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Survey of YC female founders on sexual harassment, coercion by angels and VCs

• rhacker 8y ago
  This is a good step. However, I really believe the largest hurdle to overcome is gender bias. Women get comments from everyone on how they should behave many times over that of a man will get in their lifetime.
• cm2012 8y ago
  Good on YC for doing this survey.
  • your-nanny 8y ago
    I agree. However similar surveys should be conducted of male employees. Sexual harassment of males is systemically underreported.
    • jnovek 8y ago
      I see this as a rising tide. The amount or women sexually harassed appears to be much higher than the amount of men. By establishing policies that benefit the biggest victim group, you can pave the way to better policies for all the groups. Think of it as social triage. I also suspect that YC will take a man reporting a sexual assault as seriously as a woman. In my experience YC is open minded and egalitarian.
      • bluGill 8y ago
        It isn't just YC though. Society has a very strong double standard here. Men socially are likely to have a hard time if they report anything and it is found out: "you should have just slept with her". Women who report it will get sympathy for what happened if people find out. While in both cases the victim will be uncomfortable and probably not want to talk about it in public, women can talk about it to their closest friends while men cannot.
      • Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        I just see it as sexist. "Appears to be much higher" is an unscientific basis for sexism. I think that this might just be because members of this community are mostly men, so male->female harassment being more common is a statistical certainty. But the same goes for the ratio of, for example, heterosexual men to homosexual men, and anyone in those demographics affected by harrassment are left out in the cold. We have a [dead] example in this thread of a male victim who has been the target of female harassment. You don't fight sexist behavior with more sexist behavior. Just conduct the survey of everyone. Use demographics after the fact to establish trends, don't go into it with bias. In other words: the methodology used here literally covers up sexual harassment. It's just a sex no one cares about.
    • AdrianB1 8y ago
      In many cases males do not consider sexual harassment some basic interactions like asking someone for a coffee; some coffee will remain just a coffee, some will not, the line is drawn where an offer is no longer just an offer, but when it is repeated or involves coercion. On the other side, I saw women misunderstanding neutral situations way more often. This will make the percentage of women complaining of harassment always much bigger than men.
    • LyndsySimon 8y ago
      I very much agree, and came here to say this. While I don't see a pressing need to do a survey like this specifically for men, it seems jarring to me that the survey was only sent to women. Why? It would have been no more difficult to send it to men as well. The results would likely have reinforced the need for things like Callisto; their lack gives anyone opposed to this sort of thing ammunition to attack the concept without addressing it on its merits.
• deleted 8y ago
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• 5874-4b22-a4e0 8y ago
  Are there no protections for male founders, or rank and file employees? Perhaps founders with body dimensions that are less than Terry Crews?
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • shawn 8y ago
    I can't vouch this, but I would if I could. This is both relevant to the article and a relevant question in general. Users didn't flag this; a mod did. You can tell because it's collapsed.
• ummonk 8y ago
  Good stuff. One concern with Callisto though: What stops a serial perpetrator from reporting himself (using an alias) to be able to identify anyone else who has reported him?
  • giarc 8y ago
    I would imagine the attorney that gets involved would not divulge the identities of those coming forward to each other.
  • Hongwei 8y ago
    Hopefully self-preservation - why call attention to himself (or herself)? Unless they had more sinister intentions to intimidate previous victims or worse. But even then, reporting yourself to the watchdog wouldn't be worth it. I think this is a great thing for YC to be doing.
    • glangdale 8y ago
      Somewhere else upthread it was suggested that Callisto could "get together" victims, which another commenter pointed out is less than ideal for legal reasons (looking like they cooked up testimony). The 'fake report accomplice' would be another good reason not to allow victims to directly communicate. Generally, an attacker would probably not want to call attention to themselves. A sufficiently well-resourced adversary (I suppose) could hire people to spam the system with false accusations (possibly targeting similar peers so it looks like "hey, everyone in crypto/databases/... is being accused") but if the process of getting an account with this system isn't trivial (invite-only, verified email, etc) it wouldn't be easy.
  • tlb 8y ago
    This paper explains the cryptography and game theory behind their approach: https://www.projectcallisto.org/callisto-cryptographic-approach.pdf https://www.projectcallisto.org/callisto-cryptographic-appro...
    • deleted 8y ago
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• jackemupguy2 8y ago
  Great stuff and obviously anyone with 2 brain cells gets it. However, how do these stats play to the population at large? The SF corridors of tech have a couple slants that are interesting, but it's very polar when it comes to population of male/female ratios. Am I not correct? Plus a foundation of gaming / influence from our male dominated demographic can be unfairly deemed unsocial which may be the pattern of socially unacceptable behavior. That's in defense of culture, but also noting its obviously unacceptable behavior towards woman.
• losvedir 8y ago
  Can someone clarify the stats a little bit? The post mentions "19 founders" and then breaks it down into 18, 15, and 4. Is the "19" an error (I notice that's 15+4, perhaps it's missing the "18" group?), or can women be counted in multiple categories? If that's the case, it seems to me like the first category should include the second and third, so wouldn't that one be more than 19?
  • acchow 8y ago
    > The post mentions "19 founders" and then breaks it down into 18, 15, and 4. Some founders reported more than one incident.
  • regular_dev34 8y ago
    19 is the superset. Try to think it of as a venn diagram, will make it easier.
• runako 8y ago
  The details are stunning. Nearly 20% of responders reported sexual coercion or quid-pro-quo. Given that there are responses which declined to report anyone, the actual number is obviously higher. This is happening at the top startup accelerator in the world, where there is likely to be more scrutiny than elsewhere. (The problem is likely worse in other places.) Kudos on publishing this research, great work.
  • castlecrasher2 8y ago
    > Given that there are responses which declined to report anyone, the actual number is obviously higher. I don't see any specifics on the number reported vs the number that experienced harassment, just the number of respondents who experienced it. Where is that in the article?
    • runako 8y ago
      Slight misread of the post, see my response to @nailer in a sibling comment. The broad conclusion is unchanged.
  • nailer 8y ago
    You're using 'reported' in two different contexts, and drawing an odd conclusion as a result From your comment: > Nearly 20% of responders reported sexual coercion or quid-pro-quo From the survey: >> 88 YC female founders completed the survey >> 19 founders experienced one or more inappropriate incidents by angels or VCs: Yes, 19/88 of founders surveyed stated they had been harassed to YC as part of the survey. From your comment: > Given that there are responses which declined to report anyone The reporting here is between the founder and authorities, other founders, other VCs, in context of the incident and not the survey. From the survey: >> When founders did report, their main reason was to protect others: “I wanted to make sure that other founders funded by this VC would NOT be in contact with this person, so I shared.” I'm not assuming any malice on your part, just a misreading of the survey results.
    • runako 8y ago
• jacquesm 8y ago
  A couple of notes: (1) There are VCs that are female friendly from the get go, rather than as an afterthought, for instance http://www.karmijnkapitaal.nl/ http://www.karmijnkapitaal.nl/ (2) What is also interesting to research is what the difference is in capital raised for what %age of equity vs teams consisting of all-males. (3) The study started off with a self-selected group, which might affect the results either way, it would be good to repeat it across a larger number of subjects chosen at random.
  • atomical 8y ago
    What VCs aren't female friendly?
    • jacquesm 8y ago
      The fact that female friendly VCs exist is a tell all by itself.
    • gk1 8y ago
      I was just as confused as you, but then I found this on that website: > We believe in the power of diversity. We therefore invest in companies that are led by mixed management teams, consisting of a balanced combination of women and men. They exclusively fund mixed-gender founding teams, which (I think) is unique.
    • moorhosj 8y ago
      Likely the ones doing the harassment highlighted in the survey.
  • stevenwoo 8y ago
    Here is a study of 150,000 women in college. https://www.aau.edu/key-issues/aau-climate-survey-sexual-assault-and-sexual-misconduct-2015?id=16525 https://www.aau.edu/key-issues/aau-climate-survey-sexual-ass... The percentage reporting sexual assault is the close to the same. There is a 160 page addendum which attempts to address 3.) as one point of a lot of points.
  • drawnwren 8y ago
• femto113 8y ago
  Over 20% of female founders are experiencing harassment or coercion and the response is to implement a reporting system to identify serial offenders? This is absurdly inadequate, does nothing to prevent harassment, and leaves the burden on the victims rather than the perpetrators. It should be incumbent on YC to ensure that before any angel or VC is given access to any founders that they are screened for such behavior, including a background check for incidents that happened before they got involved in YC. Anything less is just posturing.
  • shantanubala 8y ago
    But how do you conduct a background check without a database of reports from people who have experienced harassment? Unfortunately, most of the time, this gets swept under the rug. This way, at least that background check will actually reveal information once the relevant data is collected.
    • deleted 8y ago
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    • femto113 8y ago
      There's an entire industry of companies that perform background checks, this is not a novel problem. You can also require potential investors to sign a contract that they've never committed harassment, list any times they've been accused of harassment, entered into a confidential settlement, etc. with some significant penalty if they're caught lying.
      • beat 8y ago
        Unless that "significant penalty" includes somehow removing that VC from the company's cap table without harming the company, then the cure might be worse than the disease. Imagine the havoc that could be caused by a publicly shamed VC with a board seat and a 10% chunk of the company. And, as we learned from the tale of Peter Thiel and Gawker, one of the advantages of being a billionaire is you can afford to squander millions of dollars on petty vengeance.
• vandot 8y ago
  Wow, maybe YC and HN are coming around to pervasive inclusion issues in tech. Until I see some action though, I'm left with the memory of that time I posted survey results about women in Seattle tech scene and it was flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13558116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13558116 I see that a thankful comment on this article is already flagged, so... seems like much has not changed.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • beat 8y ago
    I've noticed that any sort of progressive/inclusive comments get aggressively downvoted on HN. It's sad and frustrating.
    • exogeny 8y ago
      It's analogous to pointing out that the #1 trait that successful founders have in common is family wealth - it causes people to have to look into their own privilege, and it ain't pretty.
    • nailer 8y ago
      I find the opposite - I've been on HN around a decade, a few months ago, during a discussion on living in SV I mentioned that the valley is a cultural wasteland. dang said this was a 'slur' and not acceptable on HN. The idea that it's unacceptable to criticise the culture of an area, and that people need to be protected from this idea, would be unthinkable on Startup News.
      • beat 8y ago
        Can't both be true? Are these actually opposites?
      • Spooky23 8y ago
        The whole point here is to have more signal than noise, and it's usually successful. I made a similar comment a few years ago about another geography and got a similar response. It gave me pause. Reflecting on it, the way dang and others handle these things is right, if you have a point, you can make it without making an insulting generalization and characterization. If you don't, at the end of the day, whatever point you try to make is wiped by the visceral response.
• exogeny 8y ago
  I'd be curious to know what YC is doing about these VCs - obviously telling them to go fuck themselves w/r/t demo day and other program access is a start, but what else? This is where YC has a platform to be a part of the solution and name names.
  • jnovek 8y ago
    YC advises founders on who they should raise money from. They also pick who to invite to demo day. It’s not all the leverage in the world, but the valley is small and, for a VC partner, deal flow is everything. For those women who do want to take a stand — and I understand why the majority don’t, there is a massively lopsided power dynamic between founders and investors — YC is providing resources (according to the article). Edit: Also, maybe someday they’ll be in a position to name names, but right now it risks the anonyminity of those reporting. As an alum I hold YC to a high standard — its likely the most distinguished thing on my resume — and if they’re in the position to out the bad guys someday but don’t for political reasons, I’ll be just as mad as you are.
• asabjorn 8y ago
  As a survivor I can say sexual assault is terrible. Before we make any conclusion on the numbers, 88/384=22.9% of the female founders responded and 32.5% were given the chance to participate. Is the sample representative of the whole? How were the 32.5% of female founders that were given a chance to respond selected? If this is a representative sample then this is a shockingly high percentage of unwanted sexual contact. Also, I wonder if we can get a bit more detail on what situations these happened in and what exactly happened so that we can discuss other reasonable measures we can all participate in.
  • tyre 8y ago
    > Callisto chose to send the survey to the 125 founders who signed up for the YC female founder email list. They choose this group under the assumption that these founders would welcome being reached out to for the survey because they had signed up proactively to this email list.
    • asabjorn 8y ago
      Ok, but it is at least a lower bound on reports. At least 4/384=1% reported unwanted sexual contact, 15/384=3.9% quid pro quo and 19/384=4.9% sexual badgering. The real number would be higher if all responded and asked. Were these experiences as part of YC or anytime? Did the survey have a definition of the terms sexual badgering, quid pro quo and unwanted sexual contact that we can look at? Do we know how many men have been accused? Basically, is this a general problem or are there some sexual predators causing most of these terrible experiences.
  • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
    The pool is 125, not 384. > we helped Callisto send a survey to 125 of the 384 female founders The pool of 125 was based on who signed up for an email list. > Callisto chose to send the survey to the 125 founders who signed up for the YC female founder email list. They choose this group under the assumption that these founders would welcome being reached out to for the survey because they had signed up proactively to this email list. There's certainly some room for sampling bias, but not nearly as much as you claim. I also strongly disagree that this is shocking: it's difficult to make good estimates, but various surveys are often in excess of 60% for women: http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/10906109/Sexual-Harassment-Statistics-Is-the-Truth-in-the-Numbers.html http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/10906109/Sexu... 20% is below a reasonable minimum estimate: https://fairygodboss.com/articles/sexual-harassment-statistics https://fairygodboss.com/articles/sexual-harassment-statisti... Now, this is a more specific survey, not just any sexual harassment, but these numbers should not be shocking. One of the core messages of the me-too movement is that these numbers should not be shocking, this is the reality, and ignorance of this can contribute to the problem.
• seshagiric 8y ago
  Great initiative, one suggestion though for Callisto and YC, it may help to publish the names of people who have access to the reports filed on Callisto.
• UncleMeat 8y ago
  This is one of the real values of #metoo. A lot of people just don't know how incredibly common this sort of thing is. Catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, rape. It is all really really widespread and it is very likely that almost every adult woman you know has experience some form of sexual degradation.
  • totoglazer 8y ago
    I think you mean a lot of men just didn't care to realize. Women knew.
    • AnarchoYeasty 8y ago
      That's not even remotely true. Loads of women think that it only happens to them that it's something they are doing. Other women reporting and coming forward was as much for other victims to know they aren't alone as it was for men to wake up to what's happening.
  • admiralEyebrows 8y ago
    It makes me wonder how the men who have the focus and discipline to get in to those positions of power have not learned the discipline of controlling their sexual urges. Those that are doing the harassing are at fault of course, but something is also wrong if men are acting on potentially career destroying impulses. Is the education system failing at teaching discipline? or philosophy? I've gone through the public education system in the U.S. and neither were taught to me, I had to seek them out myself. Maybe sexual harassment seminars should be less about defining and identifying sexual harassment and more about the type of person you can become when you stop letting pleasure and impulse define your life.
    • rocqua 8y ago
      It seems there are a few explanations, with the truth probably being some combination of these. * The harassers genuinely believe they aren't doing something wrong / think their victims want it * The harassers can't control their urges in the moment / over long times * The harassers don't care that they are doing something wrong / think they have the right to do wrong. I'm not sure which is worse. And again, it is probably a mix of the above where cognitive dissonance nudges the harassers into after the fact justifications.
• deleted 8y ago
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• JohnTClark 8y ago
  1. What about fake accusations? Will the perpetrator name still be in the database as a perpetrator if the accusations are false? I would be curios about false accusation statistics or even exaggerated or misinterpreted actions that are interpreted as sexual misconduct. 2. If you are a VC I assume that you have money, lots of money. Why not hire an escort? Why not be a sugar daddy to someone? Why have a or try to have a sexual relationship with someone you work with or someone you have a business relationship with, especially in this day and age?
  • ivraatiems 8y ago
    > 2. If you are a VC I assume that you have money, lots of money. Why not hire an escort? Why not be a sugar daddy to someone? Why have a or try to have a sexual relationship with someone you work with or someone you have a business relationship with, especially in this day and age? Because society tells you it's allowed. Because it's easier to trick yourself into thinking it's consensual. Because so many other powerful men do it. Because you can.
    • JohnTClark 8y ago
      Yes, but even if it is consensual, you need to understand that you live in a world where if you are a powerful man and a female subordinate says your name and sex in the same sentence you're career is over. I don't know why I expect more intelligence from VC's. They made millions/billions and they have a simple choice: try to have sex with a subordinate which most of the time will not be the best sex in the world and it will be possibly ruin my life vs escort/model. They made millions of $ and can't make a simple decision.
      • pvg 8y ago
        you live in a world where if you are a powerful man and a female subordinate says your name and sex in the same sentence you're career is over. No, that's a made up world and nobody lives in it.
        • 8y ago
• pytyper2 8y ago
  The process they have implemented is great. They should execute the survey again to include all genders. Yes, I saw the note regarding why only females were surveyed.
• emtel 8y ago
  I would like to know what percentage of VCs/angels are responsible for the reported incidents. If most founders are pitching to 10 VCs (which does not seem like an unrealistic number), it would be possible for even a single bad actor to be responsible for these statistics. I doubt it is a single bad actor, but I bet its highly asymmetric, since most offenders are likely serial offenders.
  • hypatiadotca 8y ago
    Your intuition is borne out by the research into repeat undetected rapists, fwiw: https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/ https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-pr... TL;DR, of the men asked a series of questions about sexual misbehavior that met legal definitions of attempted / completed rape but did not use the “r” word, 6-13% admitted to at least one offense, and 50% of those across both studies were repeat perpetrators with an average of 6 offenses each (and a median of 3, so there were some who were super-offenders). The studies cited only looked at male perpetrators, an obvious limitation, but I think the work is really relevant nonetheless.
    • village-idiot 8y ago
      Not surprising, in long tail situations a small percentage end up having a huge effect on overall statistics.
    • entwife 8y ago
      Surveying male funders, regarding their self-reported sexual behaviors and attitudes toward sexual expression, would be interesting as well. Are the same number of incidents reported by each gender? Why are men (mostly men) doing this? Have they experienced any feedback or consequences?
  • brenschluss 8y ago
    Even if there are a few number of offenders, there’s a system that supports those offenders/distrusts those who reports incidents. Otherwise, how would you explain why this happens? Logically, the women to whom something happened would say something. But statistics show that most don’t, or that most only communicate to close friends, despite stats from the original article. So we know that incidents are rampant. We also know that most men don’t know this, as represented by the surprise at this article as evidenced in this thread. We can only deduce that there is an emergent dynamic that actively discourages women from speaking up and encourages/allows these offenders to continue. This might look like bias by men that men are blind to. This might look like messages that discourage women. It’s only logical that men wouldn’t be able to see this and that men would have huge blind spots around sexual harassment issues. (And of course, this is what women have been saying continuously — if only men would listen.)
• rjzzleep 8y ago
  I asked this question below and apparently it warranted massive downvotes: Is there any data on how many of the angels and VC's have a background engineering, math, sciences vs. law, business and others? It seems to be that correlation requires more than just, he's a guy, he get's more. She's a women she gets sexually harassed, she get's less. In one of the US offices I worked in I kept getting a lot of shit from some colleagues and a middle manage who's wife was one of the first employees and highly influentual. A year after I left, an ex colleague tells me that a good friend of that lady, also a lady, that didn't like me told everyone I talked shit about her breasts. Germany, half a year in, turns out the girls in the company are talking about my cute ass. Is the difference that they did it behind my back, besides proactively? Can power dynamics really be boiled down to a plain men vs. women? Nothing about demographics, social context, history etc.? Are we saying that Elizabeth Holmes is treated the same as some no name immigrant female founder? Or a random no name immigrant male founder even?
  • gk1 8y ago
    There's no implied causation here ("correlation")... It's straightforward: The women reported experiencing sexual harassment. Does it make it any better if the sexual harassment happened because they're female and a mathematician?
    • mooseburger 8y ago
      He wasn't talking about the field of the women, but of the harassers. Yes it does changes things if the harassers are primarily non-STEM, given this is Hacker News. What are we supposed to do about the culture outside our field?
      • kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        What matters is that the harassers are beholden to no one. They have no HR dept. to give them sensitivity training.
      • vec 8y ago
        Well, for a start, we could be a lot more thoughtful about who we're willing to accept funding from.
• JarlUlvi 8y ago
  Sexual harassment & coercion impacts more than just women. All the sexual harassment I've received over my career was based on women in senior roles, in positions of authority over me.
• hal9000xp 8y ago
  I don’t live in US. While I understand what’s real offense (including disrespectful jokes), I have concern about “guilty till proven innocent”. If I’m attracted to someone and I want to date. How you can ask to go out without risk of being accused of sexual harassment? This is not sarcastic question. This is especially important if you as a male is not very good at reading subtle social cues. P.S. I really don't see why it got downvoted. There is no hidden message here.
  • framebit 8y ago
    Please read this: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/4/17933530/sexual-assault-me-too https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/4/17933530/sexual-a... The negative encounters get lots of loud attention, rightfully so. This author is making the point that women don't have to protest, speak up, or report all the totally normal, healthy encounters they have with men.
  • the_gastropod 8y ago
    If you're the person's superior at work: don't. If you're a peer, you use your words and respectfully ask if they'd be interested in going out.
    • deleted 8y ago
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    • cimmanom 8y ago
      This. And if she declines, you respect that and treat her professionally, without retaliating.
      • deleted 8y ago
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  • djohnston 8y ago
    honestly man just don't ever date/hook-up with your coworkers, it will almost always cause more trouble than it was worth
• auganov 8y ago
  Guessing by the numbers I'd assume "overtures" and "badgering" are more severe than the catch-all "harassment". But can't be sure. Also "coercion or quid-pro-quo" being so close in numbers to the former makes it even more confusing.
• NoblePublius 8y ago
  Where’s the control survey against which we can judge the significance of these figures?
• NoblePublius 8y ago
  Did anyone survey female founders who consciously leveraged their sexuality to their benefit? I’m a gay man in the VC world and this happens to me regularly.
  • ionforce 8y ago
    Can you clarify what "this happens" refers to? What happens to you regularly?
    • NoblePublius 8y ago
      Doe eyed conventionally attractive women with mediocre pitch decks, usually for fluffy consumer goods (“Warby Parker for mascara”, “Casper for Yoga Mats,” “purse with a battery in it”), showing up to pitch in high heels with tight shirts. All. The. Time.
  • drawnwren 8y ago
    My other related question; why did they survey only females? It seems like a report of combined and gender separated statistics would have also served the same purpose. If (as I suspect, but we have no numbers to back it up) females are disproportionately targeted by VCs, wouldn't this have made a stronger case than surveying only women?
  • hypatiadotca 8y ago
    I believe you that it does happen, and while it’s an interesting phenomenon it lacks the power dynamic that the other way around involves.
    • NoblePublius 8y ago
      Tell that to conventionally unattractive women with pitch decks. You’re missing the power dynamic attractive women wield over less attractive women. They love the status quo. It gets them jobs and money and power at the expense of short, overweight, unattractive women. It’s why “attractiveness” is a much stronger single variable indicator of success than “gender”. Nth wave feminists rarely talk about this.
• sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Those numbers are way too high. I always thought that investors might be looking for a date or something ... not quite professional ... but 'quid pro quo' ... my god man. Greasy.
• xtrapolate 8y ago
  > "we helped Callisto send a survey to 125 of the 384 female founders who have participated in YC" Anyone aware of similar efforts to survey the male founders?
  • gwbas1c 8y ago
    This is SOOOO important. I once worked for a startup where the female CEO did a few things that got close to the line. Not illegal or immoral, but enough to make me wonder if a similar female leader in a similar situation would cross the line towards her male employees.
  • dopamean 8y ago
    Just xtrapolate from these numbers.
    • xtrapolate 8y ago
      > "Just xtrapolate from these numbers." They could've simply involved the male population as-well, but for reasons unknown, chose not to.
      • danso 8y ago
        The reasons are not unknown. The vast majority of VCs are male, and the majority of known harassment incidents have involved male-on-female interactions. This is not to say that male-on-male and female-on-male harassment doesn't exist. But if this is one of the first surveys of its kind for YC, makes sense to design it around the population that currently seems to be the most affected.
• gowld 8y ago
  One of the main ways that organizations (schools, churches, etc) defend against abuse is with a simple rule: authority figures are not allowed 1:1 private communication or contact with someone under their power, and members are encouraged to always stay in the presence of a trusted companion during all activities. This greatly reduces the possibility of getting into an ambiguous situation where abuse can happen without a 3rd-party witness, by making the absense of a witness its own violation. This isn't 100% practical in the business world, but could be quite helpful, and valuable in its own right to avoid single-points of information failure in the business. With modern technology, recording conversations (with the knowledge and consent of both parties) can be a practical alternative when humans are not available to accompany.
  • User23 8y ago
    In other words, follow the Mike Pence rule.
    • stephencanon 8y ago
      The “Mike Pence rule” applies only to women, limiting their opportunities for advancement (and leaving men vulnerable). You have to apply it to everyone.
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      • User23 8y ago
        I'd like to see the Survey of YC male founders on sexual harassment to support this claim.
• rajacombinator 8y ago
  This sounds like a high-tech, low-effectiveness solution. A lawyer reaches out and discusses their options? That’s easy. 1) take some kind of legal action, get outgunned by wealthy VC, blacklisted by VC community as a litigious founder, tank your startup with distractions. Or 2) keep quiet. The real solution if YC wants to use their top-of-food-chain position is to name, shame, ban these investors from YC invites, and - most importantly - target their LPs. No need for a tech platform. I make no judgement as to whether that is appropriate or something YC wants to undertake.
• samirm 8y ago
  Not that there would be a lot of these, but how are they managing fake/false reports? Is that even possible while maintaining privacy?
• jVinc 8y ago
  I'm curious why only survey female founders? It seems like an odd data damaging move which is based on an inherent assumption which is ironically now not backed by data. And it would have been easy to just send the same survey out to some of the male founders while you where at it. Not even taking men into account seems to passively push the rather sexist mantra that men should just "suck it up" and not actually be taken serious in cases or sexual coercion and quid-pro-quo situations. I'm not trying to argue that woman are not disproportional represented in these case, however why not just include everyone? You state Callisto is a "non-profit dedicated to building tech to combat sexual assault and harassment." if that is the case and it's not just for assault and harassment against woman, then why self-limit the scope of your survey? And if the answer is "we would have just found no-one had any issues anyway" then I restate the question, why not just send it out to everyone and show this disproportion with data instead of just making it an assumption?
  • jsmeaton 8y ago
    The survey shows nearly 20% of respondents experienced some kind of harassment or assault and your only comment is “what about men?”. I’m sure if men within YC experience this kind of behaviour they can use the same reporting tools on bookface.
    • LyndsySimon 8y ago
      The GP has a valid criticism - why weren't men included in the survey? That criticism does not detract from the results w/r/t to female founders in any way. > I’m sure if men within YC experience this kind of behaviour they can use the same reporting tools on bookface. I strongly suspect you're correct, but without seeing the tool I can't say for sure. Even so, the GP's criticism was "why weren't men included?", not "why aren't men able to report and act against sexual harassment?" I think men not being surveyed created an unhealthy environment for discussion - not because men experience harassment at the same level as women, but because they missed an opportunity to show that and as a community we get the very sort of conversations occurring in this thread. The GP voiced a criticism, and you seem to have taken it to mean that the GP felt that men's experiences are more important. I don't believe that was the intent going in to this project, nor do I believe that was what the GP intended.
• forapurpose 8y ago
  Those numbers, which are horrible, are for relatively powerful women. Most women can't call Sam Altman and ask for help; they are not in-demand, people that powerful organizations feel a need to please. Just imagine what the numbers are for the vast majority of women with less power and influence. Imagine the mid-level manager, the run-of-the-mill coder, the cafeteria worker, the janitor? Many of those people can't afford to lose their job and have less power protect their careers. And theoretically they may be more likely to be victims: Men distinguish based on physical attraction for these purposes, not status, and they may see these women as more vulnerable and therefore as easier targets. Are you going to try to sexually coerce the VP at Airbnb or the caterer's junior assistant? You know what the perpetrators say: 'Do you know who I am?' 'It will be your word against mine. Nobody will believe you.' 'You'll never work again.' Those people need a Callisto too - they need one far more (and maybe Callisto already does that).
• deleted 8y ago
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• mindgam3 8y ago
  This is seriously great work. Thanks to all involved for making it happen. My one quibble is, why limit this to only female founders? Male founders can also experience sexual harassment and coercion from authority figures. I am speaking from personal experience. Although the specific form of harassment may be sexual, fundamentally it isn't about sex. It's about abuse of power. To be clear, I am 100% behind all efforts to reduce harassment in all forms, and I am aware that the % of female founders who have experienced harassment is higher than males. But I guarantee that the male % is greater than 0, and it would be constructive to have these perspectives included in future work.
• shafyy 8y ago
  A small anecdote: I'm a male, my co-founder is a female. We once went to a meeting with a VC (in San Francisco), and at the end he told us the story about why he didn't become a priest. Because when he was in an all-boys school, they always had one afternoon off per week. And they would go to the milkshake place and (and I'm quoting here) "everytime the girl working there turned around to stick the cups into the milkshake machine, her little butt would wiggle". He made this this butt grabbing motion with his hands. And the way he told the story was exteremly unsettling, you could see his horniness through his words and the way he moved. Almost as if he was talking about a juicy steak he ate. That story was 100% unrelated to our business or any other topic we were discussing. The worst part is, all 3 of us laughed. Only a minute after I realized that I should have said something. The point of my story is that in that moment, I was almost in a shock-like state and didn't't know what to say. I was taken by surprise. My co-founder said that she felt super uncomfortable, and was happy that she wasn't in this room with him alone. Not sure where I can report this, as Callisto seems for schools only?
• graphememes 8y ago
  It's almost like other people are humans just trying to do their jobs to feed themselves and their family.
• kragen 8y ago
  I wonder if it's intentional that they named the system Callisto. In mythology, Callisto was raped (in Ovid's account, violently); she became pregnant and, in punishment for being raped, was either killed or transformed into an animal, at which point her own son did not recognize her and attempted to kill her. Or, in another account, her father cut her son into pieces to revenge himself on the rapist. It's all rather confused. My point is that none of these stories seem like the kind of treatment I would like to promise to sexual assault victims. It makes me question the founders' motivations; it's a bit like naming a Messianic Jewish club "The Final Solution", except that of course 100% of the people who might consider joining a Messianic Jewish club already know what that phrase connotes.
• vonsydov 8y ago
  This is a pretty bad survey. Typically founders will go into hundreds of meetings. What percentage of those meetings have they gotten sexual comments. Again, there's not one fits all when it comes to expressing sexuality. Not all comments should be considered harassment.
• pokoleo 8y ago
  I applaud YC's blog post. However, they should probably go into more detail (or link) about how this is possible: > encrypted in a way that not even the Callisto team can view. > If multiple founders name the same perpetrator, they will be referred to an attorney who can then decrypt the founder’s contact info and reach out to provide them with free advice on... What's stopping the Callisto team pretend to be an attorney? Attorneys can decrypt the founder's contact info.
• osazuwa 8y ago
  15 experienced a quid-pro-quo? Am I reading this wrong, or does actually mean 1/6 women founders were asked to exchange sexual favors for investment? Holy shit.
• beloch 8y ago
  "Later this fall, they are launching Callisto for founders. Callisto detects serial perpetrators of sexual coercion and assault, and connects survivors to each other and their options for taking action to protect their community. Founders will be able to use Callisto to securely store the identities of perpetrators of sexual coercion and assault. These identities will be encrypted in a way that not even the Callisto team can view. If multiple founders name the same perpetrator, they will be referred to an attorney who can then decrypt the founder’s contact info and reach out to provide them with free advice on their options for coming forward, including the option to share information with other victims of the same perpetrator." ------------------- Collusion between witnesses can derail a court case. The best way to prevent charges of collusion is to limit communication between witnesses. This system absolutely should put an attorney in touch with the founders to build a case, but it should not put them in touch with each other. At least, not until after pressing legal charges is ruled out.
• hkai 8y ago
  > You can report at any time, even years after the incident took place. The report will remain confidential. Kudos to YC for really making this a better environment for everyone.
• stephengillie 8y ago
  This whole thread is a dumpster fire. Between this and the recent drug threads[∆][¶], this community has revealed its toxic nature. It's unhealthy to be part of this community, and from this point forward, I will recommend against Ycombinator and related investment and incubation, purely on moral grounds. [∆]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205005 [¶]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18193884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18193884
• ingmarheinrich 8y ago
  Restricting this to female founders is highly sexist.
• pi-squared 8y ago
  "Innocent until proven guilty" This has to stop, we are going into territory of assuming guilt because someone said so. Women can be bad as well. I know it's unpopular to say this today. I get that the problem is huge and I'm not defending true harassers, but you are losing valuable justice principles here. Assuming someone is guilty because they are a certain gender (male in this case) or innocent because they are another (female) is as bad as any discrimination over the ages. Humans are good in overgeneralizing and sending this survey to women only is not scientific and it's not fair. Assuming things are true because someone says so has led us to bad paths in history. Let's have a talk about what is the correct way to find a solution to the problem because false accusations can ruin a life as well as not speaking up.