Before a lot of women founders take an investor meeting, we text each other one question: "Have you ever met with him?"
That text exists because the institutions around us don't protect us. When the person you'd have to report is the person deciding whether your company gets funded, staying quiet stops being a choice and becomes survival, for you and for everyone who depends on your business.
This month, a lawsuit at Cornell alleges that seven fraternity members drugged and gang raped a student and invited the rest of the house to join through a group chat. It raised the same question for anyone building inside an elite institution: who does the system actually protect? So we're re-releasing our conversation on sexual harassment while fundraising. Alex Batdorf, a three-time founder with one exit, sits down with Helena Fogarty and Megan French Dunbar, to share their own accounts of what happened to them while they were raising money for their companies.
What We Break Down:
The Whisper Network as Due Diligence: Why women founders vet investors through private group chats, and what it costs us to do the institution's job for free.
The Math Behind Staying Quiet: Startups founded entirely by women get about 1% of venture dollars. When capital is that scarce, reporting the person who controls it can cost you the company.
Who Gets Treated as the Risk: Research puts false reports between 2% and 10%, yet according to RAINN, 975 of every 1,000 perpetrators walk free. Women are still the ones treated as liars.
What Happens in Public Tells You About Private: Alex shares how the man who assaulted her did it in front of a group of people, and what that kind of boldness says about the culture that allowed it.
Why This Isn't Men vs. Women: Someone in that fraternity captured the Snapchat, and that screenshot is now at the center of the case. Changing this culture takes more people willing to break the silence, and institutions that make it safe to do so.
This episode is for you if you've ever weighed whether to take a meeting with an investor you'd heard things about, if you've stayed quiet about something because the person responsible had a say in your funding, or if you lead an accelerator, fund or university and want to understand what your founders may not be telling you.
Read the full piece, free on Substack, on how institutions protect predators and what it will take to build a culture of consent instead.
If this episode brings anything up for you, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is 800-656-HOPE.
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