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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

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
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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
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