SAN FRANCISCO — A sex discrimination trial against one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture capital firms is providing a rare peek into the elite investment companies vying to fund the next Google and Amazon.
Their partnership rosters are stacked with some of the nation’s most accomplished graduates — multiple-degree holders from schools such as Harvard and Stanford who are competing aggressively to back the next big technology company. But they are also places where women are grossly under-represented and, according to allegations from the plaintiff Ellen Pao, unwelcome.
Pao’s lawsuit describes Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as an old-boys club where women allegedly were excluded from parties at former Vice President Al Gore’s house, asked to take notes at a meeting like secretaries and subjected to harassment and boorish behavior by their male colleagues, such as a conversation about porn stars and a trip to the Playboy Mansion aboard a private jet.
The trial has brought some of the nation’s most accomplished venture capitalists into the courtroom, where they have faced tough questions about sexual harassment and the behavior of men in the workplace.
Pao, who has a master’s degree in business administration and a law degree from Harvard, could begin testifying Friday.
