How a founder who spoke up about sexual harassment in tech thinks venture capitalists can solve the problem by Susan Ho on Jul 27, 2017, 1:22 PM Advertisement
 In the past month, a conversation has been raging on the sexual harassment of women in tech. As one of the women who spoke out on the record, I want to focus less on what’s happened, and more on how we move forward from here and drive meaningful change. At the end of the day, our goal is to ensure that women and other underrepresented groups have equal opportunities for funding. In 2016, VCs invested $64.9B into male-founded startups vs. $1.5B in female-founded startups, a mere 2.25% of the total funding. For women of color, that number is basically zero at 0.2%. I experienced the challenging VC landscape firsthand while fundraising for my travel company, Journy. With an all women founding team, I’m proud of the fact that Journy is backed by great VC’s who have asked how they can be leaders in fixing the situation. I hope that more VCs can be similarly proactive in driving equality and eradicating harassment in tech. I sat down with Lisa Wang who recently shared her own story of harassment with CNN. Lisa cofounded SheWorx, an organization whose goal is to ensure women get equal opportunities for funding, to talk about what VC firms can do to not just to get ahead of the issue, but to become leaders in funding women in tech. We talked about the change that we want to see happen, and put together this list of actionable steps VCs can take to be a part of the solution. SEE ALSO: Tech founder and VC sex harassment whistleblower: More men should speak out, because their silence is deafening 1) Make sure you're not a part of the problem You may be saying “DUH”, but this is the number one prerequisite. Has anyone on your investment team ever sexually harassed someone? Can you be 100% sure? We’ve recently seen investment partners resign from firms after allegations from years ago have resurfaced. It’s important for firms to take these seriously and take appropriate action. As a start, you can: • Reach out to founders in your existing portfolio and ask whether they’ve experienced anything, big or small, from anyone on your team. • Understand that there are founders who will not be comfortable reporting issues directly. You can also ask women’s groups who are currently collecting information to share whether anyone has reported issues with anyone from your firm (Lisa Wang at SheWorx just launched a form for women to report for both gender bias and harassment).
2) Develop a formal sexual harassment policy to cover the relationship between VCs, founders, and employees of portfolio companies that goes beyond lip service TechCrunch recently published a template for forming a formal policy, and what it should include. Enforcement is the most important part of this policy: • Ensure you conduct proper due diligence on prospective firm hires. • Actively avoid working with other firms where you’ve heard of bad behavior — if you do intro a founder to them, make sure to communicate concerns in advance so founders can make their own decision. • Have a clear process for investigating allegations and what will happen if an allegation is confirmed to be true. It’s important to be proactive in taking steps to investigate bad behavior, remove the bad actor from their position of power, and publicly communicate the reason for the person’s removal from the firm. • Put your money where your mouth is — include a clause in your term sheets that gives founders the right to transfer or buy back shares in light of bad behavior — this lets founders who work with you know that you are serious and committed about this issue.
3) Evaluate the gender balance of your investment teams and set goals to change it The best way to get ensure you’re biases are in check? Hire more women to your investment teams. Simple as that. Jenny Lefcourt and Claudia Iannazzo both recently shared their advice on how to actually do it. It boils down to: • Setting a diversity goal — depending on the size of your firm, some goals may be, ensuring the next investor hire is a woman, getting to 20% women investors within the next 18 months, etc. • Realizing that bringing in women investors with a “proven track record for investing just isn’t realistic” — it takes years to know how early-stage venture deals end up performing and firms are missing out on great talent if that’s a requirement.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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