There's three names in that title, and none of them are explained in the tiny slice of an article that's free. Am I expected to just know who these random people are?
>Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire over racist, anti-Muslim remarks posted on social media.
> In a tweet about New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Maguire said Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything. It’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda.” Maguire later doubled down on his remarks and responded to public criticism with vague threats, writing to one individual critical of his remarks, “You may not know this… but I’ve been watching you.”
Shaun Maguire is a partner at Sequoia who has become an outspoken right-wing commentator online and large GOP donor. His recent comments that the Sequoia COO quit over was about the democrat front runner candidate for NYC Mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
> Following Trump's felony conviction last year, Maguire announced he'd back Trump in the 2024 election and would write his campaign a $300,000 check. In total, he donated about $800,000 to Republican causes last year, according to data from Open Secrets. Once Trump was elected, Maguire aided in the transition by interviewing candidates for positions in the defense department, The New York Times reported.
There’s a big fuss over a potential mayor of New York that has the right losing their minds. To the point where people are quitting over other peoples opinions. Truly bizarro world stuff.
> To the point where people are quitting over other peoples opinions.
Isn't that rational? If you found that a colleague had views you found personally abhorrent AND you had the luxury of being able to walk away from the job, wouldn't you?
The tragedy of modern work life (and the current job market!) is that the vast majority of people do not have that luxury, and hence are stuck in the jobs they hate. But I expect the COO of a large VC probably has several lifetimes' worth of that luxury stashed away.
> Isn't that rational? If you found that a colleague had views you found personally abhorrent AND you had the luxury of being able to walk away from the job, wouldn't you?
I consider that to be immature and highly unprofessional.
It used to be that professionalism considered the realm of private opinion to have no bearing on whether you could work with someone. It also used to be that we might abhor your opinion but defend your right to say it. Now we cannot even work with someone who has impure opinions. Nor do we have any barrier between our private lives and work now, apparently.
It is entirely consistent to defend somebody's freedom of speech but then wish to dissociate from that person if their speech offends your sensibilities. This is just a variation on the old "freedom of speech" vs "freedom from consequences" / "freedom of reach" dichotomies.
Maybe the best option is, as you indicate, to use discretion when breaking the barrier between your private and work lives. However, airing your opinions on a public forum with your public identity largely precludes having such barriers.
I do not see why "has the right to say something" and "everybody has to refuse to change their behavior towards this person in any way" are supposed to be the same thing.
I didn't say you had to treat the person the same way; you might not like the guy and might not hang out with him. But part of professionalism is being able to work productively with people you strongly disagree with.
Like seven or eight years ago I was at lunch at work with a sister team of ours. They had an intern who decided at lunch to announce that he was a fascist and that gay people were degenerates who were ruining society. Should the team have just said "huh that's quirky" and moved on? What of the gay people on the team who'd now be needing to work with somebody who openly thought that they were filth and expressed this at work?
Now instead of an intern, imagine that this was somebody's boss. Or the CEO. Is it really unprofessional to leave rather than choosing to work for and enrich somebody like that?
I agree with this up to a point. If their shenanigans is making dealing with them even professionally unbearable, you owe it to yourself to determine whether that environment is worth staying in.
People should either keep their opinions to themselves or not allow it to be tied to their corporation. If my employer was tied to shitbird comments like Sequoia is now, I'd quit also.
The opinion in this case is that Muslims are fundamentally bad people. They aren't disagreeing over tax policy or what to do with rent stabilized apartments in NYC.
Yeah, I'd prefer not to work with somebody with these bigoted beliefs.
This is true, but it's also fair to complain about someone on HN linking to a one-sentence headline on a paywalled site. It approaches ill manners, imho.
Thanks. The full page cookie consent with no "essential only" had me turning away from the article. No cookies are persistent in my browser but the lack of perceived choice is still irritating.
I recall Shaun Maguire trying to interfere with European politics, specifically supporting AfD in Germany. Instantly lost my admiration towards Sequoia, the image I previously had about them was something like calm, deeply analytical grown ups. Turns out they are into petty daily politics that will not go anywhere other than stir drama, at least this Shaun guy. Still feels bad when I think about it, disillusionment is painful.
Since when social unrest is good for business? Africa, the Balkans and the middle east must be printing money then with their decades long identity politics and divisions.
Good for business for companies like the German Fox News: Nius, led by the former chief editor of Germany‘s worst „newspaper“ Bild: Julian Reichelt financed by the founder of CompuGroup Medical: Frank Gotthardt
An edge lord is being deliberately provocative for attention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgelord), but Shaun Maguire instead is just expressing his actual opinion, which is worse in my opinion.
They hate Islamism too, why do you think they had Qatar under a blockade. They see it as a threat to their autocracy. This sensitiveness is a Western thing or maybe would be a problem for Turkey or Qatar.
Looked at Shaun Maguire's twitter page and I find it appalling. Maybe I was naive about people in tech being more tolerant (as they both work with and build for diverse people).
I think there’s an argument that the pandemic era caused a lot of resentment in tech executives. They didn’t like employees having better negotiating power, resenting the pay increases and also things like support for BLM or trans rights, and stuff like RTO factored into that showing people who’s the boss. There was also a successful outreach attempt which went under the radar until Semafor published this:
I note this "tolerance" seems to only go one way. Tolerance means supporting the people I like (e.g. "diverse" people), but it never seems to mean tolerating people I don't like. True tolerance is the reverse: tolerating people whose views you find abhorrent.
Maguire said that Mamdani "comes from a culture that lies about everything. It's literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda. The West will learn this lesson the hard way."
Maguire is a MAGA supporter, so the projection of lying is... interesting.
So you think the immigrants are eating pets, the No-Kings demonstrations were Hate America rallied, Antifa is an organization, Portland and Washington are out of control crime cities and that Tylenol caused autism?
And that’s only the lies that came to my mind while typing.
This one baffles me. Obviously it is - not a national one, but there are plenty of regional organizations/groups using that name[1][2] who share similar goals/methods. This is akin to saying that "Anonymous" didn't exist back in the day - even though you had people organizing on 4chan to do collective action (mostly against Scientology) under that banner.
There are Antifa organizations but not the Antifa organization like Trump and his government claim.
Anonymous is a good example, there is no Anonymous organization, people just spontaneously grouped under the label Anonymous. So two actions by Anonymous could actually mean completely different people.
Do you think the group in your first link is a terrorist organization? They are not the Antifa, they are just antifascist organization. It’s an adjective not the name of a structured group like Hamas.
And if you are contra fascism you are antifa too, so good luck
Although I'm vegetarian, I consider it smart to eat animals that are available when you are low on money (I don't know details and don't care, as long as people aren't eating the animals in protected areas like parks)
The immigrants eating pets was Haitian immigrants kill and eat pets in Springfield, Ohio, that was simply a lie.
The No Kings demonstration are quite the opposite of hatred of American culture.
Being full of crime and being out of control are different things. There are cities with much higher crime rates in red states but somehow deploying the National Guard isn’t an option.
Claiming causation were only is correlation is lying.
The real problem is that Sequioa is so well regarded, and they control so much money, it is really hard to criticize them. You could say, you have options as an public LP, but you also don’t.
One of the issues with folks like that, is that they often consider themselves to be "Übermensch," and thus, cannot be held to the same standards as others (I won't use the other "-mensch" term, because that would Godwin the discussion).
Not just really smart people. Very rich people (usually second-or-beyond-generation rich. First-generation rich folks aren't usually that way -unless they are polymaths).
They feel that they can say whatever the hell they want, and no one can hold them to account (and they are frequently correct).
Apparently https://shaunmaguire.fyi - he's monstrous, to be curt, being a wealthy and powerful bigot:
- said some bigoted things on X about Islam (the entire religion) and
- some racist and culturally stereotyping / xenophobic / Islamophobic stuff by "[Mamdani is brown therefore he is XYZ culture which itself is a bad culture]" (my summary also from the X tweet) logic.
> Maguire, an outspoken and high-profile investor who is close to Elon Musk, wrote on X in July that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything. It’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda. The West will learn this lesson the hard way.”
Balbale complained to other senior partners at the firm, who declined to take action against Maguire, arguing he was just exercising his right to free speech, the people said. She left soon after, feeling her position was untenable.
If the same quote replaced 'Islamist' with another faith, would it have also been brushed off as "right to free speech"?
Christians will always denigrate other faiths by stating all of the faithful adhere to a literal reading of those faith's religious texts, and claiming to adhere to a literal reading of their own religious texts while simultaneously denying all contradictions, appeals to violence, hate, and despotism found within.
> exploitation of female captives and booty distribution
Oh dear! That's quite concerning.
It certainly would be a pretty terrible thing if someone capable of exploiting female captives and "distributing booty" acquired a position of power in the USA.
I mean, the Bible has God himself lying to Adam. God says do not eat this fruit - because if you eat it you'll die immediately. And later of course Adam eats the fruit, and of course he doesn't die, because actually God was lying about that.
The general position of Christians seems to be that God lying is OK, however lying to them is a sin. But, Christians lie all the time, so, seems like actually the rule is "Lie but pretend it's a sin if anybody else does it" which is consistent with God and their own behaviour and indeed consistent with lying about Mamdani...
> The Quran contains passages along these lines along with other things like the exploitation of female captives and booty distribution from the spoils of war (including female captives).
Let's please not get started about sexism in major religions. The New Testament is rife with sexism, as even a cursory Google search would have revealed to you. Here's just one example:
Ephesians 5:22–24: "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church... Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands".
Unless you are willing to scrutinize other religions as you would Islam, then you are being intellectually lazy at best, a bigot at worst.
A) Ephesians is not found in the Old Testament; it is a letter written by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. It addresses themes of grace, unity, and the church's role in God's plan, which are not specifically covered in the Old Testament.
B) The section you reference outlines the biblical perspective on the roles within marriage. The concept of submission is presented as a voluntary act, reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church. the biblical view encourages understanding it as a partnership where both spouses honor and respect each other’s roles. This section serves as a foundation for discussions on marriage, emphasizing both the responsibilities and the spiritual significance of the marital relationship.
As with many things in the bible, they are symbolic, and not to be taken literally. This is also why we have hundreds, if not thousands of flavors of Christianity - they all interpret the bible differently because many of the translations and interpretations differed wildly from scholar to scholar.
A) I'm well aware Ephesians is not found in the Old Testament; that's why I chose it. These verses are specific to Christianity, just as anything from the Quran would be specific to Islam.
B) "The concept of submission is presented as a voluntary act" What is written in any faith's texts is imposed on its followers, whether it was intended to be voluntary or not. We can only speculate how many millions of women were instructed to submit to their husbands as if he was God himself. This indoctrination starts as soon as children are old enough to attend church and continues as long as they go to church. There are obviously progressive leaders in any faith, but that tends to be the exception, rather than the rule.
"the biblical view encourages understanding it as a partnership where both spouses honor and respect each other’s roles" The dominant view among Christians in America today is "complementarianism", which sounds a lot like what you're saying. It's designed to appear at first glance as equality, but really means that women are restricted to domestic grunt work while men control all the levers of power: All roles of authority in the church, in business, and of course still telling what their wives and children to do at home.
The fact that you even say "honor and respect *each other's roles" strongly suggests you believe that a woman's role is to be, in essence, subjugated to her husband, limited to giving birth, raising children, and taking care of all the husband's emotional and logistical needs. Correct me if I'm wrong!
"As with many things in the bible, they are symbolic, and not to be taken literally... translations and interpretations differed wildly from scholar to scholar."
This is a fine perspective to have. But OP was happy to demonize all of Islam based on a few quotes with seemingly no account of their historical or religious context. Virtually any religion can be
>As with many things in the bible, they are symbolic, and not to be taken literally. This is also why we have hundreds, if not thousands of flavors of Christianity - they all interpret the bible differently because many of the translations and interpretations differed wildly from scholar to scholar.
Including many who don't have this perspective on scripture.
I probably agree with you on more things religious than not. Having said that, I was correcting OP, who strongly suggested that Islam was uniquely misogynist by quoting a couple passages from the Quran.
What I think is really interesting is that the some of the strongest currents in Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all converging on the subjugation of women, especially the control of their bodies and their sexuality.
> We can also do this with Islam too, a religion founded by a slaver war monger who had sex slaves, and whose teachings say women are a sexual reward.
A helpful reminder to you that Christianity was founded by a man who never married, never had children, and lived poor his whole life. Something literally no one within Christianity espouses today. It is ignorant to assume that Muslims all aspire to live like Mohammad when virtually no Christians aspire to live like Christ.
Islams founder's take differs quite a bit from Christianity's founder's take. We should be able to point that out without being called racist/bigot/receiving down votes. One had sex slaves, one did not marry and instead treated the world as his children.
Virtually every Christian I know aspires to be as Christ like as they can. You may not see that in their actions, but in their beliefs they definitely aspire to that. Are you saying Muslims don't hold their prophet in high regard? The prophet is just symbolic?
Christians believe you should wait until marriage for sex. So they very much preach item 2 you list.
Most Christians I know follow item 3 and literally espouse it. That you should not be greedy. You should not take advantage of others. You should live life for a moral purpose, for entry to heaven, not material gain.
Christianity teaches that you can't be Jesus, that is the point of the religion. You can't be a god. You can only be the best flawed human you can, and that is good enough, and you are forgiven for those flaws, IF you TRY to be better than your base nature. It teaches that Christs life was that of a god, and yet he still took time to take care of/see the lowest among us. Not that his life was one we can do, but definitely one we should aspire to. Does Islam not teach you should aspire to be like their prophet? That his morality should be an inspiration?
The west is freely accepting of calling out Christianity, Mormonism, Scientology. But we can't examine/be critical of Islam. That is not OK. I've known way more Muslims than Scientologists. It is not a foreign/abstract religion, but a real religion present in our communities. There is a lot in Islam that needs to be called out and processed by the Muslim faithful. Tom Cruise can be called out on his faith. Mitt Romney had his faith called out a ton and that was OK. Catholics get called out all the time for being Catholic. We can call out other religions too without it suddenly being racist/bigoted. No, it's calling out if a religion has some crappy beliefs/justifications and saying 'I'm not sure about a person who believes these things as a core part of their identity'.
All that said I would love to see Mamdani as mayor of New York. His religion/acts done under it shouldn't define him, just like with Tom Cruise, Mitt Romney. We're all people making our way, not caricatures defined externally.
> Virtually every Christian I know aspires to be as Christ like as they can. You may not see that in their actions, but in their beliefs they definitely aspire to that.
This is a nonsense statement. It's trivially obvious how to be "Christ like": Live poor, help the disenfranchised, feed the hungry, heal the wounded, don't marry, don't have kids, and preach the gospel, if only to a small number of people.
If the Christians you know don't live like that, then they are not being "Christ like." To say they are while they do the opposite -- work to get rich, get married and have big families, confine their spiritual work to Sunday mornings, occasionally giving to charity (or only to their own church) -- is to believe that words have no meaning at all.
I'm sure the people you think of as "Christ like" are by and large perfectly wonderful human beings. But this whole discussion was sparked by a powerful man at Sequoia making reductive statements about all of Islam based on a few quotations from the Quran. At some point we have to admit that the way people practice religion does not necessarily follow what's written in their texts. And to suggest, as others have in this very thread, that because Mohammad married had multiple wives means that all of his followers want to as well, is as ignorant as assuming that all Christians want to live like Christ actually lived.
The Quran is held by Muslims as 'the perfect word of God'. It is treated much differently than the Christian bible which gets somewhat loosely translated into many languages.
As the perfect word of God, quotations from it ARE THE PERFECT WORD OF GOD. How is talking about what someone believes is the exact and perfect words of God off limits/racist/bigoted? How is saying that 'Gods perfect representative on earth' having sex slaves makes me call the beliefs of followers of Islam in to question racist/bigoted? I want to know if someone is OK with sexual slavery. A religion that talks about when it gives out sex slaves/sex as a reward to good men makes me have questions about how someone who believes that sees women. Believe me, I struggle with it. The founders of my country were awful men who raped female slaves themselves. I struggle with how do I incorporate 'good parts' of their ideology when they were vile human beings. But I think it is important to challenge that, to ask that question, especially of myself and my nation. I can't imagine if that was my founding religious leader.
Asking 'what about Thomas Jefferson raping his understage slave' isn't being racist. It's legit 'how do you reconcile these things'. It's hugely informative.
Islam is a much more mainstream American religion than Scientology. There are only maybe 50,000 Scientologists in the US. There are around 3.5 million Muslims. I should be able to talk about Islam with at least the same criticality.
Please understand my culture is to challenge religions/religious people/politicians/admired figures, not just Muslims. Muslims, because they believe the Quran is the perfect word of God, are in a tough spot when their perfect word of God says things like lying or sexual slavery are OK. Just like Americans when their 'freedom fighter' founders also had literal sex slaves. But that does not mean we should not challenge. I get it's really hard for Muslims because they can't challenge 'the perfect word of God' but that doesn't make it bigoted/racist to say 'this person's religion says it is the perfect word of god that they can lie about this how do I know they are telling the truth'.
In the US, we reformed, we did away with slavery. We condemn the actions of our founders. Islam being the perfect word of God with it's perfect messenger on earth can't really condemn nor phase these things out. So how public political figures reconcile these things is very valid to bring up.
> The Quran is held by Muslims as 'the perfect word of God'. It is treated much differently than the Christian bible which gets somewhat loosely translated into many languages.
Biblical literalism isn't exactly common, too, and people who self-identify as Christian use it to justify things like killing gay people, corporal punishment, not allowing divorce except in certain cases, denying scientific consensus on things like biology or climate change, unconditionally back the actions of the Israeli government based on eschatological theories, etc.
I think there’s an argument that mainstream Christianity is less stringent than mainstream Islam on this but it’s very much a question of degree and appears to be moving backwards. We just had a rather heated national debate over what exactly Charlie Kirk meant by using a very similar phrase (“God's perfect law”) in a negative context so it’s very hard for me to see this as a Muslim problem rather than a problem common to all fundamentalist religious traditions.
Yes exactly! Thank you! We just had a national debate on Christianity so we could understand the takes that certain people were coming from (which were in fact horrible positions, so it's very important that they defined their position). Certain segments of Christianity have views that to me make them unelectable. And that is super important to know/understand. But I don't get to understand/we don't get to challenge a Muslim person's belief like that because it is somehow racist to ask.
I'm not claiming it's a Muslim problem. I talk about Christians, Scientologists, Mormons, heck even Americans and understanding how to reconcile our founding as a nation versus our beliefs now. I do understand how awkward it is because their religion literally says it is the perfect word of God. I understand that makes it complex for them. But that doesn't mean we don't need to understand. I don't know what it means to be a follower of Islam. But I do know what their perfect word of God says, and some of it is really bad stuff (just like the pre-Jesus Christian old testament stuff, yikes). I do know some horrible things about their founder, and I think it's reasonable to ask what those horrible things mean to a follower, just like calling out that my nation of freedom was founded on racism and slavery by men who raped their underage slaves. There is a taint to both, but I don't get to ask how a Muslim reconciles that taint, while I can challenge American taint. I don't know how to operate without being able to challenge, and get responses, and understand. Just like we had a Christian debate, or we debate what the founding of our nation means we should encourage the discussion and deeper understanding.
I just want the debate you yourself reference that we just had on Christianity. It's fair to want to understand, but for some reason we don't get to ask/challenge Muslims like we do the Christians, Scientologists, etc. Even though as you point out the discussion can be very eye opening.
Until we can have these discussions, people are going to have questions about followers of a religion that says the perfect word of God is that you can lie to people of other religions. People are going to question a religion that teaches sex, sex slaves, the inability of the being you desire in heaven to say no being rewards for men.
> Certain segments of Christianity have views that to me make them unelectable. And that is super important to know/understand. But I don't get to understand/we don't get to challenge a Muslim person's belief like that because it is somehow racist to ask.
I don't see anyone saying it's unfair to talk about the beliefs a specific Muslim candidate has expressed but Maguire wasn't talking about anything Mamdani has said. He made a sweeping claim about an entire culture, saying they considered it a virtue to lie when that is in fact broadly condemned. He almost certainly based that belief on propaganda about the concept of taqiyya which has been swirling around right-wing circles for the last couple of decades. That concept refers to a narrow exception allowing Muslims to conceal or disavow their religious beliefs when they fear for their safety. The term is derived from a root meaning of caution or fear, and dates back to when Islam was a minority religion whose followers had real examples of recantations forced under torture. Christians active in right-wing politics have claimed that it is both broadly practiced and interpreted to allow lying to spread Islam itself despite limited evidence and strident disagreement by actual scholars – there's a good summary here with a lot of links:
This is about as fair as finding a Seven Mountains Dominionist preacher who says that Christians need to control all aspects of society, claiming that they speak for all Christians, and then claiming that belief is secretly shared by a Christian political candidate who has never voiced supported for that sect and must override all of their stated views or past actions.
I'm an atheist now so I don't have a god in this fight but I've known enough people of each of the Abrahamic religions that I wouldn't make a general criticism of any individual except based on things they personally said or did.
> Because we can't ask Muslims politicians about their religion or their positions/interpretations, we depend on others than the actual individual we know about to try and explain, which ends up worse and potentially misinformed.
Who specifically is saying that we can’t ask them? You’ve made that claim repeatedly but I don’t see anyone saying it’s inappropriate to ask a candidate what they believe on topics relevant to their office. The condemnation is about sweeping assertions about large heterogeneous groups.
Are you really claiming that Christianity and Judiasm have no problematic passages about slavery, women, and war? Where is your handwringing about all the Christian politicians - shouldn't there be a UN resolution denouncing the problematic passages of the Bible? Or are you being willfully ignorant so you can continue to be Islamophobic?
Edit: First address the wrong in question. And a phobia is an irrational fear. What’s the sentence for apostasy or blasphemy in this faith? It’s death. That’s a very valid, rational fear.
That's not a whataboutism. OP brought up the topic that saying these things about Islam is as valid as saying these things about other religions. You're trying to make the point that Islam is uniquely bad ("Except you can't [replace Islam in that quote with another religion].") in the ways that Maguire said. It is therefore on topic for someone to then point out passages from other holy texts which suggest that those religions might be similarly bad.
It is whataboutism if the reply was a reply to my post about the UN resolution denouncing the sexual slavery and exploitation of minors in the Quran. Which seems to be the case as the argument was specific to the UN resolution statement that I made in my comment. Not the OP’s argument.
> We need to have an honest discussion for those arguing in favor of this faith about their positions on these very discriminatory segments of their core texts
and then ignored that most politicians in the US are not Muslim. So again I'm asking you - do you actually believe what you wrote (for all religions), or are you singling out Mamdani and his religion because you're a bigot? I'm having your "honest discussion."
Edit: your original response was just the first sentence, and the edit added that you're scared of Muslims. Not sure that's the flex you think it is.
If you want an "honest discussion" then be honest about your reasons for being scared of Islam and not the other religions which dominate US politics. Pointing out your hypocrisy in singling out Muslims isn't "whataboutism" - it's the honest debate you're looking for.
Oh, so an "emotional appeal"? That's also a logical fallacy btw.
This is about your personal fears of a candidate's religion and not his actions. Otherwise (if this were actually about your fear of indoctrination and dogma) you'd be spouting this same rhetoric for all politicians who believe in Abrahamic religions. Again, hypocrisy. Or did I miss where you said Christianity should be singled out and denounced by the UN?
This dude really says some things without even analyzing how degressive they are; really tone deaf, pompous and disrespectful to large swaths of people. I mean, at least post this from your anime pfp alt account.
I think Elon is right about the idea of mind viruses. He just hasn't taken the premise far enough. All of us are infected by the algorithms around us, MAGA, Woke, MAHA ect. are all "mind viruses".
I doesn't matter how smart, compassionate, empathetic, creative or dynamic you are. As soon as you expose yourself to the algorithms you become infected. The more exposure the deeper the infection.
The idea that people are affected by their experiences is hardly novel. You don't need to dress it up as "mind viruses" and claim it is an "infection".
Yeah, sounds like parent is talking about "opinions" and "beliefs", something humans famously can't agree with one another about for as long as we've existed.
The tricky part is figuring out how to still collaborate and live side by side with people you vehemently disagree with.
What? Enough with the buzzy words. You are talking about ideas. And the more you stray from science and logic to justify your ideas, the more cognitive dissonance you will encounter.
I'm not sure this direct departure matters that much to Sequoia. The COO Balbale was an operating partner who was CMO of Sequoia for 2 years and then COO for another 2 years and to my understanding did not write checks. The real elephant in the room question was whether Balbale was in a role getting carry or not. If not, then that effectively isn't different from an incentive level than an associate with a higher salary (but no real skin in the game). If so, then that means that carry was actually given up and it probably means more.
In contrast, Maguire (like other partners at Sequoia who are actually writing checks) has skin in the game through the checks he writes and whether they pan out or they don't. In light of that, setting aside his views (which you may agree or disagree with politically), I view his controversy as being most likely a calculated marketing maneuver to improve or maximize the signal to noise in his deal flow. It's hard for me as an outsider to say whether that's working for him or not, but his track record suggests that he's not having problems with his deal flow as a result.
That said -- the material comment at the end of the article does make a lot of sense. While this departure may not affect Sequoia that much, Maguire's position may sour many of the Middle East sovereign wealth funds that form some of the largest parts of Sequoia's LP base. If their discontent with Maguire's rhetoric ends up being more important to them than Sequoia's returns, that may well pose a far more material issue to Sequoia and they will be forced to act.
Funding a seed stage VC with a record of picking winners like Sequoia is probably very easy even without the few sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East. Sequoia’s checks are mainly in the early rounds where the sizes are relatively smaller to series C+. The American university endowments would oversubscribe their rounds multiple times over.
That's a very good point, and there is probably enough appetite in the endowments (nevermind the other large LP archetypes such as pension funds, hospital systems, family offices, etc) to make up for any pullout.
To go one step further, I think I recall recently that Sequoia also moved to an evergreen RIA structure (as well as several other large funds such as a16z, Lightspeed, Thrive, etc), so that's even less of a concern and makes it possible for these firms to capture exits in the evergreen structure and recycle it into earlier stage funds.
Maybe I went overboard trying to soften how non-material this event really seems.
> I view his controversy as being most likely a calculated marketing maneuver to improve or maximize the signal to noise in his deal flow. It's hard for me as an outsider to say whether that's working for him or not
why is it that tech bros will bend over backwards to find "good-faith" interpretations of the most obviously stupid shit. like bro have you literally never heard the phrase "confirmation bias"? you know it's possible he could just be a lucky idiot right?
> In an interview with the Caltech Heritage Project, Maguire reported that he earned a 1.8 GPA in high school and failed his Algebra 2 course, and that his admission to Stanford University depended on letters of recommendation.
1. The fact that he cheated his way into Stanford is completely irrelevant when considering whether he cheated his way into Caltech
or
2. No dummies graduate PhD programs, even T10 PhD programs, just like no dummies are admitted to T10 BS programs
or both.
I hope you understand that one or both of these perspectives is either the height of naivety or more of that backbending work I was talking about before.
He has a PhD in /physics/ from Caltech, and that was before he became an extremely successful investor.
If I had the platform Maguire had, I'd likely it in a different direction. But I'm not him so who cares? He has achieved significant academic and professional outcomes not in spite of but likely because of the way he is.
Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean they're an unaccomplished idiot no matter how gratifying and simplifying that would be. And I think it's really unfortunate that people let their resentment of others outside their tribe (and often their inability to perceive their tribal filters) get in the way of accurately perceiving reality as it is and not the way they wish it worked. It stunts their intellectual development and maturation into an adult, and I think it's just such a waste.
