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Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

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Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#111

Post by _DeadFred_ »

acdha wrote: post #107
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' hav…

> 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 thing…

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.

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#112

Post by yowlingcat »

inshard wrote: post #104
yowlingcat wrote: post #16

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 sal…

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.

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#113

Post by techblueberry »

yowlingcat wrote: post #103
almostgotcaught wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

After the sentence you quoted, what does the very next sentence say?

Maguire has identified as Jewish, with ancestral ties to early Jewish settlers in California.

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#114

Post by acdha »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #111
acdha wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thing…

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…

> 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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya#Contemporary_debate

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.

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#115

Post by almostgotcaught »

yowlingcat wrote: post #103
almostgotcaught wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

After the sentence you quoted, what does the very next sentence say?

Lol that he has a PhD? So either you think

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.

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#116

Post by keeda »

prewett wrote: post #109
keeda wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> 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…

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.

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#117

Post by _DeadFred_ »

acdha wrote: post #114
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

[flagged]

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#118

Post by [deleted] »

iotsloppyo wrote: post #92
whycome wrote: post #18

> 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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire's comments about Mamdani

#120

Post by croes »

762236 wrote: post #106
croes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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.

But go one, try to downplay those lied too https://orangemanslies.com/trumps-lies

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