81–90 of 264 posts
I hate it when, just because something becomes a big media story (I.e. Saudi Arabia killing a journalist) everyone comes out of the woodwork “oh dear! How can we not do business with these people?” When in fact, it’s been going on for decades and nobody gave a shit... until now, when giving a shit can firm up your virtue signaling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t claim to have entirely clean hands in this regard. When we sold our Twitter stock before the IPO many years ago, it turned out the buyer was fronting for gulf interests. I found that out after the fact but that doesn’t absolve me of anything. I could have asked the questions before executing the sale. ^^ That's why. He's "raising the bar" after making money through means that he would find despicable now. "…
People do change. Calling it posturing is premature judgement.
Pretty much every single comment so far is cynical. "No one really wants to know how the sausage is made", lots of money is tainted anyway, it's just PR fluff, etc etc. The classic HN Middlebrow Dismissal in full effect. Counterpoint: cynicism is too easy. Actually giving a shit is harder, it's uncomfortable, it involves compromise. Yes, if you refuse investment from any country that has ever violated a human right,…
Ben Hunt pointedly said in his recent article [0]: "With Saudi Arabia, the ubiquitous private information was that Saudi Arabia is a thug state and their Crown Prince MBS is a wannabe Bond villain. But no one acted AS IF they knew this until a Missionary event – in this case Turkey’s very public denunciations of the Saudi government’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi – turned that private information into common knowledge,…
The thing is, international politics is really hard. I'm pretty sure that it makes sense to track where your money is coming from but every single country is going to have a different set of "worst offenders", and you will see that the list carry a lot of political interest. I mean, we're looking at Erdogan [1] pointing the finger at the Saudi's about how they're a ruthless regime.
Hell, go back 10 years and even the Saudi were in the other side of this hardball game, what changed from there?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
The question posed by the CEO in question, while valid, is futile --verging on naive. To really mean it, you'll refuse: money, investment and goods from China, Russia, Gulf, many African countries, Latin America, etc. to such an extent so as to bring the world economy to a virtual standstill. In addition to refusing money also No Oil from Saudi, Venezuela, Russia, or Goods from China, Minerals from Africa... It's wel…
Whereas, there are plenty of Chinese people who are not directly responsible for human rights violations. Does Jack Ma have more blood on his hands than Bill Gates?
Failure to recognize shades of gray serves no good, either.
I've been following Fred Wilson for a long time (like many others!), and I have a feeling that he genuinely cares, despite not enjoying full freedom on what to say and do, because that's the compromise you accept when you take money from others. This topic, "Who are my investors?", is incredibly important, potentially complex, and hard to judge or evaluate fully. Let me try to share my thoughts. Your job as a VC is t…
It's very hard to believe that SV has to rely on "dirty" money to survive. Those tech VCs appear to be a politically-homogeneous group, which lives and works in a specific city. It sounds like something that is very much doable, tbh. And if SV cannot vet the money they rely on, how do they have the audacity to speak out in unison on situations like Trump or Theranos.
"“Bad actors” doesn’t simply mean money from rulers in the gulf who turn out to be cold blooded killers." - like we all did not know that before the referenced event?
As other commenter pointed out, we don't have enough information to judge the situation beyond reasonable doubt. MBS was selling himself as a reformer and everybody deserves a benefit of a doubt. Maybe it was of one the generals that decided to kill the journalist. Why would MBS risk all the deals he has made and about to made? Oil doesn't give him that much leverage right now and sanctions could topple the governmen…