People date in the workplace all the time, so I don't think your rules about "professional situations" are generally accepted.
I also reject the notion of "position of power" just because he is a VC. Nobody is forced to take his money. You could just as well say the applying women are in a position of power because the VC desperately needs somebody to invest in. I guess a startup should avoid seeking investments where the investor is "in a position of power", anyway.
I am also not justifying his behavior, obviously he made mistakes. But I reject the immediate interpretation of "man abusing his power to pressure women into sex".
The "boundaries" talk is also not really helpful - at some point, somebody has to make a move. If their estimate of the situation is correct, they are not "crossing boundaries". Otherwise they are crossing boundaries and need to withdraw.
Grabbing a knee under the table is of course not a good first move, but we might be missing context.
First, his initial statement sounds like that (like he is genuinely shocked that he is part of the problem after all). His updated statement might reflect his realization of the reality of what went down.
He looks pretty attractive - maybe there were other cases were the women were also attracted to him.
Maybe women also unconsciously flirted to make him more likely to give him money, and he misinterpreted. (No, women would never do that - they would never take advantage of their attractiveness, whereas men will usually take advantage of their "position of power", right?).
Pressuring women for sex is not generally that much fun, much better if they are actually into you. I would expect only a low number of psychopaths would enjoy sex with a woman who isn't into it. Therefore it seems more likely he expected them to be into it.
It seems pretty normal to develop attraction after a while of intensive talking.
What makes you think my "justification" is more far-fetched than your interpretation? Your prejudice that in general, "men are pigs"?
In general, people want to feel good - so he may have convinced himself that the women were into him.
Edit: well I am not trolling, but HN doesn't want me to comment further (as in, it doesn't allow me to). I think as long as people are not willing to have a honest discussion about the issue, and rather cling to their prejudices, it will never change. But as you wish, I will go away. Enjoy your circle-jerking.
The accusations can be true, and at the same time it seems possible that the VC didn't take advantage of his "position of power", but genuinely believed the women liked him for his looks and personality, not because they needed his money.
Maybe it is not even that interesting - a guy overstepped his boundaries? Few readers are probably deep enough in Startup Culture to have heard of him or Binary Capital, so why is it relevant?
I still can't approve of the article because of all the allusions and unwarranted generalizations it makes ("this is why there are so few female founders" and the like). A favorite is cases like Ellen Pao who lose in court but in certain circles her claims continue to be believed.
Obviously, men will always be attracted to women (and sometimes vice versa), and not all men know how to deal with it in an appropriate way. But as in this case, if called out, the bad apples also get eliminated. Also YMMV - for some an unwanted SMS in the middle of the night is a nightmare, others simply shrug it off.
Even assuming women avoid becoming founders because of sleazy VCs - what do they do instead? Men are everywhere, making advances.
I don't see the relevancy to today's Bitcoin price? Presumably MtGox was able to execute the fake trades because they didn't have to provide the money for it? It was simply a number in the database, if the dollars couldn't actually be withdrawn?
Sure, another market could try to pull the same stunt, but do they even have the same scale nowadays? There are many more markets than at the time of MtGox.
It sounds as if people were fired, investigated and so on. I don't understand the part about the medical records. Surely merely wanting to double check the story isn't the issue? Illegally holding the record would, but it seems the responsible person was also fired?
I mean, given their business practices, I am not surprised if their culture turns out to be toxic. I just don't see the reasoning behind blaming him for sexist men in the company, if he never supported such actions.
I went to an Ethereum Hackathon and wasn't convinced at the time, that is why I passed. Hopefully/probably their technology has matured since then, but I stopped following their progress.
You miss out on countless opportunities every second.
Back then I evaluated Ethereum and decided against it. That is all there is to it. I don't know how justified the current hype is.
How rich would you have been - 3000%, so 30 times - would you have invested 100000$ in Ethereum, yielding 3 Million $? Or more likely just 1000$, yielding 30000 - nice money, but not really rich?
"Most privatization efforts come about as an attempt to inject corruption"
Huh - citation needed? I've never heard that claim before. Corruption pretty much needs governments, who else are you going to bribe?
To me competition seems the only surefire way to keep prices fair/low. Yes, motivated governments in theory could do everything. A supercomputer could theoretically compute the perfect prices and allocations for everything. But no such computer exists, and markets are the only approximation available. You can not rely on governments to be motivated to be selfless and good. Even if perhaps some individuals are, in the long run the incentives are just not aligned, and it takes just a few bad apples to ruin the system.
How is the network in a foreign country being picked? Here in Germany, we have (at least?) three competing networks, O2, Telekom and Vodafone. Their coverage differs, but afaik I don't get to automatically use another network if my network doesn't cover my location.
So what happens in another country? Free roaming won't be much use if no network covers my location? If on the other hand, I will be allowed any network for the price of my home network, I wonder if it would make sense to get a contract in another country, so that I can use all networks in Germany for free?
They will reject you as long as they have enough other patients who don't care about the price. Somewhere the systemic error is injected into the system. There has to be a way to fix it or improve it.
Sorry, I heard it many years ago and didn't double check. Nevertheless for sure there are caps on health care expenses.
Speaking of kidneys - don't they prioritize recipients of organs somehow? If age based discrimination is forbidden, an 85 year old person would be as eligible as an 8 year old to receive a new kidney?
I also reject the notion of "position of power" just because he is a VC. Nobody is forced to take his money. You could just as well say the applying women are in a position of power because the VC desperately needs somebody to invest in. I guess a startup should avoid seeking investments where the investor is "in a position of power", anyway.
I am also not justifying his behavior, obviously he made mistakes. But I reject the immediate interpretation of "man abusing his power to pressure women into sex".
The "boundaries" talk is also not really helpful - at some point, somebody has to make a move. If their estimate of the situation is correct, they are not "crossing boundaries". Otherwise they are crossing boundaries and need to withdraw.
Grabbing a knee under the table is of course not a good first move, but we might be missing context.