His startup, Dovetail, was recently valued at almost a billion dollars and has backing from major VC firms, including Blackbird and Grok Ventures.
But Benjamin Humphrey is currently in the news for a different reason.
Humphrey and Dovetail are being sued in the Federal Court by Dovetail’s legal counsel, Bethany Lo Russo, for sexual harassment and discrimination.
She claims she was forced into a non-consensual relationship by Humphrey, which she says the company ignored, and has detailed a number of allegations of sexual assault.
A spokesperson for Lo Russo says the case is about “control, coercion, abuse of power, personal violation and a culture”.
Humphrey denies the allegations and says the relationship was consensual. He’s filed correspondence to support his claim, including text conversations he had with Lo Russo and her sister, some of which have been published by the Australian Financial Review. He claims that employees, as well as investors, knew about the relationship.
Humphrey has also admitted to the AFR that the relationship was an “error of judgment”.
“I acknowledge that in my position, getting into a relationship with someone at work was an error of judgement. However, I do not believe I did anything illegal,” he said.
Regardless of the outcome of the ongoing Federal Court proceedings, this story raises the question again of why any CEO or founder of a fast-growing business would decide to have an intimate relationship with a subordinate.
Especially given how all-consuming building a startup is for these founders, and how critical building a great and stable team and client base is for the growth of the business.
Given a founder will so often throw everything they have at their business baby, why not protect yourself, their employees and their startup’s brand at all costs?
Why not pursue the much broader dating pool that’s available out of your startup?
Any what, if anything, is offered from investors to those they pile funding into regarding the boundaries they expect from founders and the limits of what goes on in their workplaces?
It’s apparent, at least, that the Dovetail board was fully aware of the relationship – given it’s a two-person board, one of which is Humphrey and the other his co founder Bradley Ayers.
Meanwhile, Humphrey took to LinkedIn to share his thoughts on the proceedings in the Federal Court, including criticisims of the court process. His post, which went only to contacts but was seen by a large number of people in the startup community, including the flippant signoff, “Now let’s get back work,” according to Capital Brief.
It’s too late now to simply “get back to work”.