Three women are suing a Silicon Valley-based, Andreessen Horowitz-backed fintech startup for harassment. The women are alleging discrimination based on gender, pregnancy and age, and have named both the company and its chief executive officer as defendants in a complaint filed Monday in San Francisco state court.
The women allege that the CEO of Synapse Financial Technologies Inc., Sankaet Pathak, was verbally abusive and antagonized them in meetings and in private. The CEO “undermined, intimidated, and toyed with the female employees,” the women said in the complaint, which also alleges that Pathak made “overt, graphic sexual comments in front of and to female employees and demeaned and belittled them.”