Sex scandal toppled a Silicon Valley chief. Investors say, so what?

Last September, the board of the online lending company Social Finance ousted its chief executive, Mike Cagney, after questions about sexual misconduct.
 

The move was prompted by a board investigation that found Mr. Cagney was romantically involved with an employee, even though he had previously told directors that he was not involved in any extramarital workplace relationships, said four people with knowledge of the deliberations. Years earlier, Mr. Cagney had also promised the board he would not have affairs with employees after they learned of another relationship, said the people.
 

Yet just months after Mr. Cagney departed SoFi, two venture capitalists who had been on the company’s board and knew many details of his actions invested $17 million in his new start-up, called Figure. Since then, Mr. Cagney has raised another $41 million from others for the lending start-up, which will open soon.
 

Mr. Cagney’s swift comeback — from ouster to new company took four months — provides one of the starkest illustrations of the speed with which the technology industry is moving past the sexual harassment allegations that swept Silicon Valley and many other industries over the last year.
 

Apart from Mr. Cagney, 47, other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors who lost their jobs in the #MeToo movement are also rebounding. Steve Jurvetson, an investor who left his venture firm DFJ last fall amid an investigation into workplace conduct, is back with a new investment fund. And Justin Caldbeck, another venture capitalist, has resurfaced giving public talks about what he learned from grappling with sexual harassment claims. 
 

Their resurgence is being enabled by Silicon Valley’s start-up ecosystem, where money is plentiful and many are eager to bet on experienced investors and entrepreneurs. In those situations, what happened in the past, often becomes a marginal factor, said Nicole Sanchez, chief executive of Vaya Consulting, a company in Berkeley, California.

© 2018 The New York Times News Service