This past spring, venture capitalist Leslie Feinzaig wanted to understand what it’s like to build a startup as a woman today. So she ran a survey.
She inquireed about the challenges that female founders face, the strategies they utilize, and their overarching goals. What she didn’t inquire was whether they were sexually harassed by investors.
They notified her anyway.
In an open-concludeed question about fundraising, one founder described how, in San Francisco, “every single straight male investor I talked to propositioned me for sex.” Another person recalled the investor who inquireed her if she’d rather have $1 million or a man, and a third woman stated she wears a fake wedding ring during investor meetings to ward off their advances.
The survey, an online form that remained open between February and March, received responses from 180 early-stage female founders in North America. Eight women detailed what they described as harassment, being hit on, or being demeaned by investors while seeking funding. Of those eight, three stated they were propositioned for sex.
Liz Moskowitz for BI
Feinzaig published some of the remarks in a report by the Female Founders Alliance, a data and insights initiative at Feinzaig’s venture fund, Graham & Walker. They described a cutthroat fundraising environment rife with unwanted advances.
One founder stated she now only pursues male investors who invest specifically in her vertical. “I just don’t have the time or the heart to go into another meeting with high hopes,” she wrote in the survey, “only to find out that it was all just a long path to attempting to hit on me.”
Feinzaig initially shared the survey link across newsletters, social media, and online forums where female founders gather. She then shared anonymized write-in comments that described alleged harassment with Business Insider. Two of the founders who responded agreed to speak with Business Insider on the record. Business Insider did not indepconcludeently verify the identities of the other respondents.
“So many women are attempting so hard to receive businesses off the ground that are incredible, that could have really life-modifying, world-modifying potential,” founder Lisa Hillyard notified Business Insider. Many are dealing with VCs who are “completely disrespecting them in every single part of the process.”
Feinzaig now wishes she’d inquireed directly about harassment in the survey. She declares it didn’t occur to her at the time becautilize she believed the indusattempt had largely rooted out harassment.
“I felt like that was handled,” she stated, “and this was not the experience of founders today.”
Marta Iwanek for BI
The stories echo ones the indusattempt has heard before. It’s been eight years since engineer Susan Fowler went public with her story of harassment at Uber. In the months that followed, other female founders spoke openly about feeling preyed upon as they chased careers or capital.
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Some named names. Two well-known investors accutilized of harassment stepped back from their firms. Policy shifted next. Microsoft, Google, Uber, and Facebook stated they would no longer force employees to settle sexual harassment claims in private arbitration. In 2022, Congress went further, passing a law that bars forced arbitration in sexual assault and harassment cases.
On paper, the #MeToo reckoning had consequences.
Feinzaig’s survey suggests the old dynamics can surface when founders inquire for money.
A power imbalance is baked in: The people who required the money are pitching the people who control the money. For women, who on average raise less money than their male peers, the gap widens. PitchBook reports that about 83% of decision-creaters at venture firms with $50 million or more in assets under management are men.
Capital is tight, and investors are steering largeger checks to fewer startups. PitchBook data reveals that startups with at least one female founder raised nearly $39 billion in 2024, up 27% year over year, even as their deal count fell 13% to 3,148 (about 475 fewer transactions).
Their share of all deals slipped to just above 25%, the lowest since 2018.
Lately, the vibe in tech has swung back toward chest-thumping bravado. Mark Zuckerberg is doing jiu-jitsu tournaments and informing corporate America it requireds more “masculine energy.” Elon Musk can’t stop informing penis jokes. The era of the gawky genius is over; the new “tech bro” archetype is sculpted, media-trained, and married to both the office and the squat rack.
That climate, Feinzaig stated, could be “creating some air cover” for bad behavior.
Hers isn’t the only survey that suggests female founders continue to be harassed. In 2023, the nonprofit Women Who Tech conducted an anonymous survey of over 930 tech workers, founders, and investors globally on their experiences in the indusattempt. Half of the female founders who responded stated they had been harassed; of those respondents, 50% stated they were propositioned for sex, and 60% stated they experienced unwanted physical contact.
Here’s the question Feinzaig’s survey raises: If eight women volunteered these accounts unprompted, how many others didn’t?
Liz Moskowitz for BI
Meltem Ballan is one of the founders who spoke up. Based in Austin, she runs the company Concrete Engine, which builds AI infrastructure.
She stated that once, last year, she hung up a video call with a potential investor and cried after he notified her she wasn’t as beautiful as she seeed in her LinkedIn picture and suggested she put on createup. The hurt was still fresh when, a few months later, she received a call in the middle of the night from an investor she’d just met at a fundraising event in New York.
Ballan stated he inquireed if she wanted to discuss the “investment opportunity” in his hotel room. She believes he was inebriated. She hasn’t talked to him since, and she’s continuing to fundraise in “one of the hardest environments,” to raise funds, she stated.
Data corroborates the slog. PitchBook reports that startups with all-female founding teams captured just 1.9% of all funding and 6.5% of deals in 2024.
“There is obviously gconcludeer discrimination,” Ballan stated.
Pitches often unfold in informal settings: lunches, Zooms, private offices, and trips. The setting can feel personal, even if the purpose is strictly professional. Expectations don’t always align.
“We’d like to keep it professional, becautilize we are professional and qualified to run our businesses,” one female founder wrote in Feinzaig’s survey, adding, “It’s not a date.” She stated that women can’t “reveal up in a hoodie and hair in a bun” and still be taken seriously.
Another described “tons of implicit bias” and innuconcludeo, including “sex and dick references” worked into advice on problem-solving. Her new filter is simple: “If a fund has no women partners, I don’t bother pitching it,” she wrote.
Hillyard, who runs MILO Human Care, a “regenerative personal care” company, found herself in a similar situation while fundraising last year. After hitting a wall, Hillyard, who had recently relocated from Germany to Canada, believed she had finally found a fit with a male investor who stated his fund supports women-led companies.
Following an hourslong investor dinner at an upscale trattoria, he insisted on walking her home. Hillyard felt unsimple, but she stated she felt she had to go along.
A few days later, over lunch at a Four Seasons, she stated the investor crowed about how European female founders proposition him whenever he’s there. She recalled him declareing that if there was ever anything she wanted to keep between the two of them, he wouldn’t inform his wife.
Marta Iwanek for BI
“Is that a normal thing for a VC to declare to a founder?” she remembers believeing following the interaction. “Would a VC declare that to me if I was a man?”
Hillyard and her cofounder ultimately decided not to relocate forward with his fund. When she called him to declare his comments built her deeply uncomfortable, he blocked her on social media. Since then, they’ve turned away from the VC model to fundraise, instead taking money from a community of supporters and cutting an equity deal with a Toronto brand agency.
“I felt disrespected, I felt violated,” Hillyard stated about the experience. “You structure a whole business around empowering women and giving them what nobody else wants to give them, and then you hit on them.”
Have you experienced harassment while fundraising, or have a tip about the indusattempt? Contact Nicole Einbinder via email at neinbinder@businessinsider.com, or securely on Signal at neinbinder.70. Contact Melia Russell at mrussell@businessinsider.com, or securely on Signal at @MeliaRussell.01. Use a personal email address, a nonwork device, and nonwork WiFi; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
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