In a new report in Bloomberg, five different women accuse venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar — he’s an investor in several top tech companies, including Uber and Airbnb — of sexual misconduct. All of the allegations are anonymous, with the women behind them “citing fears over the investor’s history of filing lawsuits and concerns that he could wield his influence in the tech industry to ruin their careers,” Bloomberg reports.
One woman says she took a dinner with Pishevar to discuss him possibly investing in her company. While there, she claims he told her he was getting a divorce, hit on her, and that he “forced himself on her, kissing and groping her.” Another says she met Pishevar for dinner in San Francisco in 2013 seeking career advice. When he invited her to his home after, she obliged. “He basically jumped on me, tried to put his tongue down my throat, and I stopped it,” the woman said. A third woman says Pishevar “tried to pressure her into having sex with him” despite her insistence — including documented Facebook messages — that she wanted to keep things professional. On a work trip in 2013, Pishevar booked the pair just one hotel room and allegedly performed oral sex against her wishes. “It felt really wrong, and it was really confusing at the time,” the woman told Bloomberg. “I just remember his big body on top of me. I was young enough to be his daughter.” Other women shared stories of forced kissing, and one particularly charming story involving Pishevar sitting on a couch showing pictures of vaginas to a female entrepreneur.
There’s one anecdote in the story involving a female Uber executive whose name is given, Austin Geidt. At an Uber party in December 2014, several people told Bloomberg they saw Pishevar inappropriately touching Geidt’s leg as she “squirmed away.” Geidt declined to comment on the story, but Pishevar — via a source sent to Bloomberg through his spokespeople — denies that the incident happened because he, as it happened, brought a pony on a leash to the party, and between the leash in one hand and a drink in the other couldn’t possibly have done the alleged touching. Pishevar denied the other allegations against him, too. “Shervin Pishevar is the victim of an organized smear campaign,” Pishevar’s representative told Business Insider. “Now, anonymous and untrue stories have suddenly surfaced concerning Mr. Pishevar. The assertions regarding the only person named have now been directly refuted by an eyewitness to the claimed events.”
