VC Frat Boy Bad Behavior

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Frat boy bad behavior?

Big Red Car here getting ready to unload on venture capitalists who engage in or tolerate frat boy, bro-culture, bad behavior in their firms and in the firms they fund.

Let’s cite examples, shall we?

Take the case of one Justin Caldbeck, formerly a co-founder of venture capital firm Binary Capital. BC is a seed stage firm with $300MM under management, a new $75MM offering in the marketplace. Put money in Snap.

Caldbeck, Harvard guy, was one of two partners with another partner recently joined. The new guy has already resigned. The firm is, essentially, wrecked though when you have $300MM of OPM, it has to be wound up carefully.

Hustling Justin stands accused by six women of inappropriate conduct from staying uninvited overnight at a woman’s apartment to running a hand up a woman’s thigh at a dinner, and engaging in sexually explicit text messaging. Typical frat boy, bad behavior. No style points. No charm. Just a groper with a Harvard sheepskin.

These incidents were all promulgated by Hustling Justin’s ability to do something good for these women. He helped them and he wanted them to “help” him? Ugh!

This is typical Silicon Valley Venture Capital men-in-power bad behavior while holding the lever of funding as a tool to get laid. It is not a complex problem to understand.

It is as old as the world itself. Men behaving badly using their financial power to get women to submit to their sexual advances.

We understand the problem, Big Red Car, what do we do?

First, we don’t understand the problem. We ignore it.

We ignored the fiasco unraveling over at Uber or “Boober” as it was called by its CEO and founder, Travis Kalanik — another prince.

The board of directors — venture capitalists — knew of this problem and did nothing until it exploded on the front page of America.

Too little, too late — they hire former Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct an investigation which ends up in the resignation of the company’s #2 boob, Emil Michael, and twenty other boobs.

There is a price and it has to be paid

Let’s start with the idea that bad behavior of all stripes should be punished, shall we?

In the case of Hustling Justin, he resigned, apologized, and is using a new brand of mouthwash. The VC firm is wrecked and his former partner is screwed. Well played, HJ.

Not enough in the view of the Big Red Car.

In the case of Travis the K, he has been forced out leaving vacancies in the CEO, #2 guy, COO, CFO, CMO, and General Counsel offices.

[Note to Uber board — your failure to act in a timely manner is cowardly and will cost you billions of dollars in lost value, but what it really reveals is what pimp dog whores to money y’all are. Why didn’t you deal with this sooner? Are you that greedy? Did you notice that all the adults were leaving the company?]

Solve it, Big Red Car

OK, here’s the solution:

 1. Stop ignoring the problem. Stop. Admit it. If you are a guy who has engaged in this behavior, stop it. Make a penance. Get help.

 2. Look at reality — 90% of VCs are men. All these men talk a good game about balance and diversity, but when you look at a picture of their firm, there are no women.

Stop lecturing everybody, you fakirs and poseurs, until you have women senior partners.

 3. Report bad behavior. Report bad behavior and engage in public shaming. Bit unfair, but this is triage, baby.

Women in tech need to out the shitheads. OK, so not everybody who is accused of something did it, but the pendulum has to swing back.

Make a website to report bad behavior to.

 4. Tell your big brothers. Big brothers, take immediate and direct action.

If you are a women sans big brother, start a web based company wherat you can hire a former Navy SEAL to be your “big brother for a week.” Guys who hit on women because they have the power of the purse will understand an old fashioned big brother ass whipping.

[OK, the Big Red Car is kidding, but it could be a thing. Especially if you have a big brother who is a former Navy SEAL. A paratrooper or Ranger brother will also work and he doesn’t have to be older than you.]

 5. Ask your personal trainer how to slap the snot out of a guy who gets fresh with you. It’s not krav maga, but it’s a start. Practice.

Personal advice to the guys, the frat boy bad behavior boys

[OK, let me bottom line it for y’all, fellows. If you cannot attract any female companionship without flashing money or promising to fund someone’s deal — YOU ARE A PATHETIC LOSER.]

Glad we had a chance to chat, y’all. Needed to say that. Remember when the Big Red Car puts [something in brackets], nobody can see it but you and me.

And, that, dear reader, is how the cow ate the cabbage.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be good to someone today. Even yourself.cropped-LTFD-illust_300.png

 

5 thoughts on “VC Frat Boy Bad Behavior”

  1. If you’ve spent time around Frats then you’ve seen an institution that teaches this behavior at the perfect time. It’s hard to undue.

    Adam, AEPi – Lambda Beta chapter.

  2. What do these big companies have in their bylaws?

    Can’t they attach a cash fine of some sort on top of being fired?

  3. I don’t understand guys like Mr. Caldbeck. Granted, I’m old now and the testosterone is not flowing like 100 proof Bacardi in a beer bong any longer, but still…

    Does anyone give a shit about their reputations any longer?

    Or have smart phones destroyed all sense of impulse control?

    And our pre-frontal cortex’s have regressed to the point that we are just animals now?

    And it’s not just the rich white males doing stupid things.

    For every Mr. Caldbeck out there, it seems that nowadays there are just as many 25 year old white school teachers banging their underage students. It’s becoming more and more frequent, this despite the fallout being much worse for the school teacher than for the rich guy. She loses her career, and her career opportunities going forward are not particularly grand as a registered sex offender.

    Just as guys like Mr. Caldbeck can purchase as much prime prostitute ass as they want with no fallout to satisfy his horny sweet tooth, so too can a good looking young woman go into any bar and land as much 21 year old ass as her little heart desires.

    Why toss your life down the drain?

    Is the forbidden fruit just so irresistibly tasty? Maybe I should be asking Bill this question.

  4. It’s an old subject, “A story as old as time.” I hope the advice works. As men, we’re supposed to like to see females, of all ages, in our families and otherwise, happy and smiling and hate to see a frown or a tear. Commonly with at most two tears and even just a hint of a third, a girl of 4 can wrap her father and any uncles around her little finger.

    For a man running his hand up the thigh of a woman, maybe my mom’s solution should still hold: She has at hand a 6″ hat pin and uses it. Other partial solutions: She screams. She wears long skirts. She stays more than arm’s length away from men. She and her girlfriends have notes on boys/men, and they stay away from frat boys like Rafe Testosteroni. When the boy arrives to take her on a date, her father answers the door and says: “GOOD to meet you son. She’s ready. Of course, she’s our angel. Son, if you ever make her cry, I’ll kill you. Now have a nice evening and have her back on time.”

    There have been some attempts at solutions: There is the famous “A woman’s place is in the home, barefoot, pregnant, and dependent.”.

    I started grad school in math at Indiana University. I really wanted just the math for physics and then change to physics. Two of the math courses they had me in were beneath me — one of them used a challenging text that as a college senior I’d taken, taught it to myself, and lectured to a prof, one week the material, the next the exercises, for each of the chapters. Another course, somehow the prof didn’t like me. I was getting paid, for teaching, but I was a bargain, considering how much teaching and how little pay. So, I stayed to complete my teaching and left to make money. I made good money and then got a Ph.D. at a much better school.

    But there at IU I saw some of the story as old as time: (1) One girl had a wise father. She was a fantastic student. Still, as she left for IU, one of the last things he told her was: “Whatever you do down there [Bloomington], be sure you leave with a teaching certificate.” Traditional advice. Been known to work well for a lot of women. (2) I taught math courses, and all the courses had some girls. None of the girls seemed to have any very good ideas just why they were taking the courses unless it was to meet boys or teachers such as me. Except for the course in Math for Elementary Education Majors: Those girls all knew just what the heck they were doing and why: They wanted a teaching certificate so that they could be a school teacher. No joke. They were serious and determined about that. Really focused. Bright? Not very. Curious? Nope. Focused? Yup. (3) Another old solution was for her to be a nurse. (4) My Mom worked really hard in high school, really at night school because at 14 she dropped out of school to get a job selling in the women’s department of a big department store to help support the family, to learn writing, spelling, typing, letter writing, filing, dictation, and bookkeeping. She was really good at those. Those subjects helped her and helped our family. (5) Another option is, her husband is in or runs a family business, and she helps and, also, helps have the kids help so that the kids can also learn the family business.

    So, for some traditional solutions, we’re looking at woman’s place in the home, school teaching, nursing, secretarial, and helping in the family business.

    Once a college girl told me “Women don’t have just to be cared for. Women and do things, too.”. Well, she was very aware of the option of “place in the home” and wanted more. Okay — some women have wanted more.

    I have a guess: If a girl in high school or college is going to be well focused on some career option, then at least on average it helps a lot if her mother did well with that career option. So, the rate at which girls can move into career options other than the few traditional ones has an obstacle: For the girls who pursue new options, e.g., law, MD, Ph.D., MBA and VC, STEM field professional, entrepreneur, military, department manager in some government organization, etc., they are at risk of trying something new, breaking new ground, etc. Along those roads there will be some tears and even some deaths.

    And there is another issue: For the women who try such new things, there is an increased chance that they will be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the Mother Nature-Darwin tree of life and, thus, have on average only a short term effect.

    E.g., my wife was brilliant. It ran in her family. She had a sister who had a daughter who went to a large, highly intense high school. One day her parents were surprised to learn that the daughter was first in her class. So, she got Valedictorian. And in college, PBK (so did my wife). Then the daughter got advice that law would be a better career direction than medicine and got her law degree at Harvard. She started her career at Cravath-Swain. She did some pro-bono work and then decided she’d rather be in medicine and got an MD. Last I heard she was happy in medicine. Her real goal? “Help people”. Then, sure, the world of work dominated by men mostly won’t understand that goal.

    E. Fromm in The Art of Loving wrote: “Men and women deserve equal respect as persons, but they are not the same.”. I tend to believe that Fromm was correct. So, just how fast women can be C-level executives in big companies, senior venture partners, founders of very successful startups, etc. I don’t know. If the girls/women want such career directions and can do well at the work, then fine with me. Just how fast that can happen, again, I don’t know.

    For Rafe Testosteroni and his frat bros, they’ve been around for a long time. So have those 6″ hat pins.

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