problems coming up in multiple different reviews. These accusations can have a material impact on the restaurant, similar to the impact it might have on a VC. Hopefully, no person will take one review as a final judgment on a VC, but if a pattern emerges people should proceed with caution.
- landon32 9y ago
  Yeah, I think a service like this becomes much more effective when both positive and negative reviews can be posted. Also would help a lot if you could see analytics on the review, like average rating from each gender. Then it would be much more clear who is biased.
- panzer_wyrm 9y ago
  Hmm. Not sure about it. Food and service are somewhat objective. For a lot of reviews will average quite well. In the current climate if 99 founders says they are not harassed and one says they were, if it goes public the outrage machine will side with the one, reputation will be destroyed and there is no way for the accused to defend himself. That is how the world works currently. Like it or not. And most often than not there will be no court case in which he will be able to clear his name or be proven guilty and made to pay for it. Sexual harassment is both a terrible thing and being accused is also terribly potent weapon. Of course we cannot demand X > 1 reports. Because even one time is too much. See the problem? Zero tolerance is easy to abuse. Some tolerance is disregard for victims. Shitty situation all the way.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Reviewing a restaurant and accusing someone of sexual harrassment are not even remotely in the same ballpark of potential for long long-term damage to someone's reputation, family, career, and future.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    True. Up until about five minutes ago, accusing a VC of sexual harassment has substantially less effect than a bad Yelp review. That aside, his point stands. Personal testimony is evidence. Seriously people deciding whether to act on personal testimony have a variety of heuristics and tools for deciding to what extent they weight a particular piece of evidence.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    This is easy to dispute. A lot of restaurants operate on a razor's edge of profitability. More restaurants fold every year than VC firms. Restaurants tend to be operated by middle class people with weaker backup plans than venture capital firms, which are staffed by investment bankers, most of whom have Ivy League pedigrees --- in fact, most of whom collect 2/20 on funds invested no matter how bad the quality of their dealflow gets. Meanwhile, these same VCs that people on this thread are champing at the bit to defend routinely create blacklists of founders, which they'll share with competitors to fuck people over. If they don't like you, they'll take meetings with you, telling you the whole time that they can't wait to get you a term sheet, and then take your slide deck and their notes from the meeting and send them to portfolio companies and other VCs for competitive intel†. It's a little silly to think we're going to feel sorry for these people in this situation. Really, the distinction is that it's important to some people that we all believe a large fraction of sexual harassment complaints are bogus. It's got nothing to do with the impact of YC shunning you, and everything to do with the politics of the issue. † Ask me how I know this. But, I mean, you already know how I know this.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

tptacek 9y ago

YC has, from what I've been told, been doing stuff like this for years. Not just for harassment, but also for all the other bad-actor stuff VCs do to startup founders (think: stuff like ruthless term sheet recision). It's things like this that make it hard for me to be totally down on YC, despite disquieting things about its culture. It's hard to argue that it hasn't been an unalloyed good for founders.

Gargoyle 9y ago
>It's hard to argue that it hasn't been an unalloyed good for founders. I can't agree with this without knowing who is on what list and why. There's way too much room for bad judgement to get in the way. Having said that, I'm making a very minor point here, since of course you can say the same about every single business and who they will or won't work with.
- tptacek 9y ago
  If you don't trust YC to be pro-founder, then you should be very concerned about YC, because they're enormously powerful. I can't convince you either way. It would be pointless to debate it. Reasonable people might disagree. I'll only say that I don't know any founders, including people who have gone through YC and not felt they got much out of it, that don't agree with me that YC is far, far on the "founder" site of the "founder vs. capital" spectrum. I have less respect for the argument that YC might be pro-founder but would prioritize some secret conspiracy to inflate harassment claims above the welfare of their portfolio companies. (I don't see you making that argument, just heading it off.) For what it's worth: I have no connection to YC, and am openly critical of Sam Altman.
  - elmar 9y ago
    When the exit its very low value and investors fight for the scraps YC donates is shares to the founders, in my opinion it doesn't get more founder friendly than this.
    - 9y ago

djohnston 9y ago

this is not going to end well.

thinkingemote 9y ago
I expect this thread to be flagged down quite soon. Many such threads are if they are lacking substance and/or attractive to flame.
- djohnston 9y ago
  i didn't mean the thread, i meant the blacklist.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    It will probably work very well for YC. Corporations started the trend of multiculturalism despite the fact that it clashed with the widespread "melting pot" approach to different cultures at the time. Even though multiculturalism has hurt our society and led to a disdain of American culture, it helps corporations by increasing the labor pool, and thus will remain in effect. The same forces that have made multiculturalism the norm will make "multigenderalism" a norm: Money. Tech workers are some of the highest paid workers in America right now. With such a pushback against outsourcing(and with as much outsourced already as they can get away with), YC and lots of other big names are trying their darndest to increase the labor pool in some other way.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I disagree, for reasons that are equally obscure.

dangerboysteve 9y ago

This should keep the lawyers busy for a while.

smt88 9y ago
How so? This isn't unlike Uber or Yelp ratings, where someone's reputation will affect their ability to make money. It's not perfect, but it at least provides some accountability.
- clock_tower 9y ago
  Income will definitely be affected by getting on this list. See above, where tptacek says: "More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow, becoming persona non grata with YC will force VC firms to make personnel changes." But still, this will probably be good on balance. False accusations of this sort will certainly be something to watch out for, but now victims of real sexual harassment will have recourse.
  - smt88 9y ago
    I think you misread my comment. I agree that income will be affected. I agree it's not perfect and that it needs to be moderated and substantiated.

throwaway6497 9y ago

I am assuming the access to this list will be tightly guarded. So the only way to protect the women of the valley from these VCs is by having a partner friend at YC who will look up the list for you and give yay/nay answers?

tptacek 9y ago
More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow, becoming persona non grata with YC will force VC firms to make personnel changes.
- throwaway6497 9y ago
  This is only way VC firms can be motivated to actively punish the bad actors. Unless, it hurts their dealflow, they are not incentivized to act. Pledges and warnings' only go so far.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  > since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow Do they though? It seems every demo day some VC posts up a blog about how they are not fans of demo day anymore for X, Y and Z reasons and that they're no longer attending. Don't get me wrong YC is great and all but you make it sound like most of the VCs need YC but so many companies outside of YC get funding I'm not convinced that's even close to the truth.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Yes, they do.
- mbesto 9y ago
  > More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow Dealflow is everything in the VC community, but this is pure hyperbole. Statistically speaking, there are way more companies that drive VC returns that come from outside of YC than the ones that come from it.

charlieo88 9y ago

So basically a list of VC that want to be taken to a strip club to discuss funding? Wouldn't a list of VC that behave professionally be better?

KekDemaga 9y ago

"History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

smt88 9y ago
So you're suggesting that harassing women is in the same category of innocence as being a communist?
- djohnston 9y ago
  no, he's suggesting that creating a "blacklist" of accused will inevitably end up with innocent names on the list.
  - smt88 9y ago
    These situations aren't good analogs for several reasons. 1. If someone's "crime" is just having communist ideals, then it's not a crime at all. It's actually protected by the Constitution, although that doesn't apply to an employment situation of course. Harassing someone is often a crime. 2. Hollywood's blacklist prevented people from accessing their primary source of income. The consequences were extreme. The people who might be affected by this blacklist are not people who will starve or die because they aren't getting enough deals. 3. Accusing someone of communism doesn't have the blowback for the accuser that's equivalent to accusing someone of harassment. It's embarrassing, risky, and shameful for someone to publicly talk about sexual harassment. There's a need for a mechanism to hold VCs accountable for bad behavior. There wasn't such a need for the Hollywood Blacklist. YC's proposal isn't a perfect mechanism, and it's definitely possible the wrong people will be held accountable. But nothing could be a perfect system in he-said-she-said scenarios. If YC is erring on the side of accidentally punishing VCs rather than allowing women to be harmed, I'd rather see the VCs punished, as they're the ones with vastly disproportionate power.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

scott_booth 9y ago

Smart PR move. The women will fall right for this.

noahmbarr 9y ago

I'm very supportive of these efforts to distance startup founders from investors who are unprofessional and/or abusive -- but: "She also tweeted that Y Combinator had disinvited an investor who was trying to replace a female chief executive with a white male" Should it be the best person for the job, male or female alike?

tptacek 9y ago
Here we're inventing a controversy where none necessarily exists; we simply don't know enough to discuss what's happening here, and so we shouldn't.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Power corrupts, but it isn't instantaneous and it isn't as if there aren't good people who can resist that tendency. Y Combinator represents an aggregation of power, and so it's likely that someone, somewhere will be tempted to abuse such power. The "lowest cost" and most likely form of this would be through a false accusation of someone who only has marginal standing. You can say this for just about any organization which has power. This is why transparency is often a good check for power. In cases where transparency isn't practical, then there is the larger granularity of the market. Where this breaks down is in very acute concentrations of power. The realist view acknowledges that power is contextual, and that contextual abuses will happen. Sometimes the world is imperfect and you're going to have to leave for more peaceful pastures. Throughout all of the above, you can recognize "the good" in their magnanimity and their protection of the dignity and rights of individuals -- even extending this to the accused. I forget who said it, but the true test of character is not in how someone treats those they need, it's how they treat those they don't need.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I think it's very reasonable to be concerned about the level of influence YC has amassed. I'm not super concerned because I had raised funds in the valley before YC existed and I'm pretty confident that YC is a massive improvement for founders. But either way: sure, YC is very powerful. I would just push back on the idea that it's somehow out of bounds for them to have lists of potential business partners they won't want to work with in the future. Businesses do this all the time. All YC has done here is actually told us about one of those lists.

anindha 9y ago

This secret list might give less incentive for these issues to be publicized. Having these issues raised publicly helps change overall culture.

grandalf 9y ago

Could someone post a link to the article (paywall)

finkin1 9y ago

The general idea of creating lists of people who are bad actors is an interesting (and controversial) idea. On one side, there should be a ledger of people doing shitty things, even if the behavior isn't illegal. Who wants to work with assholes? No one. If there's a record of people's bad behavior then future founders can save themselves a lot of suffering by simply knowing to avoid these people. On the other side, what standards are used to put someone on this list in the first place? Are multiple offences required? Seems like without a process of submitting good evidence of people's poor behavior there's a lot of room for abuse. If this list actually becomes a tool that people rely on to select their investors I would start to be concerned by the potential abuse of power. I'm curious how others feel about this idea of putting people on lists.

desireco42 9y ago
I agree with you that putting people on the lists, especially because it is hidden and you don't know criteria can be problematic. That is, in theory the only thing against this. In practice, everything about this initiative is good.
rezashirazian 9y ago
Wouldn't lists like this lead to lawsuits?
- patrickmay 9y ago
  > Wouldn't lists like this lead to lawsuits? Yes, yes they will: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/23/maajid-nawaz-is-suing-the-splc-for-calling-him-an-anti-muslim-extremist/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/23/maaj... I don't think Maajid Nawaz is going to win because he'll have to prove real damages from the SPLC (horribly erroneously, in my opinion) labeling him an "anti-Muslim extremist". Being put on a blacklist by YC might result in damages that are easier to prove, though.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    YC will have to make a discoverable false statement of actual fact. They're unlikely to publish a list, and what they do reveal to YC founders is unlikely to be phrased as simply as SPLC's statements about Nawaz. I think this is less likely to be legally complicated than you think. Consider: YC has been doing this for years already.

baron816 9y ago

I hope they're very careful with this. If even a couple of unscrupulous founders threaten a VC with false accusations in order to secure funding (ie blackmail), then VCs will stop taking meetings with female founders. Game theory can be used to make sure this doesn't backfire, so hopefully they consult a good game theorist.

Steeeve 9y ago

Every incubator maintains a list of who they prefer to work with. This really should not be news.

covercash 9y ago

There's a Reddit AMA happening right now with a current batch founder and they said, "There's an... internal investor database with founder grading and info-passing," so I wonder if that's where the blacklisting is happening. AMA link for those interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/6najyy/im_a_founder_in_the_current_y_combinator_batch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/6najyy/im_a_found...

surfmike 9y ago

Though this is a real problem to solve, what about false accusations? If all it takes is an accusation (or two) to destroy someone's career then I see a huge problem with this.

bArray 9y ago
I don't see why you've been down-voted, this is a serious concern. This sort of power can make or break somebody's career. I don't like the idea of somebody who works with me being able to destroy my career with no or weak evidence. At the very least there needs to be consequence for false accusations if the punishment is so severe (destroying the reputation of a venture capitalist). The process should also be open to scrutiny once judgment is passed. I personally don't like the way society is going. If I was a good looking woman with a warped moral compass, I would consider ganging up with several other women and blackmailing ourselves a few million dollars. As a venture capitalist with such a claim against you and no evidence to prove your innocence, you'll likely lose or be forced to pay up.

carsongross 9y ago

Accused?

danieltillett 9y ago

Well this is not going to encourage VCs to want to work with women founders. Even if you never harass anyone why take the risk of ending up on the banned list.

s73ver 9y ago
No, you don't. With that level of paranoia, you could say that you shouldn't drive anywhere, because you might get into an accident.
- tbrownaw 9y ago
  I've heard of people who refuse to ever be alone with anyone of the opposite gender. IIRC they were megachurch pastors who had legitimate reason to fear that even a hint of an accusation would be a career-ending event.
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    I think Pence does this - refuses to have private meetings with women because of the risks.
    - monocasa 9y ago
      He got that from Pat Robertson.
    - Sleeep 9y ago
      No, Mike Pence does it for religious reasons, to avoid the abstract possibility of sexual temptation and to further the idea of men and women having separate roles in life. It's a popular practice among evangelicals (and other conservative religious groups, like fundamentalist Muslims and orthodox Jews). It's known as the Billy Graham rule. He also doesn't go to events where alcohol is being served without his wife; she will presumably protect him from any loose women. Also, as far as I remember he only mentioned meals, not meetings in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule

bassman9000 9y ago

Compiling an easily shareable list. What could go wrong?

dreta 9y ago

Not getting into "guilty until proven innocent"; all this is going to accomplish is attach a huge risk factor to women who are seeking investors making their life harder than it already is. Hell is paved with good intentions.

stcredzero 9y ago
Guilty until proven innocent? This is disgusting, it will get abused If YC has their head in the right place, then such abuses will be figured out, and will effectively flag the abusers. If YC doesn't have their head in the right place, you really didn't want to do business with them in the first place. Hell is paved with good intentions. In some ways, the beginning of the 21st century really isn't all that different from the beginning of the 20th or the 19th!

nodesocket 9y ago

How is this any different than discriminating based on hearsay? I.E. what happens if you get on such a list without any resources to defend yourself? This experiment has been tried before (Mccarthyism). It did not end well! This also assumes that the accusing women are being entirely truthful, honest, and acting in good faith which unfortunately is not always the case.

randyrand 9y ago

Clearly few in the comments are in favor of this, but it's curious why. My supposition is that sexual harassment is too grey. It's ill defined. It's hard to know how to 100% avoid it when flirting with someone. If someone can define the exact point hitting on someone goes from acceptable flirting to unacceptable harassment, then we could all rest easy. But without that, it's incredibly worrying to accidentally do something that ruins your career. Is there a place for coworkers falling in love or making love in 2017? Maybe not. Maybe so. But I think it's sort of sad how much we are repressing human sexuality if not.

mrkurt 9y ago
This one is pretty cut and dried. When there's a power disparity between two people, flirting's not ok. You can be against investors and bosses making passes at the people who have to make them happy without wanting to ban workplace romances entirely. Big companies have been doing this for years.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - rosser 9y ago
    No. You're just not specifically subject to that test. If you're in their management chain, and you get involved with them, you've actually exposed them to significant risk.
    - randyrand 9y ago
      Ah dang, deleted my comment because I had a change of heart and didn't feel like going down this rabbit hole further. But for reference it was: > so as long as you're a lower level employee you're in the clear? Clearly the answer to this question is no. The flow chart of bad behavior is much larger than that.
- throwaway_30761 9y ago
  This one is pretty cut and dried. When there's a power disparity between two people, flirting's not ok. Well, there's flirting and then there's flirting. Real-life example, which I observed from the sidelines: . Mr. A is a new hire. Mrs. B is the senior non-management team member. Someone gets flowers sent to them. Mr. C decides it would be amusing if they ended up on Mrs. B's desk, with a note saying they're from Mr. A. An hour or two later when Mr. A realizes he's just being hazed and still has a job, he decides to take the joke and run with it. This leads to several years of the most absurd and blatant come-ons you can imagine. Several years later, Mrs. B is the official team lead and Mr. A is reporting to her. The blatant flirting and absurd come-ons are still exactly the same as they've always been. . The only concern about whether this is OK, is if some outsider were to see and take it seriously enough to cause trouble with HR.

adrianratnapala 9y ago

The most startling thing here is the form headline takes: "X is compiling a blackist of Y accused of Z". Notice the word is "accused" and not "guilty". Now I am not going to accuse YC of running a star chamber: I assume (without knowing) that they are fairly responsible with their blacklist. But the principle is still worrying. Like most institutions, private companies are not able to hold trials and rigorously tell guilt from innocence, so whenever they set out to police others they must do so on some lesser evidence. It is our right to shun others because we suspect them without proof of something bad. Perhaps it is even our right to gang together and ostracise such, but society suffers when that is the norm.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
I used to feel similarly, but see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621466 which completely changed my mind. Empirically, we seem to be too far in the direction of "innocent until proven guilty." This allows people to prey on others unchecked. It can swing back too far in the other direction, but a healthy balance is probably best.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Typical standards for these sorts of things are a presumption of innocence until shown otherwise, which can be to varying degrees of certainty: preponderance of evidence (i.e. "more likely true than not"), clear and convincing evidence ("quite likely true"), or beyond a reasonable doubt. I would hope that at least a preponderance of evidence standard is used, beyond just the leveling of an accusation. Considering the consequences for the accused, clear and convincing is probably a better standard.
- gozur88 9y ago
  >Empirically, we seem to be too far in the direction of "innocent until proven guilty." You can't know this without knowing how many of the allegations are false.
- multibit 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation

aburan28 9y ago

Is this actual a legal maneuver available to YC? This seems risky. Why not help fund the women's arbitration fees instead?

bsder 9y ago

Are they going to make it public? This is pretty much a deal breaker if they don't. People deserve the opportunity to defend themselves.

theEXTORTCIST 9y ago

from the article "Two other groups are also launching tech start-ups to help victims share their experiences." "One group of women has already founded a start-up, BetterBrave, that aims to be an online hub for female workers who felt they were sexually harassed at work. SheWorx, composed of female entrepreneurs, is planning an online database that would enable women and others to report unethical behavior by investors."

Overtonwindow 9y ago

All it takes is an accusation. A very powerful weapon indeed.

aaron695 9y ago

So best advice for VCs not to get on the blacklist, don't deal with women. Best advice for startups, deal with people on the blacklist, less competition.