Tech bros need to step back and listen

It remains incredibly difficult to be a woman in the tech and startup space despite years of effort and well-intentioned initiatives.

For example, according to a 2022 report from Deloitte, only 0.7 per cent of venture capital money goes to female-founded startups, despite the fact that women make up 22 per cent of startup founders.

Something needs to change.

According to international feminist icon (Forbes, 2018) Cindy Gallop – former publicist, marketing and advertising professional, and tech founder – we need to fix the system, not women, who have been told for years that they need to be more confident or assertive to be successful.

And a key problem with the current system is it enables harassment and bullying to such a degree that it is prohibitive, not just for the equal engagement of women, but their success.

Heard it on the …

Enter Grapevine, an Australian initiative built on an anonymous reporting platform aimed at stopping harassment and bullying in the startup ecosystem for the benefit of all.

Launched in late 2023, Grapevine was co-founded by ‘Vinemakers’ Lucy Wark, Misha Garg, Kirsten Hunter, Sam Garven, Paloma Newton, Jessy Wu, Margot Kilgour and Emma Earley. “We’re creating a place for people to feel heard and supported in their experiences,” Ms Earley told Business News.

“By sharing these stories, we hope that anybody who has had a similar experience knows they aren’t alone.”

Grapevine works by enabling anyone who has faced harassment to anonymously submit and share their stories through the website.

“A limited number of Vinemakers have access to the original stories, which are de-identified to protect all individuals and organisations,” Ms Earley said.

“We then provide pragmatic guidance for key parties involved in the story to take action, find resolutions, and proactive steps to prevent future wrongdoing.”

She said Grapevine acknowledged that people of all genders could be perpetrators of, and affected by, harassment, bullying and discrimination.

The problem

Grapevine came about in response to a couple of high-profile incidents at the end of last year that rocked the global startup ecosystem.

In Australia, the matter involved Sam Joel, founder of crypto-based charity GiveTree.

He trolled women in the industry via Linkedin with comments like “Are you single? Should we make a better baby? […] Assuming I wanna bang you, because let’s be honest – you look. Fat.”

Another notable case was in Europe, where the long-running DevTernity tech conference was revealed to have used artificial intelligence to create fake female speakers.

The purpose? To give their conference the illusion of diversity. It was later revealed they had been doing this for years.

“[A] bunch of women working in the startup ecosystem – founders, operators, VCs – felt compelled to respond to [these incidents],” Ms Earley told Business News.

“We found our way into a WhatsApp group chat of women largely unknown to each other, but unified by a common mission, a bias for action and the energy to make it happen.”

She said Grapevine had more than 3,000 followers on Linkedin within eight weeks of launching and was receiving a significant amount of media coverage.

Solutions

The importance of initiatives such as Grapevine is that they finally begin to address a foundational problem in the startup world where women are not and do not feel safe.

Until they do, no real change can occur.

While the two cases outlined above are success stories in the sense that they’ve been called out and dealt with (Mr Joel resigned and the DevTernity event was cancelled), they are just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s easy to call out bad behaviour when it’s visible. However, as any woman in the startup world knows, there is so much more that happens in secret and never sees the light of day.

Which is exactly why Grapevine’s making visible these stories is so game-changing.

“Storytelling is also critical to raise awareness of the abuses of power that occur, such as harassment, bullying, and discrimination,” Ms Earley said.

“These stories spark conversations about how we can collectively address the systemic and structural inequities that are largely unique to this ecosystem.”

• Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie is a cultural anthropologist specialising in human communication, innovation and AI. She is also a keynote speaker, Certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator and the creator of SUPERCONNECT®