Litigation and our culture

SoFi Co-founder and CEO Mike Cagney sent the following note to employees today:

TO: SoFi team
FROM: Mike
SUBJECT: Litigation and our culture

Team — SoFi is based on the values of speed, transparency and alignment. To that end, I have some thoughts to share with you related to the two lawsuits filed earlier this month.

While we’re confident in our positions in these cases, we take these types of claims seriously. Our legal team is hard at work preparing our responses, and as part of that work, we’ve had many discussions with current and former employees about these issues.

Based on these discussions, we’ve discovered that the same lawyer has been trying to collect information relating to alleged sexual harassment at the company, and that he has several people who are prepared to formally allege they were the victims of or witnesses to improper activity at our Healdsburg operations office.

To be blunt, that kind of behavior has no place at SoFi, and we’re not going to tolerate it.

These allegations are being thoroughly investigated by outside attorneys we have engaged. To the extent we determine that there is any truth to the allegations, swift and severe action will be taken. Jing will be following up with an anonymous means for employees to provide our counsel information that could be helpful to their investigation.

While it is too early in the investigation to know exactly what might have happened in these incidents, we need to continue to raise the bar for our policies, procedures, and programs to make sure that we’re not just bringing in great people, but creating a culture where all of you thrive.

We are taking multiple steps to strengthen our approach to HR and training, including new ways for people to anonymously provide feedback on any issues they discover, and new training and education programs for both managers and individual contributors.

I am so proud of the company that we have built together, and I hope you are too. SoFi has more than 350,000 members, and together we have saved them billions of dollars, helped them get out of debt faster, and buy homes when they thought buying a home was out of reach.

We continue to grow fast – we’re already over 1,000 people, and just completed a record month for the business in August. But our rapid expansion is no excuse for bad behavior in the workplace. We, together with our members, are the embodiment of this company in the world, and I want both groups to be equally proud to wear a SoFi t-shirt like we do every Friday (or, in my case, almost every day).

Thanks,

Mike