I think it's easy in situations like this to assume that one party must be right and the other wrong. Chances are for Caldbeck and for his accusers, many signals got mixed up and misread.
Yes it is possible Caldbeck is a cunning predator who knew exactly what he could get away with and used his clout as a VC to grope and harass many women, but it's far more likely that he is not. Far more likely he isn't all that smooth with women and ham-handedly attempted to woo his victims.
He failed to realize how the power dynamic influenced things. This is important for anyone in a position of power to realize. My moment of realization was when I noticed that every single person on a team I led laughed at a joke I made. I realized something was off. The joke simply wasn't that funny. It's easy to see how simple flattery (which is quite normal when dealing with VCs) might have thrown off Caldbeck's compass. Yes I'd expect someone with his level of experience to be aware of it, but some people can go years without realizing they are being flattered.
This is in no way meant to minimize the poor judgment Caldbeck used or to cast any blame at all on his victims. VC is a unique world that is fad-driven and reputation-driven and so the founder of a very hot company has tremendous power over investors, but all other founders are essentially beggars.
I know Jonathan and he's an exceptionally gracious person whose behavior is completely reserved and respectful. I imagine he's quite disappointed about being lumped into all this and having his company's brand ruined by it and his name dragged through the mud for Caldbeck's poor judgment.
He failed to realize how the power dynamic influenced things.
Yes, but I bet he realizes it now. That's the entire point of naming and shaming this behaviour. If you don't understand the negatives of your actions eventually people are going to tell you you're in the wrong. Hopefully you have enough good friends or colleagues who you respect that are able to tell you when you're in the wrong before it gets to this stage.
Yes it is possible Caldbeck is a cunning predator who knew exactly what he could get away with and used his clout as a VC to grope and harass many women, but it's far more likely that he is not.
I'm curious, why is that "far more likely"?
At this point I don't think anyone who isn't involved in these events knows enough to say one way or another. Yet you seem pretty certain.
My first guess would be confirmation bias, given you purport to actually know Teo.
Simply because most people fall within a fairly narrow band of behavioral and psychological norms. Religion creates the fictitious idea that there are "good" people and "bad" people.
In reality most people are simply mediocre in the moral sense. Chances are Caldbeck is very much within the normal range, which, like it or not, the vast majority of people fall into.
There are some people who are sociopaths and truly predatory, but such people are exceedingly rare.
Most studies suggest that between 1-4% of the general population are sociopaths. That is not exceedingly rare, but rather people we will encounter on a daily basis. In certain professions, it's likely much higher.
The overall scope of accusations against Caldbeck (including the rather detailed court filing of former employee Ann Lai, which includes disturbing documentary evidence in the form of text messages) is, at this point, substantial.
Your choice to interpret and minimize this as mere 'poor judgment' and 'signals got mixed up' is questionable given the preponderance of evidence, and certainly does seem to minimize the scope of harassment reported by the victims. I mean, for heaven's sake, he had to leave Lightspeed because of his harassment of one of their founders! They took a big financial hit with StitchFix. This was clearly widely understood and swept under the rug.
My intent is not to minimize it. I think that assuming that the problem is one person being a major psychological outlier is actually an unhelpful shortcut to solving the problem in a more thorough and lasting way.
The problem is not one bad apple, the core problem is deeper and more cultural and has to do with status dynamics and boundaries.
You appear to be ignoring the evidence that we already have of a years long pattern of behavior in Caldbeck.
Even if he were a naif that just accidentally harassed women, having Stitch Fix's ceo ask for him to be removed from the board should have been enough to make him modify his behavior [1]. Instead, he continued. That makes me update my prior that he's a serial harasser to about 99.99, though I'm willing to go higher.
True, however that is one incident and conceivably Teo thought it had served as a sufficient warning and that problematic behavior had been rectified. I certainly think it would have obviously been in Teo's best interest to behave that way.
Caldbeck is already part of a rather exclusive sub-population: executives working at VCs.
Based on my observations of the behaviours of people in C-suite positions, I don't think I'd be so willing to use general population statistics as a justification for a priori exonerating the man.
As an aside, you've also posed a false dichotomy, here: Caldbeck is a calculating sociopath, or a bumbling idiot who stumbled into harrassment. The truth more likely lies somewhere in the middle.
My comment is not meant to exonerate Caldbeck. He went over the line and wound up having people speaking out about his inappropriate behavior. He's likely going to feel the embarrassment from his actions on an ongoing basis for years.
My point was that many people, if put in a position of power such as Caldbeck was, might very well have found themselves misconstruing the level of enthusiasm that founders had for hanging out with him, etc.
My comment is not meant to exonerate Caldbeck. He went over the line and wound up having people speaking out about his inappropriate behavior.
At risk of pulling a "fixed it for you," a former partner is suing Binary Capital because -- according to her lawsuit -- after she told them she was going to resign due to Caldbeck's treatment of her and other women, Caldbeck told her she would never get work again and, after she resigned, started contacting members of her LinkedIn network and falsely telling them she had been fired, while continually sending weird, harassing and vaguely threatening texts (my words, but seriously, they're all in the affidavit). Perhaps the way Caldbeck treated women could be described as "inappropriate behavior," but "we're going to try to destroy your career through back channel means because you're not promising to stay quiet" is way beyond that.
If "they were told" she was going to resign and still Jonathan Teo did nothing, his words now ring hollow. He may not have harassed women himself but his inaction subjected them to the ongoing unsavory, unprofessional and inexcusable behavior of Caldbeck.
Caldbeck's actions of contacting the former partner's LinkedIn network to falsely state she was fired is beyond the pale of human decency. I guess it is true that desperate times call for desperate measures. Maybe his statement of the former Binary partner never working in SV again may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you know the whole story, you are right. I don't know the whole story so I'm reserving judgment. I'm curious what you think Teo should have done? Should he have resigned at the first indication that Caldbeck did anything inappropriate?
I am not privy to any inside information. What I am saying is that if it was a "well known secret" that Caldbeck was behaving badly then Teo should have pulled Caldbeck aside and said this must stop immediately or leave willingly or unwillingly, Caldbeck's choice. If Teo knew and did nothing then he is reaping what came from his own inaction and his words ring hollow now. Further, if he knew and did nothing, the stakeholders, all of them, deserve more from the CEO.
I have never thought that Teo should resign for something someone else did but if he knew and turned a blind eye to what was going on then his resignation may end up being necessary for Binary to fully recover. I have always been a firm believer in personal accountability and at this point only Teo knows what he knew and when.
I agree, it sounds like once he realized his actions were blowing up in his face his behavior got ugly. That is certainly an indication of immaturity.
Surely Teo would have been concerned by the lawsuit even if he was convinced it had been a one-time issue. He'd hitched his wagon to Caldbeck's and so was made vulnerable by Caldbeck's behavior.
Teo's duty to LPs and Founders is to preserve the stability of the fund. He may have decided not to continue working with Caldbeck after the evidence surfaced, but taking immediate action would have been highly destabilizing. It's hard to imagine that he'd have felt some personal loyalty to Caldbeck that would have dominated the very simple risk-avoidance calculus for a situation like this and no evidence that any existed.
Think of how easily Teo could have become a hero just by bailing from the fund when the first accusations surfaced. He'd have screwed over the founders and LPs but would seem like the pinnacle of moral judgment.
This is why it's troublesome to adopt an overly moralistic view when analyzing these sorts of situations. The strategic behavior changes and rewards personal grandstanding at the expense of the rest of the parties involved.
Ultimately, Caldbeck's behavior was immature, inappropriate, and disgusting, but it was likely not illegal. Would you really argue that someone in Teo's position should jeopardize his firm just to send a strong message about some accusations?
In my opinion the right thing to do is take clear action to prevent it from happening again but to stay focused on the business.
I agree, it sounds like once he realized his actions were blowing up in his face his behavior got ugly. That is certainly an indication of immaturity.
It's astounding to me that you view threatening to destroy someone's career as simply an "indication of immaturity"... immaturity implies impulsiveness, an act taken in the heat of the moment without a full understanding of the consequences.
The purported emails, texts, and linked-in messages demonstrate a pattern of persistent, premeditated behaviour that goes well beyond simple "immaturity".
Ultimately, Caldbeck's behavior was immature, inappropriate, and disgusting, but it was likely not illegal
At minimum we have clear allegations of harassment. You seem to be willing to dismiss those allegations out-of-hand, but neither of us is in a position to determine if those acts went to the level of breaking the law. That will be up to a jury to decide.
Would you really argue that someone in Teo's position should jeopardize his firm just to send a strong message about some accusations?
And head off a media circus? Absolutely! You cannot possibly believe that the way this has been handled has been even remotely optimal. If Teo knew about this (and let's face it, he probably did), he should've gotten waaaaay out in front of it.
At this point, he looks either 1) complicit, or 2) incompetent.
> At this point, he looks either 1) complicit, or 2) incompetent.
Well, he obviously had to trust Caldbeck's word a great deal to want to do business with him in the first place, so maybe Caldbeck lied. Would you consider Caldbeck's spouse similarly responsible?
Keep in mind that these new accusations hadn't been made yet so perhaps Teo thought the problem had been dealt with and risk minimized. This is the key point, it's about risk minimization. Teo has nothing to gain by this blowing up and everything to gain by surfacing it early, distancing himself, and being the good guy.
SO to claim that you think he's complicit indicates that you think he was loyal to Caldbeck like a hypothetical fraternity brother, and not rational like an experienced investor.
If there is one person to whom Caldbeck's conduct would have been most alarming (aside from his spouse) it would have been Teo, so I think your assumption of his complicity unlikely to be true.
Similarly, the idea that he handled it incompetently also does not hold up to scrutiny. His firm just blew up, and he clearly didn't want that to happen. My read on it is that he's attempted to act selflessly to preserve the value of the firm for the LPs and founders, and not tried to capitalize on it for his own gain.
It sounds likely that Caldbeck may be guilty of having harassed some founders, and if so I hope he receives appropriate legal consequences in addition to the inevitable reputation loss.
But we should give Teo the benefit of the doubt since I think his actions indicate that he's not trying to act opportunistically.
My point was that many people, if put in a position of power such as Caldbeck was, might very well have found themselves misconstruing the level of enthusiasm that founders had for hanging out with him and potentially for his apparently aggressive advances.
This comment is literally an attempt to exonerate the man: You are providing an alternative motive (or, less charitably, an excuse) that would lead one to conclude what he did was not, in fact, sexual harrassment, but simply a misunderstanding.
If you can't see that that's what you're doing, you're not being honest with yourself.
My point is not that Caldbeck ought to be exonerated. I think the embarrassment he's facing and reputation costs are likely well deserved.
The issue is that by painting Caldbeck as a psychological outlier and predator it prevents reflection on what could be done to make situations like this get resolved/rectified more quickly and more effectively.
I think that's exactly the right solution. Even if the lines that are drawn are not exactly right, having them clearly drawn will help all parties evaluate their own behavior (and that of others) more accurately.
I think the sentiment he's trying to capture with that description is the enthusiasm with which stories about the tech industry being hostile to women are written, and how those stories tend to cast a broad net with respect to who gets blamed.
Increasingly, this is becoming national news. I read a story about the Binary Capital fiasco in the WSJ -- a few years go it would have been in Valleywag and probably not even made Techcrunch.
The problem is the narrative that comes with these stories is overly general. Most startups hire based on merit and require hard work but have a supportive, kind-hearted culture. Yet stories run with headlines like "Why is Google still so white and male?" etc. Stories like these overlook the deeper social problems that make it less likely for women and minorities to get hooked on building technology at a young age, and focus on the idea that it's backward-thinking male managers who are causing this from the top down. In other words, the lay reader is nudged into thinking that there's some sort of boy's club and that women and minorities aren't welcome. The public is sensitized to this at present after some of the recordings of Donald Trump. We're all ready to send a mob after the next male villain.
Teo himself has invested in many female founded companies and the female founders I know who have worked with him consider him one of their most valuable sources of insight and support.
> Lai left Binary because of its “sexist and sexual environment,” including inappropriate conduct with female staff at company outings, a female-specific dress code and statements about the attractiveness of Lai and other women such as startup founders, according to the lawsuit. [1]
I'm extraordinarily skeptical something like this went on right in front of Tai without his implicit consent.
I agree based on your link that skepticism is in order. I'm sympathetic to the idea that certain topics should be 100% forbidden in a work environment, but then I catch myself and realize that ultimately a lot of what is deemed appropriate vs inappropriate has to do with the tastes of the people involved.
Even in cases where there isn't "org chart" status at play in a company, there are other forms of status, and so any kind of inappropriate talk could be abusive in some way.
This is not to say we should accept these problems without trying to make the world better, just that work culture is a hard thing to understand. Maybe when a customer calls up angry, the team refers to the person as an asshole. To some this would be highly offensive, to others it would not. Maybe someone who worked there went along with it but did so resentfully and then they find another job and write a blog post outing the team for being vulgar.
The point I'm trying articulate is that the bigger issue is that we (humans) are bad at understanding how status dynamics impact our own willingness to engage in certain topics of conversation, banter, humor, even flirtatious behavior. I've seen one sales guy who would go into the main office and kiss each of the secretaries on the cheek as part of a sort of greeting ceremony, full of high fives, etc. They all seemed like great friends who did that little ritual willingly, but it's possible one or more of the secretaries hated it and dreaded his arrival at the office. It was confusing to me at the time because I thought how I really wouldn't want to be touched by him, but I figured it wasn't really my place to judge since they all seemed to be enjoying it.
Probably the best way to handle it is for firms to establish a code of conduct for workplace interaction that forbids certain problematic topic areas explicitly, but such things are hard to enforce and seem to me to be better handled by positive examples being set by leaders and clear, zero tolerance policy toward any form of abuse of power (regardless of whether it's harassing, sexual, etc.)
He might be disappointed, but how he is acting doesn't come off as reserved and respectful. He made a judgment to associate himself with Caldbeck, and instead of making proper reparations he's digging himself an even larger hole. He's not a victim in this. He helped put Caldbeck in a position of power.
Character is what we do when nobody is looking. Clearly, Jason Caldbeck's character is flawed especially when it comes to professional and respectful behavior towards women and at least initially in accepting responsibility for his action. Jonathon Teo could stand a refresher because men of character stand up for what is right, when it is right and required. Turning a blind eye to his partners behavior is a direct reflection of his own. And these letters, well they say I will stand up and speak out against specific behavior when I have to rather than when I needed to do so. Maybe he would not be working to further prevent the outcome (firestorm surrounding the news of bad behavior) had he been more diligent to prevent the action in the first place.
It appears Jonathan was either inattentive to the point of being reckless or unconcerned to the point of being callous and or implicit. The truth of the matter is only he knows at this point. His letters do nothing but attempt to spin the situation further tarnishing his handling of this situation from occurance to discovery and thereafter.
Yes it is possible Caldbeck is a cunning predator who knew exactly what he could get away with and used his clout as a VC to grope and harass many women, but it's far more likely that he is not. Far more likely he isn't all that smooth with women and ham-handedly attempted to woo his victims.
He failed to realize how the power dynamic influenced things. This is important for anyone in a position of power to realize. My moment of realization was when I noticed that every single person on a team I led laughed at a joke I made. I realized something was off. The joke simply wasn't that funny. It's easy to see how simple flattery (which is quite normal when dealing with VCs) might have thrown off Caldbeck's compass. Yes I'd expect someone with his level of experience to be aware of it, but some people can go years without realizing they are being flattered.
This is in no way meant to minimize the poor judgment Caldbeck used or to cast any blame at all on his victims. VC is a unique world that is fad-driven and reputation-driven and so the founder of a very hot company has tremendous power over investors, but all other founders are essentially beggars.
I know Jonathan and he's an exceptionally gracious person whose behavior is completely reserved and respectful. I imagine he's quite disappointed about being lumped into all this and having his company's brand ruined by it and his name dragged through the mud for Caldbeck's poor judgment.