Social Capital shakeup: VC firm removes team page from its website

A
screenshot of Social Capital’s website on August 1,
2018.

Internet
Archive WayWayBack Machine; Social Capital; and Melia
Robinson/Business Insider

• Venture capital firm Social Capital seems to be
  unraveling following a tumultuous first half of 2018.
• Seven partners, including one of the firm’s cofounders,
  left the firm founded by early Facebook executive Chamath
  Palihapitiya.
• The latest defectors are VC partner Mike Ghaffary and
  vice president of marketing Ashley Mayer.

Social Capital, one of the most closely-watched venture firms in
Silicon Valley, has vaporized the “team” page from its website,
following a tumultuous first half of 2018.

The tech investing firm seems to be unraveling amid a wave of
departures. The latest defectors are investment partner Mike
Ghaffary and Ashley Mayer, social media darling and Social
Capital’s vice president of marketing.

“It’s never a good sign when a VC firm deletes the ‘team’ page
from its website,” Axio’s business editor
Dan Primack first reported on Friday. “But that’s what
recently happened at Social Capital, which is hemorrhaging more
talent.”

The departures represent another blow to Social Capital, which
was founded by
early Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, whose tech
pedigree and iconoclastic
pronouncements about investing made Social Capital one of the
most buzzworthy venture firms in the industry.

Chamath
Palihapitiya.

Flickr/TechCrunch

But after Palihapitiya made
a series of abrupt and jarring changes in strategy,
top investment partners have been jumping ship. And for some,
the landing spot looks very familiar.

Three partners — Arjun Sethi, Jonathan Hsu, and Ted Maidenberg —
joined forces to launch a fund of their own, called
Tribe Capital. Its vague focus is internet and software
companies, though the firm just cut its first investment check to
a
cryptocurrency-related startup.

“It’s like Social Capital, but without Chamath,” one source
recently told Business Insider about the new firm being launched
by Sethi.

Here are all the partners who have left Social Capital so far
this year, listed in order of their departure:

• Tony Bates, CEO of Social Capital Growth
• Marc Mezvinsky, vice chairman
• Arjun
  Sethi, partner (now: cofounder and general partner
  at Tribe Capital)
• Jonathan
  Hsu, partner and senior vice president of
  quantitative investing and data science (now: cofounder and
  general partner at Tribe Capital)
• Ted
  Maidenberg, founding partner (now: cofounder and
  general partner at Tribe Capital)
• Ashley
  Mayer, partner and vice president of marketing
• Mike
  Ghaffary, partner

It’s not immediately clear where Mayer and Ghaffary are headed,
though a source with direct knowledge told Business Insider,
Ghaffary is not joining Tribe Capital.

Mayer and Ghaffary shared these updates on Twitter: