What’s With All the Trumpy VCs? The tech industry is still mostly blue. But things are definitely changing.
What’s With All the Trumpy VCs? The tech industry is still mostly blue. But things are definitely changing.
The tech industry is still mostly blue. But things are definitely changing.
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A “vibe shift” is under way in Silicon Valley, Michael Gibson, a VC and former vice president of grants at the Thiel Foundation, told me. Eight years ago, the notorious entrepreneur Peter Thiel was the odd man out when he announced his support for Trump. The rest of the Valley appeared to have been horrified by the candidate—particularly by his draconian and racist views on immigration, on which the tech industry relies.
This year, J. D. Vance, a Thiel acolyte and former VC himself, is Trump’s running mate. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of the legendary VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, came out in full support of Trump in a podcast episode released just before Joe Biden dropped out of the election.
(Earlier this month, Axios reported that Horowitz informed Andreessen Horowitz staff members that he and his wife, Felicia, will donate to support Harris “as a result of our friendship” with the candidate. “The Biden Administration,” his note continues, “has been exceptionally destructive on tech policy across the industry, but especially as it relates to Crypto/Blockchain and AI,” mirroring language from the podcast during which he and Andreessen endorsed Trump.)
White. Male. And Yale. These bros have never actually worked for a living. They don't really know anything about tech. They just jumped into that market to grift because they were born rich and that is what they do. In years past they'd have been trading tea, or loaning money to poor farmers then taking their land
Big money will side with anyone that will lower their taxes.
Getting rid of regulations is also popular with them.
Karl Marx told us this would happen. Wealth ultimately will cut deals with other wealth, even evil, dubious foreigners, before giving up an ounce of it. They see themselves as the new aristocratic class, and unless you are willing to push harder than they are, they'll get their way. The last 40 years have been that happening slowly, now it's happening fast.
I feel like “capitalists aren’t left wing” is a lesson people keep having to relearn.
Easy: they like money. The entire ideology behind Trump is "he's rich and I can be rich like him too!" All the VC guys know they can manipulate him with very little money (for them) and get to keep/make more for themselves. He's only a true friend to the wealthy.
They like candidates they can buy.
We can stop them today by not using paypal, xitter, facepals, etc.
Just sayin’. The intractability of those things so easily deleted is the real issue. The vast majority of people are very much incurious when it comes to tech. They choose dystopia by default then wonder how it happened.
The people they are listing were known conservatives. I would say Trump removed all shame from people who were reserved about it before.
They saw the money Thiel made with no backlash and decided to follow suit
Marc Andreessen is such an egg head