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Fifth of Y Combinator female founders sexually harassed by investors, research finds

Nineteen say they experienced inappropriate 'incidents' from angel investors or venture capitalists 

Maya Oppenheim
Women's Correspondent
Tuesday 16 October 2018 18:55 BST
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One in five female founders who passed through prominent Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator have been sexually harassed or assaulted by an investor, new research has found.

Y Combinator – which provides seed funding for startups – released the results of a survey completed by 88 female founders who have gone through its accelerator program.

Nineteen said they had experienced inappropriate “incidents” from angel investors or venture capitalists, which included sexual overtures or badgering, coercion or quid pro quo, or unwanted sexual contact.

Those who chose not to report the incidents chiefly cited concerns around retaliation from investors. Two survey responses highlighted by Y Combinator suggested speaking up about their experiences would “endanger” their firm’s prospects for future funding rounds.

“VCs (venture capitalists) would penalise women for coming forward by icing them out of social and professional situations and denying them funding opportunities, meaning the bad behaviour rarely got outed,” an anonymous respondent wrote.

Y Combinator published the results of the survey in a blog post on Monday – saying it has a zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate behaviour and would ban any investor who acts inappropriately from their community.

“We also created a formal process for founders in the YC community to report bad behaviour by investors,” it said.

The survey was carried out with Callisto - a non-profit organisation which builds software to highlight inappropriate sexual behaviour in the workplace. The survey was sent to 125 of the 384 female founders who have been associated with Y Combinator.

Y Combinator provides seed funding – the earliest stage of venture funding – for startup organisations and helps to pay businesses' expenses when they are getting off the ground.

The survey comes as Silicon Valley and the business community as a whole has been faced with its own manifestation of the #MeToo movement.

A slew of cases of sexual misconduct in the tech community have generated numerous headlines over the last year and a half. This includes a sexual harassment suit filed by a former Google employee alleging a “bro culture” at the firm and a suit filed against Microsoft by over 100 employees alleging gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

Women at Microsoft working in US-based technical jobs filed 238 internal complaints about gender discrimination or sexual harassment between 2010 and 2016, according to court filings made public in March.

The figure was cited by claimants suing Microsoft for systematically denying pay raises or promotions to women at the world’s largest software company. Microsoft denies it had any such policy.

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