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Most Cities Would Welcome a Tech Billionaire, But Peter Thiel? (bloomberg.com)
Sarah McBride, writing for Bloomberg: Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is moving to Los Angeles from San Francisco, adding another dose of legitimacy to a burgeoning startup scene in Southern California -- along with some controversy. The co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, Thiel runs Founders Fund, one of the more-respected venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. He comes with a little baggage, though, including his staunch support for President Donald Trump, his secretive funding of the legal battle between Hulk Hogan and Gawker.com, and comments some people say have been derogatory toward women. "I'm not sure why Peter Thiel believes he'll receive a warmer reception on the L.A. tech scene than he's had in Silicon Valley," said Tracy DiNunzio, chief executive officer of Tradesy, a fashion-reselling company based in Santa Monica, California. "Our venture and startup ecosystem is fairly left-leaning."
He's a supporter of Donald Trump, who wants a military parade, like the ones the French have, to celebrate the day when the 99% began cutting off the heads of the 1%.
Sadat was also fond of military parades, until the day, when a couple of the tens of thousands of armed people walking by, shot him dead.
Perhaps Peter can stand beside him during the parade.
Guy's a Trump troll who also bankrolled lawsuits against media whose main crime was breaking the law.
Fixed that for you.
If you're a startup and you need funding and you've got a demonstrably astute tech investor with a deep rolodex and sacks of money to invest, why do you care who he votes for?
I certainly wouldn't.
This politicization of every aspect of life is way out of hand.
No, that was the excuse for the lawsuits and judgments...
Real reasons why the lawsuits got financed by Thiel is:
(1) He was butthurt that he was outed
(2) Gawker dug up a lot of dirt on the tech scene
Just hire non-political foreign workers. Then, destroy the competition with superior products.
I don't agree with him, but for crying out loud, what ever happened to the 1st amendment and freedom of expression? No one bats an eye when people on the left like Bloomberg or Soros donate to political causes they believe in, but if someone wealthy on the right such as Koch brothers or Thiel donate to political causes they believe in, then everyone gets bent out of shape? Where's the fairness in that? This is exactly why Trump won in the first place, people need to stop suppressing the beliefs of others simply because you disagree with them. If you have a problem with what someone says, debate their ideas and arguments, but don't go all big brother with the thought police. I think this sums it up quite nicely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
...and I welcome the millions of dollars in increased tax revenue. On the other hand, if he pays no taxes, then fuck him.
Airing peoples' dirty laundry isn't against the law. It's crass, but it isn't against the law.
Airing the government's dirty laundry, on the other hand...
Maybe I'm in the wrong but I couldn't care less about someone's political leanings if they're in a posistion to help and teach me.
Are the politics in LA really that different that NorCal? No.
The real reason why he wants to move out of Silicon Valley is that he can't afford housing in this area. All others are just excuses.
in LA money is king, no matter what your views.
In SF money is also king, but you don't have to like it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Video Games, Movies, Books, TV, Sports, Cooking, Comics, Tech, Cars....
You can't find a single subject that hasn't been fucking infested with demented Liberals crashing and burning. Everything always has to be about politics all the time. They've always been deranged losers, but now that they lost an election that their media propaganda masters told them they were 99.9999999% likely to win, they've brought it to an entirely new level of lunacy. Their goal here is to make everyone else as miserable as they are, no matter how prosperous and successful the economy and country are.
Never let them poison you, no matter how zealously they infest your choice of entertainment and ruin it. I mean, fuck - we have video games in medieval settings where the NPCs scold you for not using their pronouns of choice. That's suicidal levels of insanity.
Libel is against the law. Possession of stolen property is against the law.
"including his staunch support for President Donald Trump, his secretive funding of the legal battle between Hulk Hogan and Gawker.com"
Last I knew we still lived in a Free country. That you'd base his political admiration on anything is quite telling of how left you've become.
The Gawker funding wasn't secretive. They published and refused to remove a private "sex tape" that never should have been public. There's no journalistic value in that.... OH wait, slashdot mods. Yeah I know, you're going to shadow ban this post too. It all goes on imgur anyway.
Cities dwellers aren't nerds, there's too many distractions. You wastes of space are marketing and sales people.
Who?
What?
Yeah, I'm sure he like totally cares what she thinks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> He comes with a little baggage, though, including his staunch support for President Donald Trump,
Since when is supporting the government "baggage"?
You are encouraging this behavior.
Because you can be a "nerd" without being involved in "relevant" development, or even development at all. Fuck off, you needlessly elitist piece of shit.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Mr. Thiel,
Come to the midwest. We love republicans and entrepreneurs. Consider Dayton or Cincinnati.
-A midwesterner
Personally I wouldn't choose to live the lifestyle that working for Google etc forces on you, no matter what they paid me.
Apart from anything else, being surrounded by the obligatory bunch of neckbearded hipster millennials who all think they're "alternative" yet all look, dress, speak, think and act exactly the same, and all march lock-step according to extreme peecee liberal brainwashing, would drive me nuts.
it's not libel if it's true. neither Thiel's sexual orientation nor the Hulk sex tape were false or fabricated.
Extremely well said and concise. Bringing into how we relate to people because of their personal politics (conservative vs liberal vs progressive vs socialist) is extremely toxic. If we cannot talk or do business with people that hold differing political views - the civility of society will only continue to decline.
Is always welcoming to entrepreneurs and has no state sales tax.
To hell with California, come to a free country where you can do just about anything you want.
Thiel would not be a good fit for Los Angeles. He should come to Arizona, where we love his politics and where he would appreciate the lower rents and cost of housing for workers. The Phoenix area is a burgeoning tech scene that has grown up around Arizona State, Intel, Honeywell, and a host of newer and smaller tech enterprises. Hardly a Silicon Valley yet, but he can help make it one.
In the end I expect it will, because most people that have or want power or money use "decency" only for virtue signalling, but do not actually believe in it. Thiel may just be more honest in his evil than others. Which, paradoxically, makes him a little less evil.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... that they are intolerant of any views other than their own.
Possession of stolen property is a crime.
Seems like New Hampshire would have been a better fit for him if he leans libertarian. Libertarians tend not to shy away from politically incorrect ideas even if one doesn't support em. Like a Libertarian is going to support racist conservative whose being wrongly abused by government even if they don't agree with conservative non-sense that puts certain ethnicities below that of others. aka Christopher Cantwell.
New Hampshire has attracted a lot of libertarians from Silicon Valley over the past several years and he might come off at a glance as leaning Libertarian even if not a principled libertarian. Of course it's sometimes hard to tell given libertarians are traditionally fiscally conservative and socially liberal (though given the liberals advocating of violence more and more it's hard to say this is still true- ie advocating government action is advocating violence and unless it is used against violence is wrong- ie taxes are wrong- a law against rape is not- but if you redefine rape as some chick deciding after a sexual encounter that she didn't like it then that isn't rape).
He may be too conservative and what I'd refer to as a fake libertarian. That is the vast majority of "libertarians" outside of New Hampshire are little more than republicans in sheep clothing and it's mostly principled libertarians that are coming home (ie New Hampshire)- though we get some stupid "libertarians" who don't even understand what a libertarian actually is.
I don't have much faith in libertarian-leaning individuals with religious views because they tend to be flaky and unable to maintain logical principled positions- of course neither do the majority of people manage to think logically rather than emotionally and there aren't exactly principles behind the democrat or republican parties to begin with.
A libertarian is someone who takes a philosophical view that the use of violence to achieve social or political objectives is immoral. You don't have to be a nice person to be a libertarian- but you do have to share this life philosophy. * You can as a libertarian and many do have other values like not being an ass hole or being a big supporter of charitable causes *.
I have to say I don't agree with at least his support of the use of violence against Gawker. I don't believe in "intellectual property" either although there may be a place for fraud as it relates to a sort of trademark of a lesser degree (ie fakes should be legal so long as it's advertised as a knock-off and your not defrauding the buyer).
I'm not much of a fan of Facebook or PayPal either- but neither in and of themselves particularly violate libertarian values even if a lot of libertarians aren't huge fans centralization of the violations of people's personal privacy Facebook commits routinely. It's hard to argue and I don't think any libertarian would that Facebook is or should somehow be obligated to stop legally. Users are getting what they deserve and we should have little sympathy given people willy nilly ignore the issue to such a degree that they only have themselves to blame for the outcome.
It's also hard to blame someone for making it rich in the manor he did it. The real issue is PayPal/Facebook ultimately ended up being so successful it was to the detriment of humanity- and given your opting into such a not-in-your-interest business- it's hard to fault him too much- even if I'd rather see principled libertarians putting political values first (ie end government, facebook has become a terrible government in its own right, albeit one you opt into, which isn't a violation of libertarian values, but just rather disagreeable to those values) and supporting decentralization and privacy (but not by via use of violence- or in other words government as he did in the Gawker case).
Why would there be an article like this?
"Our venture and startup ecosystem is fairly left-leaning."
So intolerant then. If Peter Thiel wouldn't be welcomed because he's not like you, what does that make you? I guess it has finally become obvious to everyone how intolerant and exclusionary "left-leaning" cultures are.
So he should stay in SF and not contribute to LA tax base?
Ken
You've had fun living on the industrial legacy of your state's early innovators, but it's not going to be easy to live like the Jetsons when today's California requires ten years of impact studies and a hundred-lawyer HR staff before you can back your Prius out of your own driveway.
Of my investors. Ever read the history of the Commodore Amiga? Jack Tramiel basically backed the engineers into a corner that let him take everything until Commodore road in and saved the day. Tech investors have a long history of screwing over start up. So yeah, I'd care who the guy voted for. Maybe I'd still risk it. But I'd be aware of the risk...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
is another woman's badge of honor
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Leeching off your success? You mean the HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars in unfunded debt liabilities that your parasitic government will never, ever be able to pay?
Sounds like a smashing success, indeed! See you in the food lines, comrade!
Moving to LA isn't exactly a big exodus; he's still paying California state income tax. He should move to Florida, where there's no state income tax. Set up shop in Miami. Starve the failing monstrosity in Sacramento of his tax dollars.
Peter Thiel is a New Zealand citizen.
I didn't vote for him... :)
And yet Gawker lost their court case.
Its weird how a not breaking the law gets a court to find against you.
Oh wait, you're wrong.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I know youâ(TM)re just trolling, but I can assure you that USA is barely first world on average (crumbling infrastructure, totally ok with people massacring people, insane amounts of poverty and lack of universal health care etc) ... on top of that, engineers in other parts of the world are paid easily up to 10x more. Silicon Valley couldnâ(TM)t afford me. The constant smell of marijuana is also a bit over the top in my opinion.
What reason would there be in staying in the highest tax state in the nation? He could move to one of the 40 Trump supporting States.
we're already here and have been all along.
California is the state of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dornan, etc.
The left was only able to hijack the state and make it one-party-rule by super-majorities in the state house by importing millions of immigrants from leftist countries. Now we have the highest gas taxes in the nation, while our trasportation infrastructure crumbles. We now have some of the highest income taxes in the nation, while we hae the worst income inequality. We now have some of the highest business taxes and regulations, while our manufacturing businesses flee the state (SpaceX and Tesla do NOT offset all the other losses). We now have the highest levels of homelessness and poverty and the highest rates of welfare consumption in the nation.
The very same progressives who try to hush all this stuff up by claiming California is a "net maker" and other states are "net takers" are outraged that Trump just partly unmasked that lie by taking away PART of the SALT federal tax deduction that Democrats in places like New York and California have for decades used to hide the true impact of their tax-and-spend policies. California lawmakers are currently trying to re-classify California taxes as "charitable deductions" to try to thwart this and keep hiding the effects of their policies. As a general rule, if you think you need to be that dishonest in your lawmaking, you are almost certainly in the wrong.
The sad truth about morons like you is that the "tech workers" who are the most liberal are the ones working on phones, and tablets, and web sites, whereas those of us who work in aerospace, defense, and other areas that actually matter and where lives are on the line tend (Musk and some of his people being outliers) to be on the political right - and plenty of us are still here but finding the place increasingly fascistic and jack-booted. Right wingers in tech tend to keep their views to themselves, not having that National Socialist tendency to demand that others listen to their views and agree with them, so you might well have right wingers working around you who would surprise you. You guys on the left, however, lack the self-control to shut up and just do the work; the rest of us are all forced to notice you, so we know who you are. California may well be currently in the death-grip of you Marxist-leaning loons with your propaganda and speech codes and intrusive bloated totalitarian government worship, but things that connot be sustained won't..... and we'll be here to pick up the bits and pieces when your drug addled fantasies collapse .... we like the weather.
Nazism involves the collusion of the state with favored corporations to the exclusion of genuine market forces.
Thiel is a libertarian anarchist who is trying to abolish the state.
Anyone who knows anything can see these are mutually exclusive.
You are incompetent.
You've had fun living on the industrial legacy of your state's early innovators, but it's not going to be easy to live like the Jetsons when today's California requires ten years of impact studies and a hundred-lawyer HR staff before you can back your Prius out of your own driveway.
Speaking of the Prius, I saw a traffic accident in San Francisco...a Prius and a Vespa collided at an intersection.
There was glitter *everywhere*!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Software development and computer design happens to a large degree there, but engineering, the stuff that gets you living like the Jetsons, most definitely is not the mainstay of these states.
Wow the whole point of this article is to bag on someone because of who they support politically and some (non-abusive) statements they made?
This type of abuse and hatred is exactly what drives people far from "the left".
"The left" is hatred. Is intolerance. Is abusive.
I would never want to live in a society that was controlled by the left. It would be hell.
It's, possible, to, overdo, it, though.
I, ,m,e,a,n, ,r,e,a,l,l,y,
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Subject says it all.
The Right is back in a big new way.
Ignoring a judge's order to take down a sex tape isn't a very good idea
http://gawker.com/a-judge-told...
It's also hypocritical given they'd earlier criticised people for not taking down Jennifer Lawrence's nudes. Jezebel and Gawker were both owned by Gawker Media.
https://imgur.com/a/ULIA4
Gawker pissed of Thiel by running this
http://gawker.com/335894/peter...
Apparently they outed him when he was on a business trip to Saudi Arabia.
So Thiel backed Hogan's lawsuit, and that bankrupted Gawker media.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So the lesson here is people living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones at people who own hail makers.
California is full of wealth from far left liberal companies who do little to contribute to help California's giant size debt from helping all the poverty living in the state. Clearly these liberals are hypocrites with a ideology that doesn't work for most. Add in the wealth from Hollywood elite and other wealthy people and you would think that would lower poverty. But not so much, and Peter Thiel would be wise to leave the state so he can stop being the whipping boy for liberal lefties. Let California drown in its own broken ideology.
Lots of young healthy blood in LA?
He wouldn't be happy going somewhere he couldn't bitch and moan about how hard it is to be a piece of shit to everyone.
Don't waste your time in California where the tech scene is so in-bed with liberal politics one's professional worth is questioned on every turn.
Instead, start something great in Kansas City!
SIlicon Valley is getting tapped out, the rents are through the roof. Per the San Jose Mercury news 71% of the engineers are here on H1-Bs. Between the 1.5 Million dollar homes that cost anywhere from 250-450 in most other U.S. Cities, and the 150:100 gender imbalance, Silicon Valley is losing talent, finding it hard to attract new talent, and the main reason for the small amount of talent that it is now attracting, and holding onto has to do with the area having been historically the center of the tech universe 40 years ago when land was cheap.
When the venture capitalists move to other locations there will be a large swooshing sound as the unliveable bubble here drains quickly. LA is a great choice, it already has infrastructure, ports, a large talent pool to begin with, and near identical laws and climates. I suspect a lot more venture capitalists will start the move.
The single most common problem for startups last year was getting kicked out their buildings, because the buildings were being sold to make room for skyscrapers. these weren't mom and pops or starry-eyed dreamers these were startups with hundreds of millions in backing, having to re-locate because all the property along vast corridors were sold to build skyscrapers and condos.
Don't get me wrong Silicon Valley needs these buildings, I feel a lot better about getting kicked out of the home I was renting 1600sqft, 3bd was sold for 1.3M, when I know my customers with hundreds of millions were getting kicked out of their buildings too.
It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!
Sad!
Staunch support for the sitting president is controversial?
Tolerance is enduring/allowing someting or someone you do not like.
There's no such need for "tolerance" when you like and agree with the person or thing. If you love your duaghter, you have no need for "tolerance" for her --- but you might not like the guy she marries and thus you might need "tolerance" for him. See the difference?
I like sausage pizza. I do not need to tolerate it. When I dine with friends and they want pepperoni, I tolerate it.
get it yet?
Tolerance has nothing to do with "an outgroup" -- and quite frankly with the flipping of morality, in many large cities religious Christians and Jews are the "outgroup" and gays, transgenders, etc are the "ingroup". By YOUR definition then, those religious Jews and Christians should be the ones getting protections and tolerance, right?
No, "tolerance" is not about the specific subject or person or political position, it's all about enduring that with which/whom we personally disagree. The tolerant religious person who opposes homosexuality nevertheless treats gays well. The tolerant gay activist who opposes the religious person he knows opposes gay marriage nevertheless treats that person decently and with respect. The tolerant Muslim treats the Jew well as a fellow human being. The tolerant religious Jew treats the outspken atheist well as a decent human being.
Don't forget that Hogan won that lawsuit on the merits. If Thiel had not bankrolled Hogan so that the playing field was level, Hogan would have simply been unable to pursue it and get the recompense he sought, due to Gawker's vastly superior resources.
Thiel says he's getting away from tech, so her admonition that the local tech scene won't be any more welcoming makes for a big, "So what? He didn't want to associate with them anyway."
Not:
I may well claim to be a libertarian (I used to, but now I'm a minarchist),
but rather:
He may well claim to be a libertarian
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Reading into the subtext of your message... you're jealous about plowing the retarded sister, aren't you?
Which is why we aren't in debt, have a stronger economy than any red state, etc.
What cool-aid are you drinking that you believe that crud you are spouting??
Thiel's bankrolling the lawsuits against them was for two reasons:
1) It's legal - we got rid of restrictions on maintenance and champerty, not that you likely know what those are.
2) He hated them, they've posted all kinds of agitprop going after him, including the nonsense you keep spouting.
The lawsuit itself, however, was very much about the sex tape. No matter how much Thiel hated them, there wouldn't be a lawsuit to bankroll if they hadn't done that and even then they wouldn't be in such big trouble if they'd actually obeyed the judge's orders.
So your post is deeply confused because Thiel doesn't have a lawsuit against Gawker, Hogan did. There are bankruptcy proceedings, mind you, but that's not the same thing, either.
Poor Peetie thinks all the other kids are being so mean to him. Poor Peetie has to retreat to his safe space. Poor widdle snowflake indeed.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
As an engineer turned marketing, I think you're off base. The company I work for now, has people with backgrounds in theater and dance. The kind of creative energy that comes between us is really amazing. I sometimes thing like a engineer, and they approach problems different from me. I feed them the tech and community input and then we together create a story.
As an engineer turned marketing, I think you're off base.
You literally proved my point AND attempted to refute it in the same sentence. Then you even expounded upon it. Honestly can't tell if this is an expert troll or a mentally deficient city dweller, well played.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make other than "marketing and sales people" are wastes of space. Which makes absolutely no sense in a business. You need all parts to succeed. Your condescending tone and arrogance is amusing though. Not that your opinion matters much to me. My comment wasn't directed at you anyways as much for others reading this thread.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
The point was that city dwellers are marketing and sales people. "Wastes of space" wasn't even used as a modifier but a qualifier.
The state in the US that can't provide water to its own people and needs to be bailed out by the federal government which is bailed out by printing more money believes they are too good for Thiels money or anyone's money. Why isn't California given to Mexico in exchange for them building the wall?
These styrofoam hipster libtards that don't want Thiel around should just continue their worship of big pharma - TPP and Obamacare - and leave other folks alone.
Yes, all those engineers in rural Alabama are really working on the cutting edge of tech.
Yep, them dumb country boys don't make phone apps. They make something stupid like rockets to mars. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/m...
NRRPT/RCT
You mean like...the only people to ever get to the moon?
If we had more resources dedicated to rednecks we'd be raping and pillaging alien civilizations by now as payback for all the anal probes.
Apart from anything else, being surrounded by the obligatory bunch of neckbearded hipster millennials who all think they're "alternative" yet all look, dress, speak, think and act exactly the same, and all march lock-step according to extreme peecee liberal brainwashing, would drive me nuts.
Like most older generations, you misconstrue what "alternative" means. They don't mean alternative to each other, they mean alternative to you. They've seen what you are like, what you have done with the world, and have decided, collectively as a group, it was all a mistake and needs to be changed.
> what you have done with the world
Don;t blame me. I didn't do anything with it.
If Oakland residents didn't storm his residence and do something like flipping his car and setting it alight, then he will probably be ok in LA.
The resources Thiel can offer may completely outclass other offers for startups, so I think he'll be ok on that point as well.
> what you have done with the world
Don;t blame me. I didn't do anything with it.
And like every generation tells the one before, "Your failure to do anything is why it is crap."
I look forward to your response when kids start telling you this.