Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley

round of funding. We're really really excited about the future, and the founder of the company, Sandy, through a friend, said that Mark Cantor was in between projects and that he would be available to interview for the position of CEO. Mark Cancer this is the name will be mentioning a couple of times this episode. He founded a software company back in the eighties that became known as Macromedia, which after he left, went public and was sold to a

b for three point four billion dollars. Within certain circles in tech, he's pretty well known. Kathy and Sandy had dinner with Mark to see if they'd want to bring him on as CEO. Not long after, the three of them were on a conference call and Sandy had to drop off the call. The Mark said, Oh, I guess you know, because Sandy's on the Phone's just the two of us, and I said, you know, okay. He said, actually, this is a great opportunity because there's something I want

to talk to you about privately. And I said, what's that and he said, he said, you know, I've been looking at the expenses of the company and you know, projecting it forward, and he said, I don't see a role for you in this company moving forward. He said, but but I have an idea. I have an idea. Um what we could do is, um we could have an arrangement the two of us, and the arrangement was I'm gonna have sex with him and then I would

be able to keep my job. And then he also mentioned that he didn't have this rangement with another company that he ran and it worked very nicely. So admitted to doing something similar at it with a different woman where he had sex with someone, you know, so she could stay on the parel. And he was, you know, thinking maybe this might be a good arrangement. And I said that that, you know, under no circumstances was I interested or going to take him up on the offer.

And I said, I'm so offended. I can't even believe you're saying this to me. What Kathy didn't know was that Mark had a history of harassment allegations dating all the way back to his time at the software startup that he founded that became Macromedia. He was asked to leave the company in the early nineties partly because of that behavior, According to a person with knowledge of the matter, and a year after the alleged incident with Kathy, another woman in the tech industry, says Mark went on to

proposition her. You'll hear from that woman in a minute. Hi, I'm Akito and I'm Sarah McBride. And this week on Decrypted, we're tackling Silicon Valley's sexual harassment problem. It's a scandal that has completely consumed the industry over the last month. Over the years, Kathy Kbrey had told some friends and her two daughters about Mark Cantor's alleged advances, but that interview you just heard with us was the first time

she spoke publicly about her experience. You'll be hearing from other women today too, women who came forward with their stories about other men over the last month of various news outlets, and one woman who went public years ago. These are women who step forward to expose what many have called an open secret and text tight knit male dominated community. We'll hear what life has been like for these women since then and whether they fear the repercussions

of exposing this darker side of the industry. Will also be discussing what can be done to curb what's become to feel like an epidemic of abuse of power. So let's fast forward to March. A year after Mark cancer allegedly proposition Kathy Kobery, Wendy Dent was struggling to raise money for her media related startup, an app called Cinemas. That's when she realized that someone commented on her Facebook

post about International Women's Day. He wrote, go girl, So you know d R r L. I felt he was a role model to me in a sense that he was a pioneer of multimedia, which is the space that I'm in, and he he was someone that I was keen to meet because he's been doing exciting things. The man she's talking about is Mark Cantor, the same Mark Cantor who we heard about from Kathy Kybery. Wendy and Mark started exchanging messages on Facebook and decided to meet

up in San Francisco at a falafel joint. That's when Wendy told Mark about her startup, and you know, he listens and said it was a strong idea, and he offered to be an advisor, and so I was really quite excited. It was a meeting going well. Wendy says. Mark offered to advise her on her company and write the computer code of her app. And I've been so stuck, and I said, you know, that's so so great. I'm so happy about that because I haven't been able to,

you know, get developers. I haven't been able to get funding. It was at that point he said to me, well, yeah, everyone's going to want to get into your candies, and I want to get into your candy. And that I wouldn't forget. I will never forget hearing that and just being so stunned. And he said, you know, i'd like he said. I remember, he said I want to have sex with you. Um it wasn't that I kind of even repeat the way he said it, but he said

to me, I want to have sex with you. And he said to me, your problem is you kind of have this air about you that you're unfaul this blue Wendy away was Mark really suggesting it would help her business to sleep around. I throwled off and I was just shocked, and I didn't quite no it was to make of it, but I wanted to keep the good meeting going and I wanted to be that it could be just about the tech it it could work, Wendy said. She tried to laugh it off, but then she received

a series of Facebook messages from him. She shared screenshots of those messages with us. One said, Wendy, you're a sorceress casting a spell on me. Wendy ignored the messages and switched over to email, trying to steer the conversation back to her company. We reviewed those emails too. Mark replied, what's in it for me, and Wendy said, let me know your thoughts. Mark replied, yes, we can talk, but

on the phone and added a smiley face. I felt then that he was basically pressuring and he was putting. He was putting a kind of set development deal on the table with how it felt and um, and I I was really on the I didn't want to respond. I didn't know how do. I didn't want to prove oky middle with any response. I just wanted a squide away and and not have anything more to do with him ever again. For some of you, Wendy's tale might

sound familiar. She went public with part of it to Katie Benner of The New York Times, who named not just Mark Canter but also other women's stories about two very well known investors in the valley, Chris Soccer and Dave McClure. Dave is someone we even had on this

show in the fall. Chris said in a blog post that he disputes the account but apologized for playing a role in making the industry inhospitable for women, and a blog post of his own, Dave wrote, I'm a creep and also resigned from the venture fund that he co founded. To the New York Times, Mark responded to Wendy's allegations, saying that he only said what he said because he didn't like her ideas and wanted her to go away.

In a post on the publishing platform Medium, he said he wanted to apologize to Wendy for quote using a sexual innuendo to end our relationship. I'm wondering what the response has been like for you. Have women been reaching out, have men been reaching out? Have your friends been reaching out?

To you. What's what's been their response? The reactions good and bad because um, instantly we had, I think, a feeling that we've broken it to do and we could talk about this and everyone believed me, no one believed him. But at the same time it was horrible for me because he then started blaming me for it. He tried to justify it by saying my fault for a myriadic

ridiculous reasons. And I didn't want to get into any slinging matches about face and I just wanted up, you know, going going out to my bed, combat covers the the rest of my life today. Wendy lives in Mexico. After that exchange with Mark, as well as a few other instances that involved unwanted advances from men in the tech industry, she left to look On Valley. She ended up learning to code herself, and just recently released cinemas to Apple's

app store. Wendy worries that coming forward might make it harder for her when she's ready to start raising money for her company, but at least so far, she says she doesn't regret the decision to recap The tech entrepreneur Mark Cancer has faced sexual harassment allegations dating back to the early nine nineties, when, according to a person familiar with the situation, he was asked to lead the software

company he co founded partly because of that behavior. We reached out to Mark for the story, and he said no one ever told him he was being fired for harassment, and said he was instead fired for smoking pot. We also heard from two women who say they were propositioned by Mark. For Kathy Kybree, Mark was potentially her incoming bus.

For Wendy Dent, Mark could have been a mentor. Mark said that in conversations with Kathy, he talked about sex, and he did talk about his ex girlfriends too, but added quote I certainly never said to her you must sleep with me or else. As for Wendy, Mark acknowledged that he did tell her he wanted to have sex with her, but said he only said that to shock her. He said, quote, my sarcasm and contrarian logic is a

key part of my psyche. He also said that he was angry that Wendy didn't offer anything in return for seeking his help with her company, and said he was not expecting sex. Before Wendy's story ran in the New York Times, two women came four with their experience involving a different man, a venture capitalist called Justin called Back. Their story ran on the text site The Information, and it's what sparked this most recent outcry over the harassment

of female start up founders. We thought that this was a huge issue, but we couldn't have even imagined just how many more women would come and speak up. That's Lady Shoe, co founder of the travel startup Journey. Lady said she was groped by the venture capitalist Justin called Back when she and her co founder Susan Hoe were pitching him on their business. She and Susan recently spoke to our colleague Emily Chang. This is just stuff that

happens all the time. I mean to whether it be a snide comment or just a hug that's like a

little too grabby. Yeah. I think the unfortunate thing is that when it comes to behavior like this, it's it's almost at a point where, you know, when when we were initially um put in touch with red Albert Gotti, who was the porter who wrote the Information article, we both looked at each other and we didn't think that there was a story there we just said, wow, you know why, what what makes up this story so special that we feel the need to tell it and share

this when every other day this happens to women across industries. Susan and Lady couldn't have known how much of an impact their story would end up making. Justin Caldbeck initially denied the allegations, then apologized, and ended up leaving the

venture capital firm Binary Capital that he co founded. You know, obviously all the women who came out in the New York Times, and I just think, wow, we are hopefully in a world, are starting to become in a world where speaking out against sexual harassment does not equate to dropping a nuclear bomb on your career. You know, I I breathe this. We've had the sigh of relief where, Okay, we made the right decision, made the right decision, We

made the right choice. As Susan and Lady, as well as Wendy and Cathy consider the long term consequences of their decision to go public, there are actually very few people they could look to for past experience. It was almost unheard of to actually attach her name to an allegation of harassment in the Insulated world of tech, but Geisha Has is one of the few women who did live through this. A few years ago, her story ran on the gossip site Valley Wag. It involved receiving an

email from an angel investor called Pavel Kurda. He said, I like you a lot. I will not leave Berlin without having sex with you. Deal that was back in and the story went viral. The investor, Pavo Kurta, ended up apologizing in the aftermath. In terms of negative things, um, there got death threats on Twitter where someone would say

I will cut your throat. You find what probably what hurt more were when you read through the comments of articles and there's this Facebook plug in, and you can see that there are people that you have mutual friends with their real humans and them dissing you, them saying like your damn's own distress, You're doing it to advance your career, and just constantly constantly attacking you. Um. Then someone created a Facebook page that said I want to

have sex with Keisha Has. They pulled personal images from my Facebook profile and photoshop the guy's face on my fiance's face. Were you depressed in the aftermath? Definitely? Yeah? For how long I'd say maybe two three months. It was mainly social anxiety where whenever I would be with other people, I could not help but extremely wonder what they were thinking about me, and I myself was extremely

judging myself about everything. Like suddenly you or new normal is like all these strangers know who I am and they either want to kill me hit me. I think I'm scum or they think I'm a hero. And so that suddenly is your new reality and it takes a little while to like process it in a way that's healthy. I'm balanced, said She's still glad she came forward and

that the overwhelming response to her story was positive. Geisha also said she didn't let the aftermath and all its distractions stop her from pursuing her mission of helping more women launch successful ventures through her company called Dreamers and Doers.

I think one of the things that are associated with um successful diversity and inclusion efforts, and I think of m combating sexual harassments falling under that umbrella is developing accountability not just for reaching metric, but for people who create environments that are run counter to those values. That

voice might be familiar to our regular listeners. It's why von Hutchinson, the diversity consultant we spoke to in our episode about affirmative action in the startup Penny And when why Van talks about accountability, she's talking about imposing real consequences for the people who create these hostile work environments. Companies actually have to to make the tough, the tough choices, right. It's easy to sign a pledge, It's harder to establish

robust accountability measurement mechanisms in your organization. It's harder to engage a third party on Budsman to review your claims of harassment. It's harder to fire that superstar partner. So I'm looking for companies to make decisions like that. Um, I'm I'm very happy that the people who are coming forward are being believed and and that companies are and and VC firms are taking concrete action. When we saw sort of the downfall what happened with Binary Capital, I

think it's sent a real message. It's tempting to say, let's just get rid of the handful of bad apples and everything will be fine. Most men in the tech industry don't try to sleep with their employees, their mentees and the founders of the companies they fund. But these kinds of stories we've been talking about today is just a very extreme manifestation of a much more subtle and pervasive sexism in this male dominated industry. I've had women tell me they will walk into pitch meetings and vcs

will ask them, do you want to have kids? Do you want to have more kids? Do you think you can hire men? Um Men don't get asked those questions. Men don't get asked if they want to have kids. That's our colleague Emily Chang, who was the one who interviewed Lady in Susan earlier. Emily's also writing a book about women in tech, so she's been doing a ton

of reporting on this topic. When you talk about women who work at these tech companies, they might be and often are the only woman on a team of engineers.

All the rest of them are men. And these women are constantly fending off advances and comments of all kinds, And they tell me that it's exhausting, Like it's exhausting to have to navigate that and negotiate that and preserve the relationship and politely saying exactly, that's hard in any situation to politely say no, but when it's in your work environment and it's happening all day long, all the time.

You know, it was about a month ago that the story from the information came out, and you know, I'm wondering, had you heard of stories like this happening before around sexual harassment? Yes? I guess what I would say is every female entrepreneur, every female in tech, it seems to me, has a story at least one story, and some of

these women have many stories. And it might be being sexually harassed, someone grabbing your thighs, someone trying to case to you, But more often it is uh, something incredibly small that you might that might not seem so bad in isolation, but at it all together and it is a big deal. That brings us back to Kathy Kobrie

story from the top of the show. Cathy said she ended up telling the founder, Sandy, who didn't want to be interviewed for today's episode, about what Mark Canter said to her, and Mark didn't end up sticking around the company for long. He said he left Cubican after only a matter of weeks, even before ever signing an official employment contract. Kathy ended up leaving Silicon Valley and tech

all together. Today. She lives in a sleepy town called Carmel on the central California coast and works part time for a nonprofit. This is the first time that you're speaking about this on the record. Are you scared? Are you are you nervous? What are you worried about? Of

course makes a steps. But the reason I'm doing it because I have twin daughters and when it was happening to me, when I hung up the phone, the first thing I thought about is like, you know, this is what my girls are gonna be up again, and it just it breaks my heart. Have you ever told your daughter is about what happened? Oh? Yes, Oh I told him.

It's embarrassing, you know, because they heard me talk about how excited I was abound him to joining the company, and then when he was gone, I had to give some explanation and so I told them and they cried. And I told my daughter yesterday that I was doing this interview today and she cried. What do you think? She cried, Cathie m because she knows how humiliated it made me feel, and she knows how many thousands of

hours I've worked. But I've been reading these stories about women who have come forward, and they're definitely in in more of a position. You know, they're actively raising funds and they're afraid to be labeled as you know, trouble or you know, I don't want to do business with terror, and I think that they're braver than I am. But I'm just doing this pretty much for my daughters who are coming up into the world and want to be in business and to think that they would have to

endure something like this. If I am speaking up in some small way makes it better or easier for them, I guess it's going to be worth it. And that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. Do you have a story you'd like to share with us? You can get in touch at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net, or you can find me on Twitter at McBride SG

and I'm at aki Eto seven. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, leave us a rating and a review. This goes a long way to get the show in front of more listeners. This episode was produced by Pia got Cary, Liz Smith, and Madness Henriksen. A special thanks to Isabel Gottlieb and Nicole Grant, who helped us with

a ton of research and reporting for today's episode. Be sure to catch Emily Chang, who you also heard from today, on Bloomberg Television's Daily techt Show at two pm Pacific five pm Eastern, every weekday. Alec McCabe is head of bloom Podcasts. Because we wanted to get you this episode as soon as possible, we'll be taking a break next week. We'll talk to you soon. M