Kleiner Perkins partner Ellen Pao, who made headlines last year for suing the company in a widely publicized gender discrimination suit, is gainfully employed once more. After reportedly being fired from KPCB in October 2012, she has now taken a gig at community site Reddit, where she’ll be “helping us build strategic partnerships that benefit the community.” Read More
When last we left Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, matters had reached the inevitable long, slow legal slog to determine whether the suit would ever see court. However, Ms. Pao was still getting up and going to what must’ve been the most awkward office environment since M.A.S.H, as Read More
After Mat Honan’s “epic hacking,” an anonymous Apple employee leaked word that the company has temporarily stopped processing password changes over the phone while it figures out if its security policy needs to be altered. Amazon already updated theirs. [Wired]
Don’t let Mr. Honan’s loss be in vain. Time to enable “two-factor authentication” on Read More
Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination case: Still headed for the courtroom. Eventually. Maybe.
When last we checked in with the legal wrangling over Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination suit against Kleiner Perkins, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn had rejected the storied VC firm’s arguments for arbitration but invited the firm to ask again in a hearing scheduled for today.
But it sounds like Kleiner’s legal representatives couldn’t quite close the deal. Reuters reports that, rather than ruling, Judge Kahn told Kleiner Perkins he didn’t buy their arguments and added that they had the option of appealing if they wanted. Read More
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn kept his word today and ruled against Kleiner Perkins’ motion for arbitration in Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination suit.
However, he did rule that the storied VC firm may ask again for arbitration at an upcoming hearing scheduled for July 20th, meaning that the case could still be arbitrated by a third party.
A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson sent the following statement to Betabeat: Read More
When VC firm Kleiner Perkins filed its response to partner Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination suit (nearly a month ago now), included in the flurry of legal documents were requests to require Ms. Pao to submit to binding arbitration.
Now the Mercury News reports that the presiding judge has spoken–tentatively, at least–and she’ll be required to do no such thing. Kleiner argued that partners signed arbitration agreements with each of the firm’s new funds; Ms. Pao’s lawyer rejoined that only an umbrella agreement would do, and his logic apparently carried the day.
Of course, we should also note that lawyers for both sides are still due at a hearing today, where Kleiner has a chance to try talking the judge into reversing his ruling. Maybe somebody’s got an ace up his sleeve? Read More
The gender discrimination suit filed by Kleiner Perkins partner Ellen Pao against her employer has hit a potential snag. The hedge fund run by Ms. Pao’s husband, Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher, has filed for bankruptcy, according to Dan Primack at Fortune.
Mr. Primack points out that while the bankruptcy and the suit could easily be unrelated, the possibility of family financial disaster could provide a motive for Ms. Pao seeking damages against the company. Read More
Compensation is central to the discrimination case filed against Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byer by junior partner Ellen Pao, which alleges among other things that women are paid less than men. So far, no details about compensation have been made public either by the plaintiff or the defendant, and Kleiner Perkins would like to keep it that way. Read More
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has filed a response to partner Ellen Pao’s allegations of gender discrimination and boy howdy, they did not hold back. We’ve obtained a copy, and here’s the meat and potatoes:
“KPCB generally denies each and every material allegation of the Complaint and further denies that Plaintiff has been damaged in the manner alleged, or in any manner or amount.”
The firm also “vigorously denies” that it discriminated or retaliated against Ms. Pao, as well as claiming that Ms. Pao never reported anything prior to 2011, and they also deny that she complained in 2007.
The response goes into great detail, refuting many of Ms. Pao’s accusations point-by-point: Read More
Minority report is a guest column by Sarah Kunst, who does business development and product at fashion app Kaleidoscope. She’s a black, non-engineer female in tech, but plans to IPO anyway.
The big question on everyone’s mind in the wake of Ellen Pao’s allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination against venture capital powerhouse firm KPCB: “There are women not named Mary Meeker in VC?”
Betabeat crunched the numbers and came up with a Female Equality Metric, or FEM – the percentage of VC partners who are female. The number: 8.3 percent. Guess they’re not going to rename it “Sandra” Hill Road anytime soon.
For women who want to write big checks, this can seem like a pretty daunting statistic. But the refrain in the tech world is that there aren’t a lot of women, because not enough qualified women apply. What does it take to fill the hiring funnel with estrogen? We pulled together some job listings, stats and empirical evidence to provide a fast and dirty look into the world of who makes it to partner. Read More
