My cofounder Leiti Hsu and I are two of three women who went on the record to report Justin Caldbeck’s sexual harassment. Below is a full description of the events that occurred, and our perspective on them.
The backstory
In 2015, as I was starting Journy, Caldbeck and I met for drinks to discuss a partnership with another travel startup he eventually invested in (he wanted us to join forces and work together). After I got home, he messaged me at 1AM asking me to come back out.
Being on the receiving end of that message was awkward and uncomfortable to say the least. Your first reaction is to tell yourself you’re just imagining things, because you don’t want to believe what’s happening to you. But our ongoing conversations only made things worse.
It’s difficult to describe the subtle ways sexism and harassment occurs. In our messages he would write things like “Hey you,” or when I brought up a good point, “You are aggressive as shit. I kind of like it.” They all carry a patronizing tone that transforms your intelligence or success into something that is merely a source of attraction.
When we started fundraising for our seed round, one of my investors suggested I talk to Binary. I told him about the 1AM incident. He talked to another female founder in his portfolio who also said she also got “sleazy vibes” from him when they met. We took Binary off the list.
But over a year had passed since we raised our pre-seed, and our product didn’t have enough traction yet for a seed round. It was December of 2016. Caldbeck had stayed in touch and continued to check in on our progress. He wanted to meet for drinks and catch up.
This time, I purposely brought my cofounder Leiti with me. I had warned her about Caldbeck and we both agreed to have each other’s backs. We started a conversation, but Caldbeck had a dinner meeting and wanted to continue talking. We met up again post-dinner and it was late in the evening. Caldbeck mentioned that Binary has an exploratory fund for earlier stage investments and would send over details the next morning.
I did not know until the next day that he had grabbed Leiti’s thigh under the table, or that he had tried to contact her after we had left the bar.
The next morning, Caldbeck and I talked on the phone and he shared some of the details of their exploratory fund, which typically takes a 20–22% stake for a $250K check. It didn’t make sense for us to do. He offered to test out our paid product to give us feedback on the experience, and offered to connect us to other individuals who might be interested in participating in our extension. In the past few months, he’s continued to check in and offer to be helpful.
Why we decided to speak out
Leiti and I were extremely hesitant about speaking up and going on the record. Even while the above was happening, we both initially shrugged it off because the incredibly sad and unfortunate fact is that this type of behavior is all too commonplace.
He sent me a suggestive text late at night and groped my cofounder’s thigh under the table. But he was well-connected in tech, and had genuinely tried to be helpful to us from a business perspective, reviewing our cap table, sharing thoughts on our product, offering to connect us with other investors who might have been a better fit. We said to ourselves, “Women in all industries deal with shit like this every day. It’s nothing new — let’s just get back to work so we can build this business and win.”
But we can’t normalize this behavior anymore. It’s not normal and it should not be standard operating procedure for women in tech to have to deal with this. After hearing from other women about Caldbeck’s behavior towards them, instances that were much more egregious than what we experienced, we decided we had to say something.
The week before the article came out, and the day of, to say that I was incredibly anxious and nervous is an understatement. I was expecting “This is he said / she said”, “They’re being overly sensitive,” and “Well don’t meet a male investor at a bar late at night” to be inevitably mixed in along with the very supportive response we ultimately received from the tech community.
As Sarah Lacy pointed out in her article in Pando Daily, the fact that it’s so hard to report sexual harassment “without a victim willing to go on the record and risk destroying her own career” is a major problem in and of itself. Even with stories from 6 women, Leiti, Niniane, and I spent weeks wondering whether it’d enough. I asked for advice from multiple friends and advisors, all of whom told me not to go on the record and speak out because the risk was too high.
No woman wants to be the sole name on the record for a story like this. As Leiti and I are cofounders of the same company that would be impacted, either both of us would go on the record, or neither of us would. When another woman declined to have her name mentioned, we had to decide to speak up or essentially let this guy get away with his serial abuse of female entrepreneurs (though I’m pretty sure Niniane Wang would’ve said, “FUCK IT I’ll just do it myself” as her resolve through this has been beyond inspiring, and helped Leiti and me find the strength to speak out).
At the end of the day, while it’s entirely true that there are some investors who may stay away from us because of our speaking out, they are not people we’d want to work with anyway. There’s been some debate lately about what constitutes sexual harassment, that the rules are too vague and gray area — in this case, it’s not that hard. 1. Don’t text me in the middle of the night asking me to come to your hotel bar. 2. Don’t grope my cofounder under the table while we’re discussing fundraising.
How we feel about the recent news and response
Over the weekend, Binary issued another statement that Matt Mazzeo, who recently joined from Lowercase Capital, would be quitting, and that Caldbeck would be resigning instead of just taking an “indefinite leave of absence.”
This is certainly a much better response than the one Binary initially issued, which was that “there is no evidence that Justin did anything illegal and there is no evidence that any of his investing decisions were affected by his social interests.”
I realize Caldbeck also issued an apology, but I’m not buying it. Like Niniane Wang, I don’t believe he ever said or meant any of those words (thank you Brendan Mulligan for this — “Everything I hate about Justin Caldbeck’s statement”).
These steps are a start, but we still have a long way to go.
- When the article came out, it didn’t get much steam until Reid Hoffman penned this post on “The Human Rights of Women Entrepreneurs.” I’m incredibly thankful for Reid’s swift response and support in this, along with the leadership shown by Josh Koppleman, Satya Patel, Mike Maples, and others, as well as the unwavering support of Ellen Pao, Susan Fowler, and hundreds of other women. At the same time, I also know there were male VCs who were afraid to publicly support and tweet the article out, and did so only after Reid’s powerful post. Ultimately, it took Reid’s condemnation to really give weight to the issue. Let’s hope in the future that the accounts of countless women is enough.
- We are just scratching the surface by bringing these issues to light. It’s become very clear that other VCs have been fully aware of Caldbeck’s behavior. They continued to do business with him and his firm. Reid Hoffman calls for an HR function in VC, but careful consideration needs to be given in how that is set up. We need to ensure that it is performed by a truly independent party who has no financial stake in the success of these firms. Otherwise, we risk perpetuating the old boys club where men have each other’s backs when it comes to dealing with issues like these.
- Thus far, there has been no response from Binary’s LPs, many of whom are women who frequently speak publicly on diversity in tech. They’ve stayed silent on this issue and I know many of us would love to hear from them.
At this point, we’d much rather be focused on building our company. We’re glad that the community is addressing this. Let’s hope that this doesn’t happen in the future and if it does, that it doesn’t take years for this behavior to be reported, and the initial response from the firm and LPs is that of outrage instead of lukewarm denial.
Update (6/28/2017, 6:30PM): Bloomberg just reported that Caldbeck’s partner Jonathan Teo has offered to resign from both funds after over 50 percent of investors voted in favor of winding down their second fund. We’re hopeful that this will result in more people in the industry actively speaking up instead of turning a blind eye when they encounter this type of behavior in the future.
