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Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

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Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#12
1. AdRoll, Inc.

2. Aeris Communications, Inc.

3. Airbnb, Inc.

4. AltSchool, PBC

5. Ancestry.com, LLC

6. Appboy, Inc.

7. Apple Inc.

8. AppNexus Inc.

9. Asana, Inc.

10. Atlassian Corp Plc

11. Autodesk, Inc.

12. Automattic Inc.

13. Box, Inc.

14. Brightcove Inc.

15. Brit + Co

16. CareZone Inc.

17. Castlight Health

18. Checkr, Inc.

19. Chobani, LLC

20. Citrix Systems, Inc.

21. Cloudera, Inc.

22. Cloudflare, Inc.

23. Copia Institute

24. DocuSign, Inc.

25. DoorDash, Inc.

26. Dropbox, Inc.

27. Dynatrace LLC

28. eBay Inc.

29. Engine Advocacy

30. Etsy Inc.

31. Facebook, Inc.

32. Fastly, Inc.

33. Flipboard, Inc.

34. Foursquare Labs, Inc.

35. Fuze, Inc.

36. General Assembly

37. GitHub

38. Glassdoor, Inc.

39. Google Inc.

40. GoPro, Inc.

41. Harmonic Inc.

42. Hipmunk, Inc.

43. Indiegogo, Inc.

44. Intel Corporation

45. JAND, Inc. d/b/a Warby Parker

46. Kargo Global, Inc.

47. Kickstarter, PBC

48. KIND, LLC

49. Knotel

50. Levi Strauss & Co.

51. LinkedIn Corporation

52. Lithium Technologies, Inc.

53. Lyft, Inc.

54. Mapbox, Inc.

55. Maplebear Inc. d/b/a Instacart

56. Marin Software Incorporated

57. Medallia, Inc.

58. A Medium Corporation

59. Meetup, Inc.

60. Microsoft Corporation

61. Motivate International Inc.

62. Mozilla Corporation

63. Netflix, Inc.

64. NETGEAR, Inc.

65. NewsCred, Inc.

66. Patreon, Inc.

67. PayPal Holdings, Inc.

68. Pinterest, Inc.

69. Quora, Inc.

70. Reddit, Inc.

71. Rocket Fuel Inc.

72. SaaStr Inc.

73. Salesforce.com, Inc.

74. Scopely, Inc.

75. Shutterstock, Inc.

76. Snap Inc.

77. Spokeo, Inc.

78. Spotify USA Inc.

79. Square, Inc.

80. Squarespace, Inc.

81. Strava, Inc.

82. Stripe, Inc.

83. SurveyMonkey Inc.

84. TaskRabbit, Inc

85. Tech:NYC

86. Thumbtack, Inc.

87. Turn Inc.

88. Twilio Inc.

89. Twitter Inc.

90. Turn Inc.

91. Uber Technologies, Inc.

92. Via

93. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

94. Workday

95. Y Combinator

96. Yelp Inc.

97. Zynga Inc.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#13

I did a run at the (amateur) math off Google Finance and Crunchbase. With some companies I couldn't find's numbers outright omitted, and using old valuations, I totaled those corps filing as valued at $2.58 trillion in market cap., at least $131 billion of valuation and another $8 billion in investments in un-valuated companies. Assuming those investments hold value at least equal to the total worth of those companie…

GDP is the total value of goods flowing through the economy (more or less), not the total value of all property so it's not a very meaningful comparison. By this measure, Vanguard's $1.7 trillion assets under management account for over 10% of US GDP but obviously that's incorrect, that money is just parked across a bunch of assets.

The US manufacturing industry is about $3 trillion a year in actual industrial production and the tech industry has way less leverage, let alone political clout.

Edit: the total market cap of the S&P 500 broke $15 trillion in 2013 and as of 2015, all of the companies in that index didn't even employ a fifth of US workers. Add in all the spending and investment property that doesn't make it into S&P figures (govt taxes + bonds, real estate, etc) and I bet the total number is probably >$100 trillion.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense as Elon is a Trump advisor. Also interestingly missing: Amazon.

I believe Elon Musk is playing (once again) the ultra-long game. He is betting that the court system as well as Congress will limit Donald Trump and his cronies from doing something that is grounds for impeachment - and so Donald Trump will be in office for the entire term. Given this, it makes sense to be in a position that has at least a tiny bit of influence on Trump. Amazon has a similar position: they need large…

Musk might outsmart us all, but by going down to that crossroads in Clarksdale, he does not, and will not, outmoral a slug.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#15

I did a run at the (amateur) math off Google Finance and Crunchbase. With some companies I couldn't find's numbers outright omitted, and using old valuations, I totaled those corps filing as valued at $2.58 trillion in market cap., at least $131 billion of valuation and another $8 billion in investments in un-valuated companies. Assuming those investments hold value at least equal to the total worth of those companie…

It's hard to compare market caps to GDP because GDP is kind of like "aggregate value of everything produced this year" while a market cap is "estimated total profits for a company from now until the end of time." So you might have a company like Walmart with $200b in market cap but ~$500b in annual revenue (3% of GDP by itself!) and $15b in net income. On the other hand there are companies like Adobe with $60b market caps and $6b in annual revenue and $1b in net income. So the GDP vs market cap comparison is somewhat apples to oranges, although there's no disputing the companies in the brief have a large impact on the US economy.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Elon Musk is playing (once again) the ultra-long game. He is betting that the court system as well as Congress will limit Donald Trump and his cronies from doing something that is grounds for impeachment - and so Donald Trump will be in office for the entire term. Given this, it makes sense to be in a position that has at least a tiny bit of influence on Trump. Amazon has a similar position: they need large…

Musk might outsmart us all, but by going down to that crossroads in Clarksdale, he does not, and will not, outmoral a slug.

Morality is like an ass - everybody has their own.

Musk wants to see a self sustaining, fossil fuel free civilisation, and a backup off site. I'm not saying it's morally right, in fact it might be straight out of Machiavelli ideas, but you are right in that it's a long position.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#17

I did a run at the (amateur) math off Google Finance and Crunchbase. With some companies I couldn't find's numbers outright omitted, and using old valuations, I totaled those corps filing as valued at $2.58 trillion in market cap., at least $131 billion of valuation and another $8 billion in investments in un-valuated companies. Assuming those investments hold value at least equal to the total worth of those companie…

It's hard to compare market caps to GDP because GDP is kind of like "aggregate value of everything produced this year" while a market cap is "estimated total profits for a company from now until the end of time." So you might have a company like Walmart with $200b in market cap but ~$500b in annual revenue (3% of GDP by itself!) and $15b in net income. On the other hand there are companies like Adobe with $60b market…

Fair points, both you and akiselev; thanks for the clarification

I am not an especially economically-(or even really quantitatively) inclined person; I just see GDP bandied about as a metric of "size of economy" and market cap as "value of company". Revenue is probably locatable if someone wants to dig into quarterlies... I probably spent too much time on this exercise already

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#18
I don't know what Americans are protesting about. I don't agree with the bans at all but at least you have a president who is true to his words for once - For me that is a higher moral value. You have to take the good with the bad.

I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect a politician who does what he says he'll do.

It's a refreshing break from the typical Washington charlatans who don't do anything of their own accord and instead just do what their crooked lobbyist friends tell them.

All that said, I've had a few Iranian friends/colleagues (fellow engineers) and it's really strange to think that they're not allowed to go to the US now because they're such decent, balanced people - Also, I can't help but think about those people who left Iran 40 years ago before it was under Islamic rule but still have Citizenship.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#19

I did a run at the (amateur) math off Google Finance and Crunchbase. With some companies I couldn't find's numbers outright omitted, and using old valuations, I totaled those corps filing as valued at $2.58 trillion in market cap., at least $131 billion of valuation and another $8 billion in investments in un-valuated companies. Assuming those investments hold value at least equal to the total worth of those companie…

It's hard to compare market caps to GDP because GDP is kind of like "aggregate value of everything produced this year" while a market cap is "estimated total profits for a company from now until the end of time." So you might have a company like Walmart with $200b in market cap but ~$500b in annual revenue (3% of GDP by itself!) and $15b in net income. On the other hand there are companies like Adobe with $60b market…

To be clear: it's not just hard, it is explicitly wrong.

A more correct measure is a much simpler one: the aggregate product of all these companies over the GDP. Note that this aggregate product is of course a component of the GDP, so you can express this neatly as a percentage. I see only one major accounting complication in constructing this metric, and that's the inclusion/exclusion of foreign products and subsidiaries. (See e.g. offshore revenues that are not repatriated, and therefore not part of the domestic product calculations -- I think?)

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense as Elon is a Trump advisor. Also interestingly missing: Amazon.

I believe Elon Musk is playing (once again) the ultra-long game. He is betting that the court system as well as Congress will limit Donald Trump and his cronies from doing something that is grounds for impeachment - and so Donald Trump will be in office for the entire term. Given this, it makes sense to be in a position that has at least a tiny bit of influence on Trump. Amazon has a similar position: they need large…

No large company is particularly keen to vocally oppose an administration, especially not one led by a person so demonstrably thin-skinned and vindictive as Trump. The complicated 'ultra long game' theory is just an attempt to think away the awful moral choice Musk has made - to collaborate with and enable an administration that deliberately stokes xenophobic and religious fears for political gain, at the cost of real and immediate harm to innocent people. It's just bad and not any kind of game at all.
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