TTCT - It's almost a month until the US election, and billionaire Reid Hoffman is focused on just one thing: how to help Kamala Harris win.
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unusual situation
In the tech world, the tycoons often grew up together, building fortunes with global corporations. But the political battle has stirred up ugly controversies around race, gender, and civil rights—fissures that were already deep in the Trump years of 2016. The tech world generally saw the Barack Obama era as a favorable period, but the Biden administration, also a Democratic president, has drawn criticism from the tech sector for its tightening regulations, especially regarding corporate mergers and AI. Cryptocurrency investors also dislike the Biden administration for its heavy regulation. Still, the support for Trump has surprised many. Merci Grace, a former head of investment firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, was shocked to see two friends in the venture capital industry publicly back Trump, in part because of his approach, which is considered more friendly to the tech industry. Among Trump's most prominent supporters in this space are Tesla CEO Elon Musk, investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital Management head Doug Leone. Musk, who turned out to be a staunch Trump supporter this year, called Democratic investor Vinod Khosla "crazy" when Khosla criticized Trump. Aaron Levie, a Harris supporter and CEO of cloud storage company Box, said investor David Sacks was on drugs when he supported Trump. Green tech investors who once admired Musk have now accused the Tesla boss of betrayal. Such fights were rare in previous presidential elections, when the tech industry tended to lean left. "Silicon Valley is very tense now because you have two opposing groups (politically), but you do business together," the Wall Street Journal quoted Sam Singer, a PR expert who has participated in organizing campaigns for Democratic politicians. "This is an unusual situation." Democrats have been given a new boost by the presidential candidacy of Ms. Harris, who hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of America’s tech scene. She raised more than $13 million at a fundraiser hosted by Mr. Hoffman in San Francisco in August. Tech supporters say Ms. Harris’s convention message was an unexpected bonus for them, as she talked about opportunity and capital not just for small businesses, but also for founders and entrepreneurs. She also talked about the importance of innovation and the need for the U.S. to lead in industries like AI. Supporters believe she will have tech-friendly policies, including visa liberalization for highly skilled workers in the field.Policy differences
Meanwhile, tech supporters of Trump worry that Harris will raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations and clamp down on new industries like cryptocurrency. They also say Trump will loosen Biden-style controls on mergers and acquisitions, according to Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer representing Trump and a Republican representative in California. Prominent women in tech, far fewer than men, understandably support Harris. Some have joined groups like Tech4Kamala, VCs for Kamala, or Founders for Kamala. “This divide is unprecedented,” said Edda Collins Coleman, co-founder of Tech4Kamala. The VCs for Kamala poll found that the voices of a few billionaires who support Trump do not represent the views of the tech industry. 225 respondents said their views largely align with Harris’s. In July, two old friends, Hoffman and Peter Thiel (a co-founder of PayPal), got into a heated argument over political differences at a summit in Sun Valley. Hoffman has donated more than $10 million this election season to support Biden and Harris. Thiel has publicly said he will vote for Trump and helped JD Vance (Trump's vice president) in the Senate race. Hoffman and Thiel were once very close, working together at PayPal (along with Musk). They are no longer on speaking terms because of their political differences, Hoffman said at the conference. Regardless, tech titans remain big donors to both sides. San Francisco founder Waseem Daher said this year he made his first contribution to a presidential candidate: $100,000 to Harris. "This time it feels different, the threat to American democracy is real," he said. But some tech leaders say they want to end the public spat. Zynga founder Mark Pincus said he would not support either candidate in this election, despite having donated to the Democratic Party. "We all think our side is so right that it has the moral right to judge the other side," he wrote on LinkedIn. "We have gone too far." True to the old advice about not talking about politics, personal arguments erupted between billionaires, who already have big egos. Musk, the boss of social network X, challenged Khosla, an investor, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a Democratic donor. "I have a hard time supporting someone who has no values, is a liar, a cheat, a rapist, misogynist and an immigrant-hating person like me," Khosla replied. "He may cut taxes and reduce regulations, but that's no reason to accept him." Scott McNealy, Khosla's co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is a Republican donor. McNealy said he understood both Trump and Khosla and that they "actually see eye to eye on a lot of important issues." Khosla responded that he was "disgusted" by his former business partner's comparison to Trump. (“Don’t drag family values into this race,” Khosla CEO Shernaz Daver, who has worked with both, criticized McNealy. “He’s not that low!”)
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