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 titans have often grown up together, building fortunes with global corporations. But the political battle has stirred up ugly debates 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 time, but Biden, also a Democrat, has drawn criticism from techies for his tightening regulations, especially around corporate mergers and AI. Cryptocurrency investors also dislike the Biden administration for its heavy regulation. Still, Trump’s endorsement has come as a surprise to many. Merci Grace, a former head of the investment firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, was shocked to see two of her venture capital friends publicly back Trump, in part because of his approach, which is seen as more friendly to tech. Among Trump's most prominent supporters are Tesla CEO Elon Musk, investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital's 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 for supporting Trump. Green tech investors who once admired Musk have 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 right now because you have two opposing groups (politically) doing business together," the Wall Street Journal quoted Sam Singer, a PR expert who has worked on campaigns for Democratic politicians. "This is an unusual situation." Democrats have been given a new boost by Harris’s presidential candidacy, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, which has become the nation’s tech hub. She raised more than $13 million at a fundraiser hosted by Hoffman in San Francisco in August. Tech supporters say 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 easier visas for highly skilled workers in the field.Policy differences
Meanwhile, Trump’s tech supporters worry that Harris will raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations and clamp down on new industries like cryptocurrencies. They also say Trump will loosen Biden’s strict controls on mergers and acquisitions, according to Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer representing Trump and a California Republican. Prominent women in tech, far fewer than men, are understandably overwhelmingly behind Harris. Some have joined groups like Tech4Kamala, VCs for Kamala, and Founders for Kamala. “This divide is unprecedented,” said Edda Collins Coleman, co-founder of Tech4Kamala. The VCs for Kamala poll suggests that the voices of a few billionaires who support Trump do not represent the views of the tech industry. The 225 respondents said their views largely align with Harris’s. In July, two old friends, Hoffman and Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder, got into a heated political argument 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 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. Still, tech titans are big donors to both sides. San Francisco founder Waseem Daher said he made his first contribution to a presidential candidate this year: $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 any candidate in this election, despite having donated to the Democratic Party. “We all think our side is so right that we have the moral right to judge the other side,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “We have gone too far.” True to the old advice not to talk about politics, personal arguments erupted between billionaires who already have big egos. Musk, the founder 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 hater like me," Khosla responded. "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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