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Anyone else surprised at what’s happening with these VC’s?

Anyone else surprised about Dave McClure and various VC’s being called out for their inappropriateness toward female entrepreneurs?

  • Nobody is surprised. Dave McClure is the guy who gave a presentation[1] about pitching VCs that featured racist caricatures of starving Africans, money shots, porn actrices, cartoon Hitler with swastika and more.

    This guy had no concept of what appropriate behavior is in a professional context, and his partners at 500 and the LPs knew this damn well. Their display of ignorance is just damage control.

    [1] https://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/how-to-pitch-a-vc-or-angel-13504703/

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      • A sexist joke is still sexist and a racist joke is still racist. So phrasing something as a joke doesn’t suddenly make it OK.

        In addition, jokes are never “just jokes”. Jokes make statements too and they convey values. Jokes are also used as a device to say things without really saying them: the speaker can fall back on the “it’s just a joke — lighten up!” defense when people react negatively. A person can be held accountable for what they say, even they express themselves through jokes.

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  • What I don’t get is this vilification of Silicon Valley. As if this kind of shit doesn’t happen in Wall Street? Where’s the rage? Or are the Silicon Valley rags just more politically correct?

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  • Met Dave several times. He did help female entrepreneurs a lot. In our batch 60% of startups where run by female founders. That’s real, that’s concrete.

    But. He went too far. I’m shocked and I’m surprised. He does provoke in his slides and speeches. But I thought it was controlled communication strategy, not a lack of boundaries. I was obviously wrong.

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  • The only thing I’m surprised about is that people seem to care all of a sudden. Actually a large reason I quit my startup – unless I can turn into a dude on demand, I don’t want to be on the founder’s side of a VC meeting ever again. Doing a startup was painfully illuminating on the subject of sexist bias in general… I really believed it wasn’t a thing before.

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