Skip to main content

$3 billion Carta bypassed its Marketing VP to include this 'offensive' slide citing slavery in its Series E pitch-deck: lawsuit

* Carta disregarded its vice president of marketing's objections to a slide referencing "slavery" and startup equity ownership, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. * Emily Kramer was subject to gender discrimination and retaliation during her two year stint as the only female executive at Carta, according to the complaint. * She was excluded from decision-making and reprimanded when she objected to including the slide on the grounds that it was "offensive," the complaint says. * Carta spokeswoman Lauren O'Mahony declined to comment on the lawsuit. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. When Carta was fundraising in 2019 for what would become a $300 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, the company included a depiction of feudal fieldworkers that rubbed some people the wrong way. That slide, and how the company handled it, is a key detail in a new lawsuit filed Tuesday by Carta's former vice president of marketing, Emily Kramer, who claimed she was excluded from the pitchdeck process and reprimanded when she tried to stop the company from displaying the slide at a big tech conference. A screenshot of the slide, obtained by Business Insider, shows a short timeline of labor, beginning with "slavery" and ending with "ownership". "Ownership" is a reference to Carta's main product, an equity management software which helps startups track who owns shares in the company. Kramer said she was concerned that having the word "slavery" in a pitchdeck would be triggering for its viewers, but that she was reprimanded when she suggested it be removed. She told both Ward and human resources that she found the slide "offensive" but it stayed in the pitchdeck, according to the complaint.  "It's just an insensitive slide and a message that could be told in a much more thoughtful and mindful matter," Kramer told Business Insider. The pitchdeck is just one example in the lawsuit, which alleges that Kramer was subject to gender discrimination and retaliation during her two year stint as the only female executive at the company. Kramer stepped down in November 2019, after Carta CEO Henry Ward called her an "asshole" and told her she had been given "passes" because she is a woman, according to the suit. Carta spokeswoman Lauren O'Mahony declined to comment on the lawsuit. SEE ALSO: A female exec is suing $3 billion Carta, alleging that the CEO likened her to an alcoholic who needed to recover from her 'a--hole' problem Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Why American sunscreens may not be protecting you as much as European sunscreens
https://bit.ly/3jxFq8m

Popular posts from this blog

Tokyo installed see-through public toilets in a park to let people inspect their cleanliness before using them, at which point the glass turns opaque

* Two see-through bathrooms have been installed in public parks in Tokyo. * They are made from "smart glass" designed so people can see how clean they are inside before using them. The glass turns opaque when the bathroom is locked and in use. * The stalls are part of a project that is redoing 17 of the city's public bathrooms with different designers to make them more accessible and appealing. * The goal is to fight assumptions that public toilets are "are dark, dirty, smelly, and scary," said the nonprofit foundation behind the project. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Tokyo has installed two see-through bathroom facilities in public parks, allowing people to see how clean they are before deciding to use them, at which point they turn opaque. The bathrooms are made of colored "smart glass," which turns opaque when the stalls are locked, said Shigeru Ban, the architect behind the designs. You can see how it works her...
Read more

Bill Gates says the world would need as many as 14 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine to stop the virus

* The world could need as many as 14 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, Bill Gates said on Thursday in a blog post about the race to develop a way to make people immune to the disease. * "We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible," Gates said. * Gates said he had his eyes on eight to 10 promising candidates, adding that healthcare workers and people in low-income countries should be first in line once we find one that works. * While potential vaccines are progressing with historic speed, they're still months, or even years away, and the biggest challenge lies ahead in proving whether they are safe and effective in humans. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Bill Gates believes we may eventually need to produce as many as 14 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines globally and that we're anywhere from nine months to two years away from making tha...
Read more

The 11 most important details we already know about the PlayStation 5, Sony's next-generation video game console set to arrive this year

* The PlayStation 5, Sony's next-generation game console that's deep in production, is scheduled to launch during the 2020 holiday season. * As you might expect, the PlayStation 5 is promised to be more powerful than the existing PlayStation 4 — and we've slowly been learning more about the next-gen console's new features since it was first revealed. * So far, Sony has offered a first glimpse at the new console via its new DualSense gamepad, and a tech demo highlighted the technical prowess of the new machine. * Here's everything we know so far about Sony's next-generation PlayStation console. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The PlayStation 5 is almost here. Sony's next-generation PlayStation game console is scheduled to arrive this holiday season, but we already know plenty of details about it right now: how powerful it is, its main features, and we've even gotten a good look at its new gamepad.  Here everything we kno...
Read more