How RadiumOne VC and lawyer tried to buy their way out of Chahal scandal ahead of intended IPO, by paying Willie Brown $250K deposit to make it “go away”
Jeff Elder / Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @yoreekoh , @mattrosoff , @tomkrazit , @scottthurm , @jguynn , @mattrosoff , @fedcourtjunkie , @jeffelder , @adamweinstein and @clarajeffery Tweets: Yoree Koh / @yoreekoh : Remember the ex-RadiumOne CEO who beat his gf 100+ times in 30min? Here's how one VC tried to make charges go away http://on.wsj.com/1hYTpmo Matt Rosoff / @mattrosoff : Subject: “Willie Brown.” Email: “Just met him. Wants $1 million if he can make this go away.” http://www.wsj.com/... Tom Krazit / @tomkrazit : In which we learn delightful ex-SF-mayor Willie Brown is in the fixer business: http://www.wsj.com/... Scott Thurm / @scottthurm : Wilson Sonsini's Robert Latta to Chahal: DA Gascon “needs to be visited with some domestic violence.” http://www.wsj.com/... via @jeffelder Jessica Guynn / @jguynn : RT @jkrim: How @RadiumOne and Gurbaksh Chahal tried to buy their way out of his domestic violence case. http://www.wsj.com/... via @JeffElder Matt Rosoff / @mattrosoff : SF at its ugliest, most corrupt, worst. Amazing get by @jeffelder http://www.wsj.com/... Dan Levine / @fedcourtjunkie : Willie Brown wanted $1 mln to make crim domestic violence case vs tech founder disappear http://www.wsj.com/... Great reporting @JeffElder Jeff Elder / @jeffelder : Politicians and VCs were willing to “do whatever it takes” to make tech founder's domestic violence case “go away.” http://www.wsj.com/... Adam Weinstein / @adamweinstein : This story is ghastly and bananas and everything that's awful about SF and Silicon Valley http://www.wsj.com/... Clara Jeffery / @clarajeffery : uh how is internet not freaking out more about this @JeffElder RadiumOne/Willie Brown story? http://www.wsj.com/... http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
By September 2015, Gurbaksh Chahal's fall was already public: he had been [[a:|convicted of two misdemeanors]] for battery and domestic violence in San Francisco, and RadiumOne's board had fired him as CEO because of it. What the Wall Street Journal reporting adds is what happened behind closed doors beforehand — a RadiumOne investor and a lawyer paying former mayor Willie Brown a $250,000 deposit on a promised $1 million to 'make it go away' while the company pursued an intended IPO.
The mechanics matter as much as the money: Wilson Sonsini partner Robert Latta's note that DA Gascon 'needs to be visited' frames the payment as an attempt to influence the prosecution itself, not merely PR cleanup. The story became an early template for how Silicon Valley handles founder misconduct — a template later tested by Google's handling of Andy Rubin and by investors walking away from HQ Trivia.
First-order effects
- Chahal loses his seat at RadiumOne outright once the conviction stands, and the IPO path the payment was meant to protect is dead for that company; the exposed fixer network — the VC, the lawyer, and Brown — now carries its own legal and reputational exposure.
Second-order effects
- Boards and investors elsewhere face pressure to show they are not running the same playbook: Google later lets Andy Rubin depart with $90M after a credible misconduct allegation, while prominent investors refuse to fund HQ Triva over Colin Kroll's conduct — both responses shaped by the backlash against quiet settlements like this one.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, founder-conduct risk moves from a private negotiation between lawyers and fixers to a priced factor in venture diligence and IPO readiness, with employees and journalists — as the eBay harassment case showed — increasingly able to force the private record into public view.
The trend: Silicon Valley's treatment of founder misconduct is shifting from paid discretion toward documented accountability, driven by boards, investors, press, and activist employees rather than prosecutors alone.