by
Emily Chang
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[...] Binary Capital said the allegations were "false" and that while The Information had "found a few examples which show that Justin has in the past occasionally dated or flirted with women he met in a professional capacity, let's be clear: 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."
on Justin Caldbeck. note the immediate need to bring up legality
When a dancer wearing a gleaming-white bra and underwear approaches our table [...] tells me she is a teacher at a public middle school in Berkeley, doing summer day shifts at the club to help pay bills. She says she has met patrons from all of the brand-name tech companies nearby, specifically mentioning Uber, Dropbox, Twitter and Airbnb. "Salresforce is big here," she says. "Yelp employees call this place Conference Room G."
the Gold Club in SoMa, near Yelp and LinkedIn
The Silicon Valley tropes around who becomes successful [...] young, single guys hacking all night, night after night, in a race to achieve their billion-dollar dreams. No families, no wives, no relationships, no real anything except the Product and the Dream. [...] Those young men have achieved great things - witness Facebook, Google, Apple. But just because those companies were successful doesn't mean the model isn't fundamentally flawed or that success can't be achieved in other ways. As in any industry or institution, tech's habits and norms were created by those who were there first. And those habits are hard to change, especially when the companies are bringing in billions upon billions of dollars. It stands to reason that if more types of people were given a shot, the tech industry might boast even more success stories.
i like the reasoning here, though i dont really like the implication that success = multi-billion-dollar valuations
Let's imagine a world where women hold half the jobs in Silicon Valley. Where half of entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists, board members, and employees - including engineers - are women.
[...] "I think there would be two enormous differences," the longtime tech investor Roger McNamee told me. "I think Silicon Valley would be wildly more profitable. I think there would be a significant reduction in the number of absolute failures. And so I think success would go up dramatically."
i dont think this is possible without broader societal changes, and even then, im not sure how desirable it would be (depends on the kind of broader societal changes i guess). esp if the goal is for SV to become more "profitable"