In a rare move, venture capital firm Spark Capital ‘broke all ties’ with Dispo, the popular photo-sharing social platform set up by YouTuber David Dobrik, after allegations of rape against a member of his team surfaced. Dobrik has since retired, according to a statement released Sunday.
Experts believe that a venture capitalist culture that tolerates sexual harassment and male-dominated teams is partly to blame.
“The number of sexual harassers and allegations in the VC industry is a joke,” said Lakshmi Balachandra, associate professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
“Money and power and all men lead to bad behavior – and women get less than 2 percent of all funding,” Balachandra said.
After the allegations were first published in an investigation by Business Insider last week, Spark Capital, a Boston-based company that just launched a major $ 20 million A-series investment round just a month ago , announced that he was distancing himself from the company.
“In light of recent news about the Vlog group and David Dobrik, the co-founder of Dispo, we have made the decision to sever all ties with the company,” Spark Capital’s Twitter account said. mailed early Monday morning shortly after midnight.
“We have resigned from our position on the board and are making arrangements to ensure that we do not benefit from our recent investment in Dispo,” the tweet read.
However, the company has a futures contract and a binding contract with Dispo, and the statement does not specify how the investment itself will be affected. Spark Capital did not respond to a request for comment.
“Dispo unequivocally condemns any form of assault or violence and believes that survivors should always be heard and supported. To remain true to our mission, we support David’s decision to separate from the company,” the company said. tweeted Monday. Dobrik’s co-founder and childhood friend Natalie Mariduena did not make an announcement about her future at the company.
Mariduena said in a statement on Tuesday: “I spent a lot of time thinking about the recent allegations, and because of the seriousness it took me time to process. Like many of you, I’m upset and angry and I do not accept the behavior that is in the article describes whether any sexual misconduct / abuse for the sake of the case. “
Other businesses that participated in the funding round, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Seven Seven Six, said they were distancing themselves from the start and would donate any profits from the investment to organizations that help women who are victims of sexual assault .
Even without a material sign of an interruption, the statement by the parent company itself is unusual among start-up investors.
“It’s extremely unusual for a VC to cut all ties with a founder or a company in which he has invested,” David Robinson, a professor of finance at Duke University, said in an email.
“The reaction you see is proof of the seriousness of the accusations facing the founder,” he wrote.
For years, brands paid influencers to display their products in their posts, a practice that came under fire by the Federal Trade Commission when some influencers did not disclose the sponsorship. Others, such as fashion blogger Arielle Charnas, makeup blogger Huda Kattan and personal trainer Kayla Itsines, started their own fashion, beauty and workout lines respectively. The next iteration is to start a venture with venture capitalists. VCs made cash just as fast back then as now with back pedal.
The risks involved in partnering with a well-known brand are nothing new. Several brands severed ties with Tiger Woods after a car accident in 2009 that shattered his image as a pure family man and exposed his serial infidelity.
But the reputational crisis for all the brands involved emphasizes the need to do proper background checks of relevant parties and not to allow a hot “rule-breaking” property to be an excuse to ignore basic rules.
According to its website, Spark Capital’s early venture consists of six men and one woman. The gender imbalance has likely contributed to the firm ignoring or disregarding the abusive material and behavior in Dobrik’s online video rich, Balachandra said.
The founder of Women Who Tech, Allyson Kapin, general partner at the W Fund, which invests in women and diverse technology ventures, said in an email: ‘Careful investigation into founders is one of the most important parts of the process when you invest in a startup. If the founder (s) had a familiar history of ‘frat boy’ culture where they filmed toxicity and benefited from it, it should have immediately raised a red flag for any investor. ‘
Kapin said Dispo as a company can still survive and thrive without its co-founder.
“The team at Dispo has at this early stage in the business a great opportunity to create a non-toxic culture that is welcoming, inclusive and respectful, with no tolerance for sexual harassment – and that belongs in the DNA of the to be new leadership, “Kapin said. said. “If new leadership invests in this and its user community, they can do well.”
According to the Business Insider report, Dobrik’s high school friend Dominykas Zeglaitis, who passes ‘Durte Dom’, is allegedly an offender in the rape applications.
Zeglaitis invited several college women via Instagram to make a video shot by Dobrik. One of the women, who she said was 20 at the time, said she had lost the liquor provided by the Vlog group and did not give permission to community. According to Business Insider, Dobrik uploaded a video of the incident, titled “SHE DIDN’T PLAY WITH FIRE !!” It was removed at the request of the woman.
Zeglaitis did not publicly comment on the allegations.
In the second of two apologetic videos, Dobrik, based in Los Angeles, announced that he would take a breather from social media, that he believed the woman’s allegations, and that he should never have posted the video, “even though I have permission.”
“I want to apologize to her and her friends for ever placing them in an environment that has enabled them to make them feel that their safety and values are at stake,” he said.
Dobrik started the short-form video service Vine before leaving for YouTube with his postal friends who appeared in his videos as ‘characters’. The videos consist of self-described jokes and improvised dialogue, tightly crafted with an unattractive and raw flair. Some of the videos were “really offensive” and were played as “bad jokes”, Dobrik said.
The ‘shock’ tactic has borne fruit. Channels of his and his friend received millions of views and subscribers, fueled by YouTube’s algorithm, which rewards the viewing time of the audience, regardless of whether viewers even like the videos they are hooked on.
Trademarks, desperate for audience and authenticity in an increasingly fragmented viewing world, have overwhelmed him with prizes and awards. Chipotle named a burrito after him. EA Sports gave him a $ 290,000 Lamborghini.
In 2019, Dobrik launches a photo app called Dispo, a digital version of an analog disposable camera. Photos were shot without filters and appeared on timelines 24 hours later, an antidote to the perfection-seeking aesthetics that permeate Instagram. The app, which was sown among co-influencers, started among their followers and dared interest.
The videos play as comedy for the first time, in part because most of their contestants are regularly shown laughing. A sample of scenes from a video, ‘Durte Dom’s Best Moments in David’s Vlogs’, depicts a rabbit being stabbed to death by editing. A woman is called a ‘slut’. Two men dress in wigs and dresses and try to enter fraternity parties. Women are recruited from Craigslist to jump up and down outside an apartment. A woman who is allegedly drunk is sitting on a bench while the other participants are playing a trivia game.
In a video posted on March 9, before the allegations of rape surfaced, Zeglaitis apologized for other videos in which he appeared, which involved remarks about “slut shaming” and were “blatantly racist”. He said another former member described the group of videomakers as a ‘toxic cult’.
“At that point, we were making these videos, and it was funny, and it was jokes, and it was funny,” Zeglaitis said in the video apology. “You do not realize that these certain jokes and these jokes and these video pieces have consequences for people.”
Dobrik said he hopes to do so with ‘infrastructure’ and ‘checks and balances’ when he returns to content creation.
For now, the moment can be something of a reckoning in the rush to make use of influencers.
“Expect new guidelines to come in the pipeline,” Ronn Torossian, chief executive of PR and Crisis Communications Agency 5WPR, said in an email. “Smart brands don’t let that happen twice.”