[daamsie]

Perhaps male advisers who are worried about such things could ensure they have a female co-adviser they can have frank conversations with. Why should it fall on one investor to tell the founder that they shouldn't be CEO?

This article is actually a very strong argument for diversity in boards.

[noisy_boy]

It is an argument for wrong reasons. Should female co-advisors get designated to talk to female founders? What if they themselves accuse the male colleague of sexist behaviour by asking them to speak to female founders? What is next, we need brown people to talk to brown people and black people to talk to black people and so on?

[daamsie]

That is not what I am suggesting.

Co-advisors should be on an equal footing in terms of the power dynamics. They can discuss amongst themselves any advice that they feel might be obstructed by biases and should be able to do so frankly. If others in the advisor group agree on the advice, then they can then present their advice as a group rather than as an individual to the person they are advising.

At that point it doesn't matter who the person is breaking the news. The advice comes from a group of diverse people and is then far more defensible against accusations of sexism, racism, etc..

[luckylion]

That sounds like you'll need a committee on every piece of advice you might give out and that would be extremely inefficient.

> The advice comes from a group of diverse people and is then far more defensible against accusations of sexism, racism, etc..

You'd by insurance against accusations, but you'll either just have people in that advice-committee for insurance reasons, or you need to have 10-15 people to do one person's job, because you need to represent all the larger groups, and their intersections.

[daamsie]

I was more thinking for critical advice such as the example in the original article. Not every little thing.

[ggm]

This resonates. Before trying to be (over) helpful which is inevitably going to be a mansplain, having a mentor or co-equal to talk to is good.