After all, two people falling in love is more important than any business deal.
Two people falling in love is not more important than love-seeking behavior poisoning the well for everyone else trying to make their careers. There are tons of other more appropriate avenues for that.
Why do you assume there power imbalance was rare? Before recent years, marrying a boss or a professor was quite common.
FWIW, among famous people in tech: Jeff Bezos married an underling; Bill Gates married one of his employees; Sergey Brin married an employee's sister, and dated an underling; Larry Page dated an underling.
That occurred in a context where women were categorically limited to lower level roles, so almost any heterosexual workplace relationship involved a power imbalance. You wouldn't expect the same dynamic on a going forward basis, nor is there any reason to structure the workplace to accommodate such relationships.
Who gets together with someone thinking "Hrm, in 10 years time I'll probably be lower management and she'll still be regular staff"?
Because it's not a huge share, it's a small-but-not-insignificant minority.
In comparison, how many met at a club? At college? At Disneyland? While backpacking through Ireland? Through online dating?
For example, "Work (1/10); College (1/30); Disneyland (1/1,000); Backpacking through Ireland (1/100,000,000)"
Work would then be the best place to find a partner with significantly higher chances of occurring than anywhere else, even if "anywhere else" comprises the remaining 90% of couples as a collective. For "only 10%" to be a bad thing, other locations would have to be significantly higher. For example, "College (6/10), Local Club (2/10), Disneyland (1/10), Work (1/10)"
Where the other 90% comes from is very important in whether or not 10% is vastly significant or not.
The three that are over 20% are “through mutual friends”, “online”, and “at a bar/restaurant”. Work is #4, at less than half of any of those.
Back around 1990, work was #2 at around 20% (still well behind mutual friends).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/08/how-m...
A bit of a tangent, but I'm a tad amazed "through mutual friends" is as high as it is. Statistically, I'd think I'd be able to think of far more couples around me that I know met through a mutual friend. I would've ballparked it at less than 3% if I had to guess it myself.
Still an uncommon thing among the people I know and with that statistic I would think it should be much higher. I just thought it was interesting that my personal experience differs so much that I'd have assumed it was much lower than it is.
And "how we met" is such a common couple's story, unless I assume my friends are liars, "met at a party" or "at a (mutual) friend's wedding" is maybe one or two of their stories.
If two founders of different companies happen to meet at a conference, there is nothing inherently wrong with them dating (assuming it doesn't cause some kind of conflict of interest due to their businesses). But an investor-founder relationship needs to be platonic.
Think of it from this angle: You are a heterosexual man pitching a bunch of heterosexual men to get money for your startup. The industry standard is that investors can sleep with founders that are pitching them. If some woman comes in, sleeps with all the investors on the board and gets scads of money for her startup while you get turned down because there was not enough money for both, are you totes happy with that outcome?
The reasons for disallowing an investor-founder romance go far beyond protecting women from predatory male behavior.
You may not care, but most of society does care. They want money to be invested in products that will do good things for the world, not in products started by people who are simply willing to sleep their way into power. If rich people want to pay for sex, they can hire sex workers. This is not a good way to do business and create something of value. It means the wrong products are getting funded for the wrong reasons.
That said, been there. Done that. Married her. :-)
The only thing that I could imagine that would make the breakup bad, would be if I didn't show her respect, wasn't honest with her, etc.
If I did all of that and we decided to go our separate ways, I feel that we would have been okay professionally. We both needed our jobs and couldn't afford to get fired - especially not in 2009.
These aren't edge cases. These are the basic ground rules.
The possibility of falling in love there is less important than maintaining a professional work environment. Workplaces don't exist for matchmaking. That's not why people are there. If it happens in a way that doesn't negatively impact the workplace, that's great. But that's ancillary.
To me, if I were in that position I would ignore the basic ground rules and see where it goes. Take a chance on love and if it doesn't work out then go find another job.