Code of Conduct
Last updated May 20, 2024
BACKGROUND
Icebreaker is a venture capital firm and a community on a mission to help build strong tech companies. Our Code of Conduct is created to define the standards by which we all must operate in this community. This document lays out what is unacceptable behaviour and how to report violations of this policy.
Our community members have diverse backgrounds when it comes to nationality, languages they speak, industries they have worked on, skills, education, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. When building strong tech companies, diversity of various sorts plays a key role, and this is why we’re extremely proud to have such a variety of different kinds of people as our community members.
SCOPE
This policy applies to all individuals involved, engaged or associated with Icebreaker.vc, including Icebreaker.vc employees, portfolio founders and employees, partners, community members and other stakeholders. In terms of the settings, we expect everyone to adhere to this policy in all settings associated with Icebreaker.vc, including but not limited to offices, work trips, work events, video and phone conferences, social media and email communication and social outings.
UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOURS
Discrimination
Unjust or prejudicial treatment of people on the grounds of sex, gender identity, ethinicity, religion, disability, age or other basis protected by law.
Direct discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly because of a protected characteristic, such as sex or race. For example, someone is not offered a promotion because they're a woman and the job goes to a less qualified man. Another type of direct discrimination is 'discrimination by perception'. This is when someone treats a person unfairly because they think they have a certain protected characteristic, whether or not it's true.
Indirect discrimination can happen when there are rules or arrangements that apply to a group of employees or job applicants, but in practice are less fair to a certain protected characteristic.
Harassment
Offensive, belittling or otherwise unwelcome conduct or act that is based on protected characteristic and violates the victim’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment. Harassment can include but is not limited to a range of verbal or physical behaviour, including offensive jokes, demeaning remarks, offensive nicknames, racist or ethnic slurs, abusive language, physical assault and intimidation.
It may also be considered harassment to interfere with someone's ability to do their work, or to retaliate against them for filing a discrimination charge or participating in an investigation.
Sexual Harassment
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature or related to gender. Sexual conduct is unwelcome whenever the person subjected to it considers it unwelcome.
Sexual harassment may include but is not limited to misogynist comments or behaviour, sexual comments or jokes, touching, gestures, advances, written and verbal abuse or sexual nature, facial expressions, sexually suggestive signals, unwanted pressure for sexual favours and unwelcome flirtations or propositions.
A conduct or act by an individual in significant power over the recipient, such as a senior staff member or a person who influences funding decisions towards a person seeking funding, are specifically included under this section.
Other Unacceptable Behaviour
The above-mentioned conducts and acts are not exhaustive. Other behavior that the recipient may perceive as unwanted may also be considered as a breach of this code of conduct.
REPORTING
We strongly encourage everyone to report any violations of this Code of Conduct to lasse (at) icebreaker.vc (+358 50 598 2101).
Breaking this code of conduct can lead to removing the misbehaving member from our activities, events or services and the community as a whole, for a limited time or permanently.
