- Sarah Lacy, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of tech blog Pando, is selling the company, quitting journalism and ditching Silicon Valley after 20 years she announced in a blog post on Wednesday.
- She says her decision comes from years of sexual harassment and threats in her 20 years of covering Silicon Valley.
- “I have absorbed so many more stories than I have reported, more than I can ever report, about the dark side of Silicon Valley,” she says in the blog post.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Sarah Lacy, the longtime tech journalist and founder of Pando, is selling the company and quitting journalism as a result of what she described as a toxic culture in Silicon Valley.
Lacy, the site’s Editor-in-Chief, announced the sale in a scathing blog post on Wednesday lambasting the problems of Silicon Valley.
“It’s a place where I’ve been sexually harassed more times than I can remember,” Lacy wrote in the post..
“It’s a place where I’ve been lied about, where VCs have arm-twisted editors to fire me, where billionaires have threatened those doing business with me to cut all ties. It’s a place where I’ve had people turn on me again and again and again simply for doing my job. It’s a place I’ve been betrayed by people I trusted. It’s a place where one-time friends threatened my children because I wrote about things they did,” she continued.
Some of incidents she mentions related to Uber threatening her after her reporting of the company’s misconduct.
Lacy said that Pando is being sold to BuySellAds, though she did not share any of the financial terms of the deal.
Lacy started Pando in 2011 while on maternity leave from her previous position at TechCrunch. In addition to experiencing sexual harassment herself, she referenced many stories of women in Silicon Valley being held back because of harassment.
“I have absorbed so many more stories than I have reported, more than I can ever report, about the dark side of Silicon Valley,” she wrote.
Pando’s biggest investors include Marc Andreessen, Accel Partners, and Greylock Partners.
Lacy said that Pando had been working with BSA since 2012. “I’m also intrigued by BSA’s strategy of buying much beloved but somewhat neglected online media brands and reinventing them for a whole new audience while still serving the existing audience with (hopefully) an even better product.”
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