Female founders say sexual harassment is still common while seeking VC funding

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 asked about the challenges that female founders face, the strategies they use, and their overarching goals. What she didn’t ask was whether they were sexually harassed by investors.

They told her anyway.

In an open-ended 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 asked her if she’d rather have $1 million or a man, and a third woman said 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 said they were propositioned for sex.

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 said 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 trying 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 independently verify the identities of the other respondents.

“So many women are trying so hard to get businesses off the ground that are incredible, that could have really life-changing, world-changing potential,” founder Lisa Hillyard told Business Insider. Many are dealing with VCs who are “completely disrespecting them in every single part of the process.”

Feinzaig now wishes she’d asked directly about harassment in the survey. She says it didn’t occur to her at the time because she thought the industry had largely rooted out harassment.

“I felt like that was handled,” she said, “and this was not the experience of founders today.”

The stories echo ones the industry 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.

Some named names. Two well-known investors accused of harassment stepped back from their firms. Policy shifted next. Microsoft, Google, Uber, and Facebook said 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 ask for money.

A power imbalance is baked in: The people who need 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-makers at venture firms with $50 million or more in assets under management are men.

Capital is tight, and investors are steering bigger checks to fewer startups. PitchBook data shows 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 telling corporate America it needs more “masculine energy.” Elon Musk can’t stop telling 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 said, 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 industry. Half of the female founders who responded said they had been harassed; of those respondents, 50% said they were propositioned for sex, and 60% said 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?

Meltem Ballan is one of the founders who spoke up. Based in Austin, she runs the company Concrete Engine, which builds AI infrastructure.

She said that once, last year, she hung up a video call with a potential investor and cried after he told her she wasn’t as beautiful as she looked in her LinkedIn picture and suggested she put on makeup. The hurt was still fresh when, a few months later, she got a call in the middle of the night from an investor she’d just met at a fundraising event in New York.

Ballan said he asked if she wanted to discuss the “investment opportunity” in his hotel room. She thinks 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 said.

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 gender discrimination,” Ballan said.

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, because we are professional and qualified to run our businesses,” one female founder wrote in Feinzaig’s survey, adding, “It’s not a date.” She said that women can’t “show up in a hoodie and hair in a bun” and still be taken seriously.

Another described “tons of implicit bias” and innuendo, 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 moved from Germany to Canada, thought she had finally found a fit with a male investor who said his fund supports women-led companies.

Following an hourslong investor dinner at an upscale trattoria, he insisted on walking her home. Hillyard felt uneasy, but she said she felt she had to go along.

A few days later, over lunch at a Four Seasons, she said the investor crowed about how European female founders proposition him whenever he’s there. She recalled him saying that if there was ever anything she wanted to keep between the two of them, he wouldn’t tell his wife.

“Is that a normal thing for a VC to say to a founder?” she remembers thinking following the interaction. “Would a VC say that to me if I was a man?”

Hillyard and her cofounder ultimately decided not to move forward with his fund. When she called him to say his comments made 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 said 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 industry? 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.