An Untold Startup Story

This is a pretty awful story--I'm very saddened that the author went through it. An interesting observation she makes:

"I know companies are recognised as separate entities, but they are established by people and shaped by people’s decisions and those decisions have an impact on people; therefore business is never just business. (And, if you reverse engineer that equation, ultimately what’s best for the people will be what’s best for the company)."

~

Startups, because they blur so heavily the line between personal and business, present a place that can be very exciting and very strange. Combine this with the somewhat young folks that seem to be trying to get in on things, and things can get really rough really quickly.

I was at coffee the other day with a friend and we kicked around the idea of "startups and startup ecosystems as liminal spaces"--places where normal cultural mores and standards do not apply. I think there's something to that.

I don't really understand why she didn't take the guy up on his offer to resign. She did seem incapable of working with him or at his incubator after that. It was a good offer on his part, especially considering they didn't even have sex, just sleeping together on the same couch and him touching her breasts.

I don't think that result was even strange. They were both very drunk, staying the same place, she didn't go back to her room at the end, and she told the similarly drunk guy she was cold - a standard hookup line to initiate hugging, which is all that happened.

I've gotten clothed hugs from friends regularly who would never sleep with me. I've gotten hands under clothes both other people's under mine touching genitals and mine under theirs in bars and at pools and beaches and the like with people I had only met that one time. I think it is wrong that it happened in this case where she didn't want it, but it just doesn't seem the world ending thing to me like she treated it.

It's terrible that shame is used as a mechanism to prevent victims from bringing justice (in whatever form) to their victimizer. The power you have is in the truth, all of it - names included. I'm glad you spoke up.

Which accelerator was this?