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There is clear precedent for YC taking a political stand by uninviting investors. Only five years ago, Paul Graham was willing to uninvite investors from Demo

There is clear precedent for YC taking a political stand by uninviting investors. Only five years ago, Paul Graham was willing to uninvite investors from Demo Day based on their support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supporting-companies-no-longer-allowed-at-yc-demo-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supportin... Paul asked, "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?" The obvious answer to that question would be, "their track record as investors could demonstrate that." But no, in 2011, if you supported SOPA, you're out, regardless of your track record. I think it's fair to ask whether, if Peter Thiel is so clueless as to donate $1.25 million to Donald Trump today, after so much of his dirty laundry has come to light and after this has been reflected in the polls, how could he be a good investor? If it was the right decision for SOPA, it's right decision today.

ivraatiems 10y ago
I was wondering whether there was precedence for something like this. If there is, then I think YC should distance themselves from Thiel now. I agree with those who say he's a long-term harm to the industry; I do take issue, generally, with dismissing someone over their personal politics, but sometimes those stances create problems in the company that can't be overcome.
- xupybd 10y ago
  I think you're correct that this might be a case of something the business needs to distance themselves from but they shouldn't try to take the moral high ground and at the same time vilify a man for his political views.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    I'm not sure how else they would justify it.
    - xupybd 10y ago
      I know this is not really possible, but it would be nice if they could just say his political views and actions reflect on our business and as we disagree with those views and actions we will no longer be working with him. This avoids the need for language like this: "fueled by hate and encouraging violence, they make each of us feel unsafe." I feel that this sort of language makes us fear one another and drives a wedge that need not be there.
whistlerbrk 10y ago
I disagree that opposing SOPA is just political, supporting SOPA threatens innovation which threatens the startup community which in turns threatens YC's bottom line. Therefore opposing SOPA and denying investors access based on their support is a business decision.
- dfabulich 10y ago
  We don't disagree. The SOPA decision was both a business decision and a political decision. Any decision a business makes is a business decision, regardless of whether it is also a political decision. The decision YC is making about Thiel is also both a political decision and a business decision.
- tyre 10y ago
  There is a strong business case here as well. Thiel alienates a lot of people and his public advocacy for Trump isn't helping. Silicon Valley already has tremendous diversity issues and a reputation as out-of-touch. If the future of America and the world only gets more diverse, which seems to be the case, then YC has a vested interest in being on the right side of history.
  - flopsey 10y ago
    There's a substantial difference between forcing someone out because of the potential that other people would shun them for political reasons vs because they are taking a stand that you think would do irreparable harm to your industry. The first is pure politics, with only the indirect consequences on your company that all businesses could face. The other is a piece of pointed legislation whose primary goal will disrupt your industry.
- danso 10y ago
  But politics is business, which is why lobbying is such a huge part of democracy. There are die-hards like you who would argue the same when it comes to environmental and energy, or justice and privacy issues. Few partisans think of their core cause as being mere "politics".
tristanho 10y ago
There is very much a difference between "uninviting companies" based on their support of a bill and firing a partner for his personal political viewpoints. These aren't apples to apples comparisons; this issue isn't that simple.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  YC companies aren't exactly multi-thousand-employee affairs. When you disinvite a YC company, you're really making a value judgment about its founders.
  - tristanho 10y ago
    In this context, the companies actually were "mult-thousand-employee affairs", it was a judgement about which large companies were allowed to send investors to Demo Day. From the article, these are companies like Comcast and Godaddy. It wasn't about actual YC companies.
    - ivraatiems 10y ago
      Okay. I agree, that's different. My mistake.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 551199 10y ago
  Yes, consider the outrage if conservative would fire someone on political viewpoints. All this alleged 'Trump is racist and hates x' is complete BS. If you read the wikileaks emails there is a major media & Clinton collusion going on. That should pause everybody. The way Democrats are running this campaign is really worrying as show in todays leaks 'CLINTON CAMP HIRES AGITATORS TO INSTIGATE VIOLENCE'[0]. Edit: I'm being down voted for facts. What have HN become. [0]http://regated.com/2016/10/project-veritas-clinton-camp-corruption/ http://regated.com/2016/10/project-veritas-clinton-camp-corr...
resfirestar 10y ago
Interesting. There might be (of course will be) disagreement about whether, as Pao argues, unpopular views about race and gender and stuff are as relevant to tech as support for SOPA. But Trump's new habit of not just implying, but saying outright that the election will be stolen from him by a nationwide ballot stuffing conspiracy is certainly relevant. That rhetoric is dangerous to the transition process and could destabilize the national environment for YC and its companies.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Making money as an entrepreneur and making money as an investor are very different skill sets. If you're smart and gritty and lucky enough to make a fortune with a start-up, then you probably have the minimum brain cells necessary to decide whether an investment opportunity is half-decent. Win some, lose some, nobody sees the difference because most of your wealth is either still in the company you worked on or is professionally managed, so there's little chance you will ever actually have to work again, and the public will still view you as a "winner." To me, conflating entrepreneurs and investors - especially investors in politics - is about as silly as asking Hollywood celebrities about U.S. foreign policy.
untog 10y ago
IMO, you can even disregard all of Trump's dirty laundry in this calculation. He is openly calling into doubt the result of this election before it's even happened, asking supporters to intimidate voters, and suggesting the entire election is "rigged". He is attempting to undermine democracy in the country and I'm not sure you need a single additional reason to object to anyone who supports him. Thiel, of course, does not think "freedom and democracy are compatible": https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
- sidcool 10y ago
  Thiel reminds me of Zobrist from Dan Brown's novel and now a nice, The Inferno
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > He is openly calling into doubt the result of this election before it's even happened As we all should, since many/most electronic voting machines don't even have a paper trail. How is it that so many standard liberal positions from five or ten years ago have somehow now become ultra conservative?
  - untog 10y ago
    His statements might have some level of validity if he was criticising the use of electronic voting machines. He is not. He is instead suggesting that his supporters go to "other areas" and "see what's going on over there" - if his objection was electronic voting machines then that request would make no sense.
  - archagon 10y ago
    Surely you realize how disingenuous this statement is? Trump's mantra of "the media is conspiring against me, the polls are all rigged, the election will be stolen from under us" is a far cry from anything we've seen in previous years. This has nothing to do with electronic voting machines. This is straight FUD in the most primal possible sense.
whybroke 10y ago
Peter Thiel is not clueless but knows exactly what he is doing. Thiel opposes democracy [1] and Trump has done an extraordinary amount to damage it. Indeed, even knowing that defeat is all but certain, he concentrates even more on doing so. Spending 1.5 million to fund the a campaign denouncing all voting as rigged (amount other things [2]) is stunningly efficient at undermining it. [1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio... [2] eg sues critical news papers, threatens opponents with prison, encourages voter intimidation, encourages foreign powers to engage in cyber-warfare, blames "magazines" for terrorism
- lhnz 10y ago
  I think it's much more likely that rather than "opposing democracy" he is attempting to connect a pro-technology viewpoint to an anti-globalisation one, and wishes to position himself politically so that he can eventually leverage this. This is more believable to me since he has been giving talks on it for the last three or four years [0]. Liberal newspapers might want to convince you that this is all about hating democracy, women, and the free press but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. There seems to be a very small amount of dirt that has been dug up and turned from a mole hill into a mountain. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KlXhrRxxbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KlXhrRxxbA
  - whybroke 10y ago
    For that to be, Trump would have to win (or have post election influence) and Thiel would have to believe Trump's low education, semi-ludite supporters could be convinced the tech that displaced many of them is good. It's hard to image Thiel could possibly believe the latter but surely it's impossible that he believes the former. >...Liberal newspapers... Like the WSJ?
    - lhnz 10y ago
      Trump also has high education, non-luddite supporters or at the very least supporters that could be brought over to considering investing in a future America that makes itself 'Great' through government spending on infrastructure and science. It could be that Thiel believes he is speaking to these people (some of which might only be Trump supporters in 2016 because they always vote Republican). My central point is that he's been speaking about both economic and technological stagnation for many years and it is foolish to consider his actions now as completely distinct from this. I've no idea whether he believes Trump will win or not. I expect that he didn't require it. His donation allowed him to speak at the RNC, and this has no doubt increased his political reach massively. I was joking when I said liberal newspapers. They are not liberal at all.
dsacco 10y ago
I agree with the thrust of your point - that organizations like YC should be allowed to uninvite or refuse to collaborate with people they are diametrically opposed to for political reasons. However, I do not agree that it's fair to call an investor's competency into question due to their political views. I agree organizations have every right to not affiliate themselves with those investors, but in the real world there are plenty of examples of investors who hold controversial political views. Logically, there is no a priori reason why "Thiel is a good investor." and "Thiel strongly endorses Trump." cannot both be true. To go further, I don't see an a priori reason why an investor with political views that are antagonistic to the industry he focuses on cannot be a very good investor. It might not be likely, but on its own I do not agree with using politics as a criterion for investing performance. That's silly - just look at investing performance directly. To go even further, I think it would be disingenuous for groups like YC to announce they will distance themselves from investors they disagree with because "How could they be qualified investors if they hold this opinion?" That's masking the real reason for not affiliating with them, and in my opinion they shouldn't have to mask that anyway. I also think using that sort of language establishes a precedent that makes the industry less inclusive to people with opposing political views. Much of the tech industry is progressive and liberal, but it would be ridiculous if this was applied to potential founders. Should founders who support SOPA or Trump not be admitted to YC if they are well into a startup that will most likely become the next Google? Put another way, if you read Zero to One and you found it to be very insightful and full of legitimately good ideas, would you call it into question after learning that Thiel supports Trump? Doesn't that strike you as an ad hominem? Sure, Thiel's political views might be relevant or worth noting as an investor, but they certainly do not define his investment performance.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  As to your final point: either the hypothetical founders do not have the support network from YC and simply cannot become the next Big Thing (and someone else at YC/SV does it instead), or they find a different support network - possibly in a different state or country - and the market hums along. It's not a great tragedy either way.
- threatofrain 10y ago
noobermin 10y ago
To be fair, pg does seem quite against Trump personally, at least on twitter he doesn't quite shut up about it. For him to accept Thiel while greatly disliking Trump doesn't really give me the sense that he doesn't care either way. Instead, I feel that he's most likely actively trying to look past Thiel's support. I'm not making a judgement whether to look past it is the right thing, but I don't think pg either is ambivalent about or secretly sympathetic to Trump.
- amyjess 10y ago
  pg left YC two years ago. He no longer has the authority to disinvite Thiel.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > He no longer has the authority to disinvite Thiel. He still has significant influence with YC, and has so far refused to personally distance himself from Thiel despite raging against Trump on twitter (a fact over which he's been taken to task by the likes of @pinboard and tptacek).
supergirl 10y ago
I'm surprised people on HN are so naive to quickly dismiss Trump because of what he says. Politicians wanting to get elected will say anything to win. After they get elected everything changes. This applies many times to politicians promising the world and then delivering very little but will also happen to politicians promising crazy things and then delivering little. Talk is cheap. Once you are elected you realize it's not so easy as you thought to bring changes, good or bad.
- oddevan 10y ago
  I think part of the issue with Trump is that--to many people--he's already failed at this. Usually, once a major party candidate wins the nomination, they start moving their positions towards the center in order to capture mainstream/moderate voters. Trump has not done this; in fact, he's tended to do the opposite. He still hasn't backed off The Wall, for instance. Granted, this is still just "talk," but to people like me, it's indicative of how he tends to double-down instead of moderating himself. I don't have a lot of confidence he would begin moderating himself once presented with actual power.
e40 10y ago
The Thiel situation reminds me very strongly of the Woody Allen situation. He married his step-daughter after cheating on his wife with her. You either ignore this fact or you don't work with him. For me, I think the Thiel situation is worse, since his judgement is very important to the companies he works with, and that judgement is suspect given his recent behavior.
jshevek 10y ago
> If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors? Trump does not threaten technological innovation the way that SOPA did. >I think it's fair to ask whether, if Peter Thiel is so clueless as to donate In what way is Peter Thiel demonstrating cluelessness comparable to being in support of SOPA? You are conflating a demonstrated incompetence regarding the impact of SOPA on innovation, with more generalized differences of political opinion.
grb423 10y ago
It's high time YC and HN joined the progressive war for social justice. I don't care if these investors could make a return on investment. What matters to me is that problematic behavior of disgusting, violent Whitey McWhiteface privilege boy Peter Thiel be put in zhis place and be shown that there is no place for zhim in the progressive, inclusive and diverse world we seek. That is obviously not the kind of inclusion we're talking about here.
pjwal 10y ago
How is this kind of authoritarianism any different than those that feel (based on science) that support for abortion (beyond reasonable medical issues for the mother) is tantamount to declaring said individuals are supporting murder and therefore should not be employed, should not be worked with, should be shamed and cast aside?

ivraatiems 10y ago

I was wondering whether there was precedence for something like this. If there is, then I think YC should distance themselves from Thiel now. I agree with those who say he's a long-term harm to the industry; I do take issue, generally, with dismissing someone over their personal politics, but sometimes those stances create problems in the company that can't be overcome.

xupybd 10y ago
I think you're correct that this might be a case of something the business needs to distance themselves from but they shouldn't try to take the moral high ground and at the same time vilify a man for his political views.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  I'm not sure how else they would justify it.
  - xupybd 10y ago
    I know this is not really possible, but it would be nice if they could just say his political views and actions reflect on our business and as we disagree with those views and actions we will no longer be working with him. This avoids the need for language like this: "fueled by hate and encouraging violence, they make each of us feel unsafe." I feel that this sort of language makes us fear one another and drives a wedge that need not be there.

whistlerbrk 10y ago

I disagree that opposing SOPA is just political, supporting SOPA threatens innovation which threatens the startup community which in turns threatens YC's bottom line. Therefore opposing SOPA and denying investors access based on their support is a business decision.

dfabulich 10y ago
We don't disagree. The SOPA decision was both a business decision and a political decision. Any decision a business makes is a business decision, regardless of whether it is also a political decision. The decision YC is making about Thiel is also both a political decision and a business decision.
tyre 10y ago
There is a strong business case here as well. Thiel alienates a lot of people and his public advocacy for Trump isn't helping. Silicon Valley already has tremendous diversity issues and a reputation as out-of-touch. If the future of America and the world only gets more diverse, which seems to be the case, then YC has a vested interest in being on the right side of history.
- flopsey 10y ago
  There's a substantial difference between forcing someone out because of the potential that other people would shun them for political reasons vs because they are taking a stand that you think would do irreparable harm to your industry. The first is pure politics, with only the indirect consequences on your company that all businesses could face. The other is a piece of pointed legislation whose primary goal will disrupt your industry.
danso 10y ago
But politics is business, which is why lobbying is such a huge part of democracy. There are die-hards like you who would argue the same when it comes to environmental and energy, or justice and privacy issues. Few partisans think of their core cause as being mere "politics".

tristanho 10y ago

There is very much a difference between "uninviting companies" based on their support of a bill and firing a partner for his personal political viewpoints. These aren't apples to apples comparisons; this issue isn't that simple.

ivraatiems 10y ago
YC companies aren't exactly multi-thousand-employee affairs. When you disinvite a YC company, you're really making a value judgment about its founders.
- tristanho 10y ago
  In this context, the companies actually were "mult-thousand-employee affairs", it was a judgement about which large companies were allowed to send investors to Demo Day. From the article, these are companies like Comcast and Godaddy. It wasn't about actual YC companies.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    Okay. I agree, that's different. My mistake.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
551199 10y ago
Yes, consider the outrage if conservative would fire someone on political viewpoints. All this alleged 'Trump is racist and hates x' is complete BS. If you read the wikileaks emails there is a major media & Clinton collusion going on. That should pause everybody. The way Democrats are running this campaign is really worrying as show in todays leaks 'CLINTON CAMP HIRES AGITATORS TO INSTIGATE VIOLENCE'[0]. Edit: I'm being down voted for facts. What have HN become. [0]http://regated.com/2016/10/project-veritas-clinton-camp-corruption/ http://regated.com/2016/10/project-veritas-clinton-camp-corr...

resfirestar 10y ago

Interesting. There might be (of course will be) disagreement about whether, as Pao argues, unpopular views about race and gender and stuff are as relevant to tech as support for SOPA. But Trump's new habit of not just implying, but saying outright that the election will be stolen from him by a nationwide ballot stuffing conspiracy is certainly relevant. That rhetoric is dangerous to the transition process and could destabilize the national environment for YC and its companies.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Making money as an entrepreneur and making money as an investor are very different skill sets. If you're smart and gritty and lucky enough to make a fortune with a start-up, then you probably have the minimum brain cells necessary to decide whether an investment opportunity is half-decent. Win some, lose some, nobody sees the difference because most of your wealth is either still in the company you worked on or is professionally managed, so there's little chance you will ever actually have to work again, and the public will still view you as a "winner." To me, conflating entrepreneurs and investors - especially investors in politics - is about as silly as asking Hollywood celebrities about U.S. foreign policy.

untog 10y ago

IMO, you can even disregard all of Trump's dirty laundry in this calculation. He is openly calling into doubt the result of this election before it's even happened, asking supporters to intimidate voters, and suggesting the entire election is "rigged". He is attempting to undermine democracy in the country and I'm not sure you need a single additional reason to object to anyone who supports him. Thiel, of course, does not think "freedom and democracy are compatible": https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

sidcool 10y ago
Thiel reminds me of Zobrist from Dan Brown's novel and now a nice, The Inferno
Alex3917 10y ago
> He is openly calling into doubt the result of this election before it's even happened As we all should, since many/most electronic voting machines don't even have a paper trail. How is it that so many standard liberal positions from five or ten years ago have somehow now become ultra conservative?
- untog 10y ago
  His statements might have some level of validity if he was criticising the use of electronic voting machines. He is not. He is instead suggesting that his supporters go to "other areas" and "see what's going on over there" - if his objection was electronic voting machines then that request would make no sense.
- archagon 10y ago
  Surely you realize how disingenuous this statement is? Trump's mantra of "the media is conspiring against me, the polls are all rigged, the election will be stolen from under us" is a far cry from anything we've seen in previous years. This has nothing to do with electronic voting machines. This is straight FUD in the most primal possible sense.

whybroke 10y ago

Peter Thiel is not clueless but knows exactly what he is doing. Thiel opposes democracy [1] and Trump has done an extraordinary amount to damage it. Indeed, even knowing that defeat is all but certain, he concentrates even more on doing so. Spending 1.5 million to fund the a campaign denouncing all voting as rigged (amount other things [2]) is stunningly efficient at undermining it. [1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio... [2] eg sues critical news papers, threatens opponents with prison, encourages voter intimidation, encourages foreign powers to engage in cyber-warfare, blames "magazines" for terrorism

lhnz 10y ago
I think it's much more likely that rather than "opposing democracy" he is attempting to connect a pro-technology viewpoint to an anti-globalisation one, and wishes to position himself politically so that he can eventually leverage this. This is more believable to me since he has been giving talks on it for the last three or four years [0]. Liberal newspapers might want to convince you that this is all about hating democracy, women, and the free press but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. There seems to be a very small amount of dirt that has been dug up and turned from a mole hill into a mountain. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KlXhrRxxbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KlXhrRxxbA
- whybroke 10y ago
  For that to be, Trump would have to win (or have post election influence) and Thiel would have to believe Trump's low education, semi-ludite supporters could be convinced the tech that displaced many of them is good. It's hard to image Thiel could possibly believe the latter but surely it's impossible that he believes the former. >...Liberal newspapers... Like the WSJ?
  - lhnz 10y ago
    Trump also has high education, non-luddite supporters or at the very least supporters that could be brought over to considering investing in a future America that makes itself 'Great' through government spending on infrastructure and science. It could be that Thiel believes he is speaking to these people (some of which might only be Trump supporters in 2016 because they always vote Republican). My central point is that he's been speaking about both economic and technological stagnation for many years and it is foolish to consider his actions now as completely distinct from this. I've no idea whether he believes Trump will win or not. I expect that he didn't require it. His donation allowed him to speak at the RNC, and this has no doubt increased his political reach massively. I was joking when I said liberal newspapers. They are not liberal at all.

dsacco 10y ago

I agree with the thrust of your point - that organizations like YC should be allowed to uninvite or refuse to collaborate with people they are diametrically opposed to for political reasons. However, I do not agree that it's fair to call an investor's competency into question due to their political views. I agree organizations have every right to not affiliate themselves with those investors, but in the real world there are plenty of examples of investors who hold controversial political views. Logically, there is no a priori reason why "Thiel is a good investor." and "Thiel strongly endorses Trump." cannot both be true. To go further, I don't see an a priori reason why an investor with political views that are antagonistic to the industry he focuses on cannot be a very good investor. It might not be likely, but on its own I do not agree with using politics as a criterion for investing performance. That's silly - just look at investing performance directly. To go even further, I think it would be disingenuous for groups like YC to announce they will distance themselves from investors they disagree with because "How could they be qualified investors if they hold this opinion?" That's masking the real reason for not affiliating with them, and in my opinion they shouldn't have to mask that anyway. I also think using that sort of language establishes a precedent that makes the industry less inclusive to people with opposing political views. Much of the tech industry is progressive and liberal, but it would be ridiculous if this was applied to potential founders. Should founders who support SOPA or Trump not be admitted to YC if they are well into a startup that will most likely become the next Google? Put another way, if you read Zero to One and you found it to be very insightful and full of legitimately good ideas, would you call it into question after learning that Thiel supports Trump? Doesn't that strike you as an ad hominem? Sure, Thiel's political views might be relevant or worth noting as an investor, but they certainly do not define his investment performance.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
As to your final point: either the hypothetical founders do not have the support network from YC and simply cannot become the next Big Thing (and someone else at YC/SV does it instead), or they find a different support network - possibly in a different state or country - and the market hums along. It's not a great tragedy either way.
threatofrain 10y ago

noobermin 10y ago

To be fair, pg does seem quite against Trump personally, at least on twitter he doesn't quite shut up about it. For him to accept Thiel while greatly disliking Trump doesn't really give me the sense that he doesn't care either way. Instead, I feel that he's most likely actively trying to look past Thiel's support. I'm not making a judgement whether to look past it is the right thing, but I don't think pg either is ambivalent about or secretly sympathetic to Trump.

amyjess 10y ago
pg left YC two years ago. He no longer has the authority to disinvite Thiel.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > He no longer has the authority to disinvite Thiel. He still has significant influence with YC, and has so far refused to personally distance himself from Thiel despite raging against Trump on twitter (a fact over which he's been taken to task by the likes of @pinboard and tptacek).

supergirl 10y ago

I'm surprised people on HN are so naive to quickly dismiss Trump because of what he says. Politicians wanting to get elected will say anything to win. After they get elected everything changes. This applies many times to politicians promising the world and then delivering very little but will also happen to politicians promising crazy things and then delivering little. Talk is cheap. Once you are elected you realize it's not so easy as you thought to bring changes, good or bad.

oddevan 10y ago
I think part of the issue with Trump is that--to many people--he's already failed at this. Usually, once a major party candidate wins the nomination, they start moving their positions towards the center in order to capture mainstream/moderate voters. Trump has not done this; in fact, he's tended to do the opposite. He still hasn't backed off The Wall, for instance. Granted, this is still just "talk," but to people like me, it's indicative of how he tends to double-down instead of moderating himself. I don't have a lot of confidence he would begin moderating himself once presented with actual power.

e40 10y ago

The Thiel situation reminds me very strongly of the Woody Allen situation. He married his step-daughter after cheating on his wife with her. You either ignore this fact or you don't work with him. For me, I think the Thiel situation is worse, since his judgement is very important to the companies he works with, and that judgement is suspect given his recent behavior.

jshevek 10y ago

> If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors? Trump does not threaten technological innovation the way that SOPA did. >I think it's fair to ask whether, if Peter Thiel is so clueless as to donate In what way is Peter Thiel demonstrating cluelessness comparable to being in support of SOPA? You are conflating a demonstrated incompetence regarding the impact of SOPA on innovation, with more generalized differences of political opinion.

grb423 10y ago

It's high time YC and HN joined the progressive war for social justice. I don't care if these investors could make a return on investment. What matters to me is that problematic behavior of disgusting, violent Whitey McWhiteface privilege boy Peter Thiel be put in zhis place and be shown that there is no place for zhim in the progressive, inclusive and diverse world we seek. That is obviously not the kind of inclusion we're talking about here.

pjwal 10y ago

How is this kind of authoritarianism any different than those that feel (based on science) that support for abortion (beyond reasonable medical issues for the mother) is tantamount to declaring said individuals are supporting murder and therefore should not be employed, should not be worked with, should be shamed and cast aside?