Bookmarker tag: meh/analysis (15 notes)

Extending the commercial sphere genuinely into the information space will lead to a more moderate, balanced world. What we've been doing instead is treating information commerce as a glaring exception to the equity that underlies democracy.

But rather than offer a set of policy proposals, I would repeat a prescription for a just society that begins with “a commitment to the local, the plural, the small scale and the active.” Those are the qualities the Web must have, even if it means cutting off the flow of revenues to giant companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay. We can’t tolerate an Internet, or a society, led by a few self-proclaimed geniuses claiming to serve mankind. The Internet can and must work for us, instead of the other way around, through a diversity of voices and platforms free to organize and collaborate on their own rather than through a few centralized services. This way the Internet can help build the social connective tissue we so desperately need, as Berners-Lee originally intended.

[...] Spending time with open, optimistic people reminded me that it might be possible to fix some of what was broken in our country - particularly the deep divisions between the rich and poor and between those at the center at those at the margins. I felt renewed and excited. I remembered why I loved tech. When I got home I felt, more than ever, committed to making a difference through my work.

I knew early in my venture capital career that I might not have what it took to be a billionaire. Around me, the two managing partners who already had billions were still working their asses off, selling, selling, selling. If I ever got to a hundred million dollars, I thought, I would switch focus to raising a family, starting a philanthropic organization, and enjoying the rest of my life. But these managing partners were always competing for more—more board seats, more houses, more land, and, always, more jets. They were driven and had huge personalities. I couldn’t imagine fighting it out like that year after year. To me, the venture capital workplace had started to knew early in my venture capital career that I might not have what it took to be a billionaire. Around me, the two managing partners who already had billions were still working their asses off, selling, selling, selling. If I ever got to a hundred million dollars, I thought, I would switch focus to raising a family, starting a philanthropic organization, and enjoying the rest of my life. But these managing partners were always competing for more—more board seats, more houses, more land, and, always, more jets. They were driven and had huge personalities. I couldn’t imagine fighting it out like that year after year. To me, the venture capital workplace had started to feel like one giant Whack-a-Mole game. Every time I felt like I’d cleared the board, a new problem would pop up. Then another, then another.

I often felt like the partners were out for themelves; certainly they weren’t rooting for me. One of the less supportive Kleiner managing partners was Ted Schlein. People would say, “Here comes Ted!” well in advance of his arrival as he stormed across the building. All stomping and furrowed brows, he always seemed grouchy, but he actually was a pretty happy guy, and unlike a lot of men in his position, he didn’t seem vain. That showed up most clearly in his socks. The guy was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but the part sticking up just above the back of his heel was always worn to a sheer transparency, one step away from being a giant hole. The son of a well-known CEO-turned-venture-capitalist, Ted was destined to be a VC, though he never seemed to work particularly hard at it.

Ted didn’t value any of the policy work I did—I had helped get John credit for passing AB 32, the California carbon tax law, by bringing entrepreneurs to Sacramento to talk job creation with legislators. (The fact that John had flown one of his private jets to Sacramento instead of driving 116 miles horrified the entrepreneurs, who had carpooled in a modified Prius that got a hundred miles to the gallon. To avoid that embarrassment, when John later flew to D.C. to testify in the Senate about climate policy, he took his private jet to St. Louis, hopped a short commercial flight to Ted didn’t value any of the policy work I did—I had helped get John credit for passing AB 32, the California carbon tax law, by bringing entrepreneurs to Sacramento to talk job creation with legislators. (The fact that John had flown one of his private jets to Sacramento instead of driving 116 miles horrified the entrepreneurs, who had carpooled in a modified Prius that got a hundred miles to the gallon. To avoid that embarrassment, when John later flew to D.C. to testify in the Senate about climate policy, he took his private jet to St. Louis, hopped a short commercial flight to D.C., then had his jet fly out to meet him in D.C. to bring him back to California.)

And so ambitious, money-hungry people began turning their attention away from Wall Street and toward the tech sector, idolizing the rapid ascent to billionaire status of the Google founders. Almost overnight, it seemed to me, the amount of money and money types pouring in changed the vibe. Even the new rich people were different. Famous rich guy of the earlier era Bill Gates was known for working hard and then for doing good with his money. His goal was a PC on every desktop. Famous rich guy of the new era Mark Zuckerberg was known for spitefully attending a VC meeting in his pajamas. His goal was making it easier to find women to date. The newest crop of billionaire boys included Evan Spiegel, who sent crude emails about trying to get “sororisluts” drunk enough to have sex with his frat brothers, and about peeing on a classmate. His goal was to enable nude selfies with self-deleting photos.

For years, I’d tried to believe in the story of Kleiner as a place where we were really trying to help entrepreneurs to build awesome companies and products. I’d believed that we were this team of people working together and that we were trying to be missionaries, not mercenaries. But eventually I’d come to see all that talk as a big lie. My parents raised me to believe that the world was a meritocracy, that if you worked hard enough you could get ahead. But that wasn’t true at Kleiner. It just wasn’t fair.

Let's imagine a world where women hold half the jobs in Silicon Valley. Where half of entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists, board members, and employees - including engineers - are women.

[...] "I think there would be two enormous differences," the longtime tech investor Roger McNamee told me. "I think Silicon Valley would be wildly more profitable. I think there would be a significant reduction in the number of absolute failures. And so I think success would go up dramatically."

The robots are the most visual example of Bezos’s obsession with automating whatever he can to free his employees to work on more creative tasks. “I don’t think I can remember a time where he wasn’t interested in using computing to help us achieve our mission,” Wilke said. “From the earliest days, he would look at a process, and if there was repetitive work being done by people who can be freed up to be more inventive, he would say, ‘How do we automate that process? How do we automate that routine so that our people can be as creative as possible?’”

Amid the change, one thing remains constant at Amazon: the determination to invent. Automating so much labor has freed Amazon’s corporate staff to concentrate on its invention process (they no longer have to work peak season, packing boxes). And it gives Amazonians inside the FCs the time to invent on their own. In EWR9, Virdi showed me a “continuous improvement” kiosk where employees enter ideas for new products, processes, and minor FC tweaks. Every Wednesday, Virdi and his senior staff review the best ideas for forty-five minutes. When they like what they see, they give their associates time and resources on their scheduled workdays—paid—and ask them to turn their ideas into reality. Associate feedback, to give one small example, led Amazon to make its bins yellow to help them more easily spot products and work more effectively.

Bezos’s joy in life comes from his work, specifically the inventive parts that make him feel like he’s back in the nineties, trying to figure out how to sell books on the internet. For many ultrasuccessful CEOs, living the good life means spending your days on private islands or coasting around the globe on a boat. For Bezos, the good life is work, and coasting is “excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.”

Next door, in the house just like ours, lives an actual African American grandmother, the wife of the retired postal worker. We’re getting paid to have our house made over to look like what a set designer imagines their house looks like so that Walmart can try to sell things to people who look like them. John tells all this to his friend Dan, who says, I think that’s the definition of white privilege.

New York Sunday night, London Saturday morning. You fly the round trip regularly for work. But the attendant stops you. At Heathrow, Sunday afternoon, the attendant lunges into your path before you can reach the business desk. Places a firm hand against your upper arm. The attendant’s fingers – who knows what else they’ve touched? – now press into the soft, grey wool of your coat. You look down at this hand on your body; at the flecks of dirt beneath its fingernails, the pale hairs sprouting from its clammy skin. And then its owner, the attendant, points and speaks loudly, as though you won’t understand, says: Regular check-in is over there.

The attendant won’t acknowledge your ticket, no, just waves you over to the long queue. It winds back and forth, penned in between ropes, all the way to the regular check-in desk. The attendant says: Yes, there’s your line, over there.

I later told Dusty Michael’s theory of history being dead and she went goggle-eyed. Dusty said conspiratorially, “Michael may be a crypto-Marxist.” (Oh God …) She kept blabbing, and it’s so weird to see Dusty’s mouth moving and genuine political words emerge. It just doesn’t mesh with her computer image. I get the impression she should be discussing exfoliation or tanning factors instead, but then, bodies are political, too. Or so Dusty has informed the office.

I surprised Dusty. I said that, “Since Marxism is explicitly based on property, ownership, and control of means of production, it may well end up being the final true politik of this Benetton world we now live in.” She said, “Hey, Danster—I underestimated you.”

It was interesting to briefly enter the political realm—as such.