Your Mama Didn’t Raise You Right

Star Investor Dave McClure Calls Woman “Lying B****” During Speech.

Today, during what was supposed to be some kind of tech event in Omaha, a self-professed loud mouth venture capitalist bad boy tried to do some kind of take-off on Louis CK’s “Everything’s Amazing” comedy bit.

Unfortunately it went horribly, horribly wrong. Mr. McClure decided to switch from stealing Louis CK’s material to acting like Triumph the insult comic dog’s. Responding to a female audience member he lashed out by calling her as a “lying f***ing b****” (you can figure it out, or watch it here). Apparently this was in response to saying her “iPhone battery was fine”.

Yeah, that seems rational.

For an industry that continues to struggle with the diversity of our culture, when we talk again and again about how we need less sexism and more diversity here’s a venture capitalist acting like a complete idiot on stage and then proceeding to retreat to Twitter while he apologies for going too far. When are we going to stop elevating people that act like this is ok? I imagine this woman (who has been incredibly gracious in her online response to the whole thing) paid good money to attend this conference. She came wanting to be inspired, to be enlightened and to leave energized to go off and create something new. Something hopefully that a VC like Mr. McClure would want to invest in. Instead she was insulted publicly and profanely by a guy who has long ago let his ego get the best of him.

This all happened in Omaha. Can you imagine Warren Buffet saying something like this during the Berkshire Hathaway investor meeting? Can you see him being not only disrespectful but sexist in this way?

The technology industry and it’s venture capital elements needs to take a long look in the mirror. This wasn’t an isolated incident. This isn’t a one-off behavior. Either we tolerate sexism, racism and agism in the industry or we don’t.

I know how my mother raised me.