Ben Casnocha, Sergey Brin, and the Amazon Women
Regarding entrepreteen Ben Casnocha's claim to have attended a party where he and Google founder Sergey Brin were the only two men in a room of 40 women, Heidi Rozen of Mobius Venture Capital wrote in to defend "Sergey's honor and Ben's veracity":
while it is fun to see the speculation about Ben's post, I feel I must set the record straight, if only to defend Sergey's honor. The true story:
Ellen Levy and I had an event at my house for a group of female friends and work associates of ours, we called the gathering 'power chicks of Silicon Valley' on our Evite.
But who are these power chicks, and what do they want with our menfolk?
I invited Ben to be the lone male, because he is helping the National Center for Women in Information Technology (www.ncwit.org) with a project on profiling female tech execs. Since many on our target list were going to be at the event, I thought it made sense to have him walk around, pour wine, and meet and greet. Since he is 1) not old enough to drink himself and 2) way younger than the rest of the attendees, I figured this was pretty innocent.
Among the attendees was Megan Smith of Google. Towards the tail end of the event she called Sergey's fiancee Anne and suggested Anne drop by. Anne, who was driving home from somewhere with Sergey, agreed to come over. Not wanting to have Sergey sit in the car, we thought it would be hospitable of us to invite him in. He was a pleasure to have there and a perfect gentleman the whole time.
Hence, it is fact, that Ben and Sergey were the only male attendees at an event with 40 women (in fact, there were more like 80 women there during the course of the evening.) And neither was there because of looks nor money.
I hope that sets the record straight, now get your minds out of the gutter :-)
Never! It's warm and moist. The takeaway: When there's a virile, handsome 18-year-old pouring the wine, even the billionaire only gets an invite as a plus-one.