Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Longtime Salesforce executive Denise Dressler is Slack’s new CEO, a new investigation reveals an alleged culture of misogyny and harassment at the FDIC, and Melinda French Gates has a strategy to redefine what a “smart bet” looks like in venture capital. Have a great Tuesday!
– A new definition. Melinda French Gates has always done things differently as an investor. At Pivotal Ventures, she and her team have invested in women-led funds and early-stage companies with the goal of transforming the way the venture capital ecosystem operates.
In a new op-ed for Fortune, French Gates explains exactly how that will work.
The investor and philanthropist sees opportunities for more “market-based solutions to overlooked problems,” like the caregiving crisis in the U.S. Pivotal has backed founder Helen Adeosun, whose company CareAcademy trains caregivers online.
To reach these goals, Pivotal is rethinking traditional markers of venture-capital potential and success.
For due diligence, Pivotal has introduced “alternative models of evaluating investment opportunities.” This mainly applies to its work as an LP backing women-led funds, which are often smaller and newer than male-led funds. Rather than solely seek out funds that have hit a certain threshold of assets under management, Pivotal’s investment team takes into account other factors—like founder feedback about working with the fund. “We aren’t lowering the bar in any way, just redefining what it means to meet it,” French Gates writes.
With new definitions like this, French Gates hopes to move the needle on stats like the roughly 2% of venture capital funding that goes to businesses founded solely by women each year. She acknowledges the lawsuit against Fearless Fund, the Black women-led fund backing women of color entrepreneurs and its impact on these goals, too.
Openness to new ways of evaluating investments—and its knock-on effects for fund managers and founders—could “change the entire investment industry’s understanding of what a smart bet looks like,” she says.
Read French Gates’ full op-ed here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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- Slack succession. Veteran Salesforce executive Denise Dresser is the new chief executive officer of Slack, the workplace messaging platform's third CEO in three years. Lidiane Jones left the position earlier this month to take over as the CEO of dating app Bumble, making the Slack CEO succession a rare instance of one female executive replacing another. CNBC
- Inside the FDIC. A new Wall Street Journal investigation unearthed rampant misogyny, sexual harassment, and neglect by male employees at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Women interviewed said male colleagues commented openly about the bodies of female coworkers, sent them explicit photos, passed them over for jobs, and in one instance told a female employee she needed to use sex to move up in the agency. Some women attributed the behavior to the FDIC’s alcohol-heavy culture and claimed that culprits weren’t aptly punished. The agency agreed to change how it handles instances of sexual harassment after an inspector general found their policies insufficient in 2020, and told the Journal it hadn't identified any sexual harassment issues since then. Wall Street Journal
- Scaling up. Bryce Adams is one of OnlyFans' biggest creators, but the multi-billion dollar content house she runs out of a Central Florida mansion more closely resembles a working office space. Recognized as an official business by the State of Florida with employees who work their own version of a 9-5, Adams's operation is a prime example of how businesses can scale on OnlyFans. Washington Post
- Text for tips. Chelsea Clinton-backed telehealth care company Summer Health announced this week that it will provide parents with 24/7 text message access to pediatricians, sleep coaches, and lactation experts. With parents and caregivers burnt out and juggling their way back into work post-pandemic, Clinton told Fortune that the company will help support parents with “excellent advice in a timely fashion.” Fortune
- Happy agents. More than half of Federal Trade Commission employees reported having positive feelings about leadership in the Lina Khan-led agency, according to data from an annual workplace survey. That’s up 8% from last year. The agency saw similar jumps in employee respect for FTC leaders and employee confidence that leaders have “high standards of honesty and integrity." Bloomberg
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