JoltVib

For the past two weeks, Ellen Pao has been sitting quietly at the plaintiff’s table while her former colleagues at Kleiner Perkins have painted her as a prickly careerist, ill-equipped for the high-stakes sausagefest of venture capital financing in Silicon Valley. Yesterday, at long last, it was Pao’s turn to speak. She has not disappointed.

Pao is now the CEO of Reddit. She is suing the venture capital firm for $16 million in damages, alleging gender discrimination and retaliation by Ajit Nazre, a Kleiner investor who was fired in 2012 for sexual harassment.

The self-assured woman who initially took the stand — quick with a smile, confident in her responses, literally leaning in to the microphone — was nothing like the picture her ex-managers conjured of an inexperienced junior partner, who couldn’t command a room. Before their relationship disintegrated, Pao’s mentor at Kleiner, billionaire John Doerr, urged her to use her dry sense of humor. That’s how she came across for most of yesterday, before the trial unraveled into its daily tailspin of performance reviews and emails chains. "Pao’s case rests largely on her own testimony."

There is lot riding on Pao’s credibility. Many of the headline-grabbing anecdotes from her complaint feel untrustworthy after hearing multiple perspectives. There are only so many versions of joking about porn stars on a private jet before everyone’s motivation seems suspect.

In its trial brief, Kleiner’s lawyer Lynne Hermle wrote: "Pao’s case rests largely on her own testimony— which is predominantly based on the self-serving notes she wrote throughout her employment that are inadmissible hearsay." In other words, Kleiner wants to make the case that she was planning on suing them all along. Hermle's objections like "triple hearsay" and "backdoor hearsay" make Pao's account seem less believable.

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