Dylan: Thanks to everyone who came to our State of Innovation WorkXPlay events this week. We'll see everyone at BostonFest on Aug. 9! So rest up.
Dylan: Yesterday The Information published a story detailing sexual harassment allegations against Justin Caldbeck, a West Coast venture capitalist who used to work for Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures from 2005 to 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. Caldbeck's titles there included associate, principal, director and partner, and he worked from the Boston office for a few years until he helped with the opening of the firm's West Coast office in 2008. Caldbeck's alleged sexual harassment toward female founders has reportedly been an "open secret" among some women VC and entrepreneurs, as Dan Primack writes. What prompted this story were on-the-record statements from three founders.
Here's an excerpt from The Information's story:"The women who made the allegations include Niniane Wang, who co-created Google Desktop and served as CTO of Minted, and Susan Ho and Leiti Hsu, co-founders of Journy, a travel planning and booking service. Ms. Wang alleges Mr. Caldbeck, while informally trying to recruit her for a tech company job, tried to sleep with her. Ms. Ho said that Mr. Caldbeck, while discussing investing in their startup, sent her text messages in the middle of the night suggesting they meet up. Ms. Hsu says that Mr. Caldbeck groped her under a table at a Manhattan hotel bar."
Primack said he spoke to another female founder who told him that Caldbeck's problematic behavior went back to when he was at Bain:"I'm there trying to get an investment from Bain, and he's literally telling me we should finish the conversation in his hotel room. He knew I had a boyfriend, but apparently that meant more to me than it meant to him. This wasn't just casual flirting, which would have been bad enough."
In a statement to Primack, Caldbeck said he is "deeply disturbed by the allegations," and while "significant context is missing" from The Information's reporting, he deeply regrets "ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable." The statement ends with this: "There's no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it. "
A source inside the firm told me that Bain was not aware of any activity while he was employed there. After The Information's story came out, the firm double-checked to see if anything had ever been reported and nothing was found, the source added. When Caldbeck left for Lightspeed Venture Partners in 2011, it was described as an "amicable departure."
I agree with Primack's takeaway on this one: "Only sunlight can burn away this sort of behavior, and protect others from it in the future. These experiences should not be part of startup life." Boston angel investor and entrepreneur Phil Beauregard put it more bluntly on Twitter: "Shine the light on this shit, or, more preferably, torch it with fire."
Dylan: As you might have seen from yesterday, BostInno is getting a sister site in Rhode Island this July. I published my first RI story yesterday on how the state is aiming to become a bigger innovation hub. Today I published my second, and it's about RI's top-funded startup, Upserve. A quick primer: Upserve is a restaurant POS and analytics software company that was founded by Angus Davis, who was previously an early employee at Netscape and co-founded Tellme, which sold to Microsoft in 2007. Read more: Office Envy: Inside the HQ of Upserve, Rhode Island's Top-Funded Startup
If you want to follow Rhode Island Inno for when it launches, sign up for the RI Inno Beat newsletter here. Follow the site at @Rhody_Inno on Twitter.
Lucy: I really enjoyed doing my second Office Envy at the HQ of Promoboxx, a digital marketing platform based on Harrison Avenue. Inside the office, they have space for several dogs, a giant chessboard, a table football and a hammock. I also discovered that all the conference rooms have a name that includes the word "boxx," such as Catboxx or Lunchboox. "The Iceboxx room, everyone says it's freezing," Isolde Decker-Lucke, marketing associate at Promoboxx, told me during the tour. Read more: Office Envy: Inside Dog-Friendly Promoboxx, Where Each Conference Room Is a "Boxx"
Dylan: More Office Envies coming soon.
Lucy: Edtech startup BetterLesson made a big move. The company started in 2008 as a free online archive of lessons for teachers. Nowadays, this Cambridge-based startup entered the professional development market by pairing teachers with coaches to work on specific learning goals. Co-founder Alex Grodd told me that the company currently partners with 48 school districts across 18 states and that this year, it's coaching almost 1,000 teachers thanks to around 15 coaches. "We have a sort of own internal eHarmony Match.com, a Tinder-type algorithm that matches each teacher with their coaching soulmate,” Grodd said. Read more: From BetterLesson to BetterTeacher: How This Startup Is Sending Educators Back to School
Dylan: Scott Kirsner of The Boston Globe wrote a story about the downfall of a local Apple Pay competitor called Merchant Customer Exchange: "A big factor in MCX’s failure, says Miller at Forrester, was that the retailers behind it didn’t focus enough on the role their app could play in helping customers collect and use digital coupons or loyalty points. Instead, they were too obsessed with eliminating the transaction fees they paid."
Dylan: Two funding items for today:
Lucy: First, Solar energy company Nexamp raised over $14.5M in an equity offering, according to a new Form D. The company is looking to raise around $19.6M total.
Secondly, Tripleseat, a Concord-based provider of sales and event management software, announced it has secured $7M in growth capital. The funding was secured from New York-based growth equity firm Level Equity. The company had been bootstrapped since it started in 2008.
Dylan: We just noticed that Ellen Chisa, who was an early employee at Paul English's startup Lola and served as VP of product, left the company last month to found a new startup with Paul Biggar. Biggar was previously founder of San Francisco-based CircleCI.
Here's a description of their startup idea via Linkedin: "make it possible to build a complete scalable app in an afternoon."
Lucy: Boat-docking startup Dockwa let us know about two additions to its executive team in Cambridge: Lindsay White is joining the company as VP of customer success, while Max Lahey will be the new director of engineering. Previously, White was director of operations for LogMeIn. As for Lahey, he was a software engineer at Stripe in San Francisco.
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