On Sunday afternoon, Shel Israel — Robert Scoble's partner in the consulting company Transformation Group — announced in a Facebook post that Scoble had resigned, effective immediately, and would be canceling his public activities for the rest of the year. The resignation comes in the wake of multiple sexual harassment allegations against the tech evangelist.
Transformation Group was founded in March by Scoble and Israel to help brands develop "mixed reality" (that is, AR and VR) strategies. The pair had previously collaborated on three books, most recently 2016's The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything.
In his post, Israel wrote that Scoble is taking the rest of the year off to focus "on dealing with his deep and troubling personal issues. He is now going to meetings and he will start seeing a psychiatrist as well." Scoble had previously been a fixture on the tech conference and speaking circuit, appearing in the last year at Collision, SXSW, and Evolve, among others.
Israel noted that "the revelations about Robert came to me as a surprise." Though he conceded that he had seen Scoble "drunk and stoned," Israel said he had "never personally witnessed" his partner behaving inappropriately toward women. "If I did, I would have called him on it," Israel wrote. He noted that he plans to keep running the Transformation Group alone.
Scoble did not respond to a request for comment on Israel's post.
On Friday, TechCrunch reported that Scoble has allegedly harassed women after getting sober over the summer. The same day, Scoble posted an apology to his Facebook page, writing, "I'm deeply sorry to the people I've caused pain to. ... The only thing I can do to really make a difference now is to prove, through my future behavior, and my willingness to listen, learn and change, that I want to become part of the solution going forward."