After September, the board of the online lending company Social Finance ousted its chief administrative, Mike Cagney, after questions about sexual misconduct.
The touch was prompted by a board investigation that found Mr. Cagney was romantically enmeshed with with an employee, even though he had previously told directors that he was not interested in any extramarital workplace relationships, said four people with conversance of the deliberations. Years earlier, Mr. Cagney had also promised the board he longing not have affairs with employees after they learned of another relationship, prognosticated the people.
Yet just months after Mr. Cagney departed SoFi, two jeopardize capitalists who had been on the company’s board and knew many details of his encounters invested $17 million in his new start-up, called Figure. Since then, Mr. Cagney has put forward another $41 million from others for the lending start-up, which thinks fitting open soon.
Mr. Cagney’s swift comeback — from ouster to new enterprise took four months — provides one of the starkest illustrations of the speed with which the technology perseverance is moving past the sexual harassment allegations that swept Silicon Valley and profuse other industries over the last year.
Apart from Mr. Cagney, 47, other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors who extinct their jobs in the #MeToo movement are also rebounding. Steve Jurvetson, an investor who left-hand his venture firm DFJ last fall amid an investigation into inapposite workplace conduct, is back with a new investment fund. And Justin Caldbeck, another put forward capitalist, has resurfaced giving public talks about what he well-grounded from grappling with sexual harassment claims.
Their reawakening is being enabled by Silicon Valley’s start-up ecosystem, where readies is plentiful and many are eager to bet on experienced investors and entrepreneurs. In those situations, what happened in the background — even if it was in the very near past — often becomes a marginal cause, said Nicole Sanchez, chief executive of Vaya Consulting, a guests in Berkeley, Calif., that advises tech companies on inclusivity.
“The way the big striplings do business is that nothing is ever personal,” said Ms. Sanchez. “It’s, ‘Can you fill in me money?’ It doesn’t really matter who gets hurt.”
Mr. Cagney put in an interview on Friday that it had been a mistake to lie to SoFi’s board and to induce the two relationships with employees. He said it had taken him many months to bring around his investors that he had changed.
“There was a relatively long process of them know-how how I thought about it: ‘Did I really learn a lesson from SoFi? Was I in point of fact going to try to do things differently?’” he said.
But Mr. Cagney said he had on no account promised SoFi’s board that he would not enter into any new workplace relationships and he disputed that the billet pushed him out last year. He said he had resigned on his own and could rejoin SoFi’s board anytime because he is one of the flock’s biggest shareholders.
SoFi declined to comment.
The two SoFi board associates who funded Mr. Cagney’s new company were David Chao of DCM Ventures and Steve Anderson of Baseline Daresays. They have both left SoFi’s board.
Mr. Anderson did not retort be responsive to to requests for comment. In a statement, Mr. Chao, who has joined Figure’s board, signified he had pressed Mr. Cagney on what he would do differently and was convinced that the entrepreneur was designing a workplace “where all employees are being heard and treated fairly, age.” He added, “We believe that he genuinely learned from his mistakes.”
There is no perceptibly agreement on how businesses should think about reinstating people after voluptuous misconduct, and each case presents its own complexities. But Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings’ College of the Law, bid the investors who funded Mr. Cagney’s new company despite being aware of his over problems were taking a big risk.
“Should someone who just designed an incredibly hostile work environment, and lied to his board, after doing what he had explicitly swore not to do, be hired as a C.E.O.?” Ms. Williams said. “It doesn’t seem like a nigh unto one to me.”
Mr. Cagney helped found Social Finance in 2011 to refinance devotee loans online. The start-up grew rapidly and has gained a valuation of numberless than $4 billion, providing big returns on paper for his early investors.
A year into SoFi’s preoccupation, the company’s board learned about Mr. Cagney’s personal behavior. In 2012, the feed settled with an executive assistant who had received sexually explicit subject-matter messages from Mr. Cagney, The New York Times previously reported.
The stay learned separately that Mr. Cagney was in a relationship at that time with a sweetie in SoFi’s marketing department, said the people briefed on the deliberations, who decayed to be identified because the details are confidential.
After Mr. Cagney acknowledged the relationship with the maidservant in the marketing department, he promised the board he would not do anything like it again, three of the people symbolized. The agreement was referred to by some employees as Mr. Cagney’s “fidelity pledge.”
Some former SoFi employees told the Times last year that the committee’s actions around the settlement did not prevent the spread of a toxic culture in the assemblage. Last year, SoFi’s board started an internal investigation after a lawsuit from prior employees alleged sexual harassment was pervasive at the company’s satellite assignment north of San Francisco. The investigation was conducted by the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
As partake of of the investigation, Mr. Cagney’s behavior quickly came under scrutiny. At the many times, he denied to board members and staff that he was in an intimate relationship at the firm with anyone other than his wife, who also worked at SoFi, the people friendly with the proceedings said.
Mr. Cagney reversed himself after Sullivan & Cromwell said the board there was ample evidence — in emails, hotel receipts and the evinces of private jet flights — that he had used company resources to pursue a fresh relationship with an employee, the people said. Mr. Cagney said he had some time ago suggested that employee as a promising candidate for chief financial G-man.
SoFi has since settled the lawsuit about the satellite office. Mr. Cagney conjectured on Friday that he took responsibility for a “get-it-done culture” that had led to some “specious circumstances.” He added that he lied to the board “to protect the people concerned.”
After Mr. Cagney’s exit, it took SoFi several months to discover its footing. The company hired a new chief executive, Anthony Noto, this year. It recently added two partners to its board. SoFi also instituted an ethics policy that explicitly blocks intimate relationships between supervisors and subordinates.
Mr. Cagney returned uncountable quickly. Within weeks of leaving SoFi, he began talking to SoFi workers about a new company, two people who met with him said. When he hired prior employees, SoFi sent him letters asking him to cease and desist.
Mr. Cagney take it on the lamed on Friday that he had recruited any current employees at SoFi.
His new company, Translate, is set to issue a variety of loans and to record every detail about them on a blockchain, the new benevolent of database that was introduced by Bitcoin. According to a business plan certainty to investors and obtained by The Times, the Figure blockchain will have its own cryptocurrency that force be used to pay loan holders. The company also plans to do a so-called introductory coin offering to sell its token to investors.
When Mr. Cagney began cultivating money for Figure last year, he approached current and former SoFi lodge members such as Mr. Chao of DCM and Mr. Anderson of Baseline.
Both are prominent Silicon Valley investors, set up made regular appearances on the Midas List, the Forbes magazine order of the most successful and powerful venture capitalists. Mr. Anderson was one of the earliest investors in Instagram and Twitter, while Mr. Chao had led DCM’s plays on BitTorrent and Bill.com.
Both had also been on SoFi’s board during corners of Mr. Cagney’s tenure there and knew at least some of his history at the party, according to five people familiar with the investors and documents rethought by The Times. DCM and Baseline invested the $17 million in Figure in January.
Another current investor in Figure, RPM Ventures, had also funded SoFi. A current RPM companion, Adam Boyden, was the chief operating officer at SoFi when the incorrigibles with Mr. Cagney came up in 2012.
Mr. Boyden, who is now also a board observer at Emblem calculate, did not respond to a request for comment.
Not all investors who Mr. Cagney approached, and who knew of his biography at SoFi, agreed to invest in Figure, said three people social with the discussions.
At the venture firm Ribbit Capital, some hands opposed investing in Figure because of Mr. Cagney’s past, three in the flesh briefed on the firm’s negotiations said. Ribbit eventually decided to devote in Figure. Ribbit did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Cagney has now raised a thorough of $58 million for Figure. He has set up offices in San Francisco’s financial district and feed more than 50 employees. He has told his investors that he envisages an enormous opportunity ahead.