Aneel Ranadivé’s Mea Culpa: Founder of Venture Capital Firm Apologizes for Asking Job Applicants to Take IQ Test
- Son of Sacramento Kings owner and entrepreneur Vivek Ranadivé, he said the mistake was not indicative of how he wants to build Soma Capital.
Venture capitalist Aneel Ranadivé is apologizing after facing ire online for requiring potential employees to take an IQ test as part of the job application process. Founder of the San Francisco-based firm Soma Capital, he is the son of Sacramento Kings owner and entrepreneur Vivek Ranadivé.
Vice reported that a New York investor posted a screenshot of the online application, which required prospective candidates to have taken an online IQ test on IQTest.com and a Myers-Briggs personality quiz on the site 16 Personalities.
Ranadivé took to Twitter to apologize for the blunder. “Someone on the team recently posted a job posting w/ numerical tests that was horrifying for me to see and counter to the mission and not indicative of how I want to build Soma, I found out yesterday and we removed immediately & will work 10x harder to be clear on culture.”
In a follow-up tweet, he said he was “grateful to those who flagged this for me fast and to those who will share and write about this so hopefully others can learn from this horrible mistake.”
“This is literally horrific to me and the frickin’ complete opposite of everything that I stand for and how I want to build [the] team and how I know how I frickin’ invest in founders as well,” Ranadivé told Vice.
Soma Capital focuses on investing in software to automate the world across all sectors and geographies. Since its founding in March 2015, the firm has “invested seed in 17 unicorns, and over 300 startups valued over $50 billion combined, according to its website.
According to its website, Ranadivé has over 15 years of experience building and investing in startups. He also works closely with his father Vivek Ranadive, who founded TIBCO Software. “Through this relationship, Soma Capital has access to Vivek’s deep Rolodex of CEO-level relationships with some of the biggest brands in the world, who can help make strategic introductions for portfolio companies,” according to the firm’s website.
Meanwhile, Papa Ranadivé is bidding for Chelsea F.C., the English soccer team that is up for sale by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. If the deal goes through, he would be the first person of Indian descent to own a top-flight English club. He joins fellow Americans Todd Boehly and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson who are also bidding for the club.
(Top photo, Aneel Ranadivé with his father Vivek Ranadivé. Courtesy, Twitter).