Mary Meeker quotes cap second week of Ellen Pao trial

SAN FRANCISCO — After investigating for two months, investigator Stephen Hirschfeld came to differing conclusions about two questions he'd been asked by the leadership at Kleiner Perkins, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Yes, a Kleiner female partner named Trae Vassallo had been subject to unwanted sexual advances by Ajit Nazre, a male partner at the firm, Hirschfeld concluded.

But no, Kleiner partner, Ellen Pao, had not been discriminated against or treated differently than male partners.

Neither had Pao been retaliated against by Nazre, with whom she'd had a brief, consensual relationship, or by anyone else at the firm, he said on the stand Friday.

Nazre was asked to leave soon after Hirschfeld submitted his reports to the firm in 2012.

Hirschfeld spent most of Friday on the stand in the case, which pits former junior partner Pao against the storied firm in a $16 million discrimination and retaliation case over back pay and future earnings.

Pao's legal team is attempting to portray Kleiner as a place that didn't make it easy for women to succeed. During cross-examination, Kleiner attorneys worked to negate that.

Kleiner Perkins "had nothing" on Wall Street as a tough place to work, Hirschfeld quoted Mary Meeker as saying.

Sometimes called "The Queen of the Internet" because of her expertise, Meeker came to Kleiner as a senior partner in 2010 after spending almost a decade at Morgan Stanley as a managing director and research analyst.

"This ain't Wall Street," Meeker told him.

She described Kleiner as the "nicest, sweetest, tamest place I could ever imagine working."

The firm was not a tough place for women to work, "It's just not true," he quoted her as saying.

The courtroom on Friday was full of onlookers, as many were hoping Pao would take the stand. However Hirschfeld's testimony took up the whole day.

Testimony from Hirschfeld, brought as a witness by the plaintiffs, was key because during his investigations for Kleiner he had spoken with most of the people involved in the lawsuit.

While the reports he wrote are part of the case, the notes he made while doing his interviews were the subject of a pretrial tussle between Kleiner lawyers, who did not want them discussed in court, and Pao's lawyers, who did.

Kleiner said they contained proprietary information. Judge Harold Kahn eventually ruled that they could be used.

The trial is of great interest in Silicon Valley because of increasing pressure on one of the nation's premier industries to include more women, who are underrepresented. It's estimated that overall about 6% of senior partners at venture capital firms are women.

"One of the motivations that Ellen Pao has is to pull the curtain back and let the world see in," said Kathleen Lucas, a prominent employment lawyer in San Francisco.

Pao is making the case that venture capitalists are "the most powerful, the wealthiest and the top of the tech world, and women have been denied access to that," Lucas said.

Whether or not Pao wins, "It has exposed a very serious problem," she said.

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