I'm a startup founder and I had sex with an investor | Hacker News Reader

I'm a startup founder and I had sex with an investor

businessinsider.com

66 pointsgpark328 comments

So... I'll chime in if you guys want to talk to me.

First, I left unroll.me in 2012 so blame whatever ethics you want but I had nothing to do with that.

Second, this post is about female responsibility in the ecosystem. Clearly you guys, except one of you, didn't read the whole post.

I posted it on Medium. I know no journalists. The editor in chief of BI reached out to me and said it was one of the best pieces she has seen on this topic, can they run it.

So ask away. I'm all ears

thank you for clarifying that you were not connected to the abuses of the unroll.me platform.

My anger is directed at the responsible parties, and I apologize if I have offended you.

If what you worked hard to build was twisted and abused by others then that is truly a painful thing.

may you find peace

You may want to edit your original comment.

Please edit your original comment. Particularly, remove the blame on her and the calling her "scum"

No questions. Just wanted to say I enjoyed what you wrote, particularly how honest you were.

The part about how you had assumed expectations for the meeting that he had not been explicitly aware of was a breath fresh air as I read it. We as people often forget others may not be reading a situation the same as we are. To see it from the others perspective is important.

I did get angry reading about you using your "femininity" as an advantage during your recruiting days. And I would like to offer this analogy. A women using her sexuality as leverage over a man for a career advantage is akin to a man using his career as leverage over a women for sexual advantage.

I see them as nearly the same, because men generally hold the chips in the professional world and women hold it in the dating world. And using that as leverage against another is wrong on both sides.

But I kinda got the feeling you were starting to agree with that. Maybe you do maybe you do not. I appreciate the honesty either way.

Oh my whole point of the post was women use their feminity all the time and it actually creates the ecosystem everyone complains about. So it's about owning that part, which is not done often.

For some reason that didnt wholely click with me when i read it. Maybe my own biases didn't want to see it. Whatever the reason, hearing you say that definitely clarified things.

Now im stratching my head wondering how it wasnt more clear to me.

I think I have become too accustomed to a tl;dr at the end to tell me how to feel, that Ive gotten worse at reading comprehension.

The article ends with a tldr to help with that:

"In wrapping up, I am deeply sorry to any contribution my actions have had on women in this ecosystem by giving permission to the kind of behavior we are trying to change."

It appears as tho my attention span was shorter than the article. My apologies.

At the same time, don't be too harsh on yourself - like you aren't condemned to a lifetime of a helpless victim, men aren't exactly condemned to be brainless animals following their dick everywhere. At least sometimes; I take your word that you have seen plenty of solid evidence to the contrary ;)

Thanks for the article - as a guy in SV I want to understand these issues, and articles like this are illuminating.

I'm curious - unless I misread, you seem to be making the distinction that once someone is AN investor, then that's basically their role in the ecosystem and they are always acting with the responsibility as such, regardless of whether or not they may someday be or currently are YOUR (generically, as in, in relation to the person they're talking to) investor.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, and I'm curious about how others are interpreting and thinking about this.

Thanks for your honest post. Really appreciate your effort in sharing this experience. I think the title itself was a def click bait.

This is an interesting viewpoint and there's definitely some interesting points to consider.

But I couldn't disagree more with the last part of the article. You point out that the woman who gets beaten by her boyfriend will have a high threshold for abuse, but of course, the boyfriend should also have a high threshold for abuse. You say "I think we have a responsibility as women to be introspective and to be honest with ourselves." But shouldn't the investors, and the community of men surrounding them, have the "responsibility" not to perpetrate, or appear to perpetrate? Why do the victims have to do the mental police work?

1. Why now? Why talk about it after so long time?

2. How do you feel now? Better, Worse, Don't care.

3. What is your suggestions for men, when a woman uses femininity to get attention in business?

Thank you for the fascinating insight into socio-sexual dynamics in business, and highlighting some of the symmetries of the issue.

The most interesting part to me is how you forbade the investor from investing in your company (not that he cared). You were both participating in a sort of zero-sum game[1] - you tempt him with your sexuality and hope he invests, he tempts you with investment and hopes you sleep with him. In either case, the first one to break "loses" the game (as you pointed out, in your earlier headhunting career, nobody got to sleep with you and you were very successful). It's "winner-takes-all".

I would like to unpack why this "winner-takes-all" system, objectionable though it may be, is still vastly preferable to a more straightforward exchange of sex for resources. In your story, given that you had already resolved to sleep with him, what would have been the terrible consequences if he had, subsequently, decided to invest?

(Forgive me if this question comes across as callous - I can well appreciate some of the reasons why this might be. But I'm interested in your perspective and don't want to lead the witness.)

[1] Obviously not completely zero-sum - if he invests you hopefully both make money, and if you have sex you hopefully both have fun. But you get the idea.

Found this very interesting and brutally honest in the details around the circumstances of the consensual night out (she mentioned several times that the meeting being purely business was all made up in her head) and her equally honest opinion on what happened to Cheryl Yeoh (she doesn't agree that was assault).

Pity how a personal account with no clear villain or wrong doing is not getting much attention as it deserves, she is being very honest here and leaving herself vulnerable to being called both a SJW and a traitor to other women. I appreciate her honesty and complicated analysis of her own motivations and subsequent reactions.

Being moderate on these topics seems to invite scorn from all "sides". Can't win, really.

Nope. And there's a large and growing group who self-silence (or even.. censor) because being moderate attracts as much vitriol as taking a side - because BOTH sides attack.

I don't get why saying "Many issues are complex" is some kind of war crime.

So some how the investor is still painted as at fault here? It's not like this dude was her boss and by her in admission the guy was lording "I'm an investor" over her head. Got to be honest, this piece feels like extended click bait.

i totally agree on this.

Wait, wait, wait. She was married and a mother when she had consensual sex with this investor, and explicitly one who would not be investing in her company? And her husband didn't leave her? Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I was too distracted by that to pay attention to the rest of the article.

Bottom line is if you don't want to cheat on your spouse, don't hang out with the opposite sex one on one--especially if there's alcohol in the mix.

I had the same thought, but then I reminded myself that there have been several years between 2011 and today. She's married now (for less than a year), not when the events described take place.

This seems like a good and thoughtful article to me. I don't know why some people are hating

In Hollywood it is the casting couch.

In Washington and on Wall St it is business as usual.

So why should a startup be any different?

Unroll.me: You stole peoples mail spools and sold them to the opposition. Selling peoples lyft receipts to Uber -- you should be ashamed of yourself and the legacy of violation that you left in your wake. To me -- this is one of the worst abuses of peoples trust that they granted to you. You are scum.

I have no sympathy for any of your antics or tales.

for those who are not aware of what 3uh is posting: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/technology/personal-data-...

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/24/stop-using-unroll-me-rig...

yeah, lady, you're pretty low on the ethics totem pole right now. Not too surprised honestly from somebody who used to be a headhunter/recruiter.

Thanks for bringing this up. Too often, Valley gossip, masquerading as news, is merely which people are friendly with reporters/bloggers and the resulting pieces are usually lazy journalism and one-sided.

I commented on this below...

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