Last year, one of the major browser companies launched a new incubator whose stated mission was to invest in startups that aspire to “fix the internet.” For Tracy Chou, who had founded a company, Block Party, which makes anti-harassment tools that aim to do exactly that, applying seemed like a natural fit-but for one thing. Earlier in her career, she’d had several uncomfortable encounters with one of the program’s architects-the sort of unwanted attention that was practically a rite of passage for Silicon Valley women.
The opportunity seemed too good to pass up, but Chou’s skepticism proved to be well founded. When she joined the incubator, last summer, a mentor she found “condescending and aggressive” pushed her to scrap her deliberate, gated approach to bringing in new users. At
