Bits Blog: Bias Plaintiff Says Venture Firm Fired Her

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Ellen Pao, who filed a sexual discrimination suit against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says she has been fired as a partner.

Ellen Pao, the venture capitalist who sued Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for discrimination and retaliation last May, said late Tuesday that the venture capital firm had fired her.

Ms. Pao wrote on Quora, the question and answer site, that the firm fired her Monday afternoon.

“I have been terminated from my job at KPCB,” Ms. Pao wrote. “On Monday afternoon, senior management told me to clean out my office, leave, and not come back.” Ms. Pao has used Quora before to address the public before. In a post to Quora in June, she said she had no plans to quit working at the venture capital firm.

A Kleiner Perkins spokeswoman could not be reached for comment early Wednesday morning after the Quora post was noticed.

Ms. Pao had continued to work at Kleiner Perkins after she filed her discrimination suit in May.

In her suit, filed May 10 in California Superior Court in San Francisco, Ms. Pao contends that beginning in 2006 she was sexually harassed by another partner at the firm. When she complained to senior partners and others at the firm, her suit claims, they retaliated against her, cutting her out of investment deals and limiting her career advancement. Kleiner Perkins denied all claims.

In July, a San Francisco judge declined Kleiner Perkins’s request asking that the case be sent to arbitration, all but guaranteeing an embarrassing public trial or pricey settlement. Ms. Pao’s lawyer, Alan Exelrod, said at the time that his client planned to pursue litigation.

The case has held Silicon Valley captive particularly because Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm that made early investments in technology behemoths like Google and Amazon.com, is one of only a handful of venture capital firms that employs women as full-time investment partners. Compared with Silicon Valley’s other top venture capital firms — Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark and Accel Partners — only Kleiner Perkins and Accel have female investment partners who work full-time.

Kleiner Perkins has been known to highlight the fact that 10 of its 38 investment partners are women. But Ms. Pao’s suit said that in reality, women were passed over for job promotions and given a smaller slice of the firm’s profits.

The Quora post was first noted by the AllThingsD site.