(and no costume required)
I wonder if this story about a venture capitalist at the TED conference will boost demand for tickets:
Steve Jurvetson, who started his career in Silicon Valley as a wunderkind founder of one of its marquee venture capital firms, has become one of its highest-profile investors, … But on Monday, he crashed to earth way more swiftly than his career had rocketed skyward two decades ago.
His partners at DFJ spent a weekend pondering his fate, sources said — first placing him on a leave of absence last Saturday, then voting him out on Sunday, and then finally informing some of the firm’s top limited partners at a golf-filled gathering, along with some portfolio companies, on Monday.
“He’d sort of create a soap opera for himself,” said one of the women who dated Jurvetson, who requested anonymity to protect her career. “He lied to us.”
The pair carried out a consensual affair as Jurvetson’s marriage wound down, the woman said, and saw one another about once a month. They would sometimes attend professional conferences together, but she described their relationship as “one hundred percent personal.” She said she also saw other men at the time.
A second woman who dated Jurvetson told Recode she was searching for career opportunities in venture capital and startups. The woman, who declined to give her real name out of professional concerns, said she only later realized he was also dating the first woman, although she herself was also seeing other men in what she described as an off-again, on-again relationship with Jurvetson.
Several of the women met one another at the TED conference in Vancouver, where Jurvetson is a regular, in the March of 2015, one of the women said. That conference is said to be a flashpoint in the Jurvetson drama, as several women dating him discovered that they were not alone in their personal involvement with the investor.
If the environment at TED gets too hot, where can this guy meet some more career-oriented women?
Jurvetson, meanwhile, spent his week trying to move on. He attended Tesla’s glitzy truck unveiling by Musk on Thursday evening as a VIP.
Maybe this will revive interest in law school:
DFJ’s external investigators at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett discovered from at least two women…
(i.e., a fully trained lawyer can get paid to do the kind of “investigation” that was formerly standard for high-school sophomores)
Readers: What do you think? Does this suggest that TED is more debauched than Burning Man?
I had no idea Jurvetson’s company (DFJ) was evangelical Southern Baptist.
It appears that his mistake was to let his girlfriends meet each other. That is also what did in Julian Assange.
Wow, this is getting more and more ridiculous.
I’m sure the guy was some kind of jerk which even he admits from his post. But to lose a position over this?
I am just waiting to see at what point will women start to say a stories like this are absurd?
GermanL: It depends on the particulars, doesn’t it? Being responsible for an embarrassing public incident at a conference could certainly be a firing offense regardless of the underlying behavior which triggered the incident. However, let’s say that the firing wasn’t warranted in this case. Why the concern for this one guy, and not, for example, a waitress at Denny’s who is fired for refusing to sleep with the assistant store manager?
agree with GermanL — but until the same standards are applied to members of Congress (who resign from a committee, but keep their inflated pay & fringe benefits & JOBS), the treatment of men who’ve misbehaved in the private sector does seem excessive (or maybe the double standard for politicians is the problem)
Shouldn’t the women also be named-and-shamed? Aside from the pre-divorce cheating, which the involved women didn’t mind, they are guilty of the exact same thing that Jurvetson is guilty of (whatever that is)…?
Dating a gold-digging whore – not allowed.
Being a hold-digging whore – encouraged.
Poor Steve.