Zenefits

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This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World by Yancey Strickler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, accelerated depreciation, Adam Curtis, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, business logic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dutch auction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, financial independence, gender pay gap, gentrification, global supply chain, Hacker News, housing crisis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Nash: game theory, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, Mr. Money Mustache, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, offshore financial centre, Parker Conrad, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Solyndra, stem cell, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, white flight, Zenefits

SCARED SUCCESSFUL During the Internet 2.0 era—which spanned about ten years and ended with the 2016 US presidential election—fast growth and big valuations defined the mainstream idea of success. In 2014, a New York Times article profiled an HR software start-up called Zenefits, which, the lead sentence explains, is “one of the fastest-growing companies in recent Silicon Valley history.” The profile glowingly notes the company’s fast growth, A-list Silicon Valley investors, and a recent $4.5 billion “unicorn” valuation. Zenefits was the newest zeitgeist-shaking success. But in the article, Zenefits’ founder and CEO, a man named Parker Conrad, gives a series of startling quotes that clash with the breathless tone. While the Times and investors quoted in the article celebrate the company’s growth, here’s how Conrad describes it: “Even when we think things are going well, it always feels like the wheels are ready to come off the cart.”

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This is perfectly encapsulated in the story’s headline: “Zenefits’ Leader Is Rattling an Industry, So Why Is He Stressed Out?” Why was Conrad stressed? Because Zenefits was a quickly growing service that aggressively raised nearly half a billion dollars in venture capital money based on that growth, and then had to keep delivering those growth rates—or better—for the foreseeable future. A year later Conrad was fired for violating state regulations to keep it up. The Times reported that the company’s board members had been pushing for faster growth. Though extreme, the story of Zenefits is not unusual. To fulfill the hyperexpectations that investors and others have, people run themselves ragged and take dubious shortcuts to get there.

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Ryan, found that as people focused on extrinsic values (status, money, etc.) rather than intrinsic values (self-acceptance, belonging, community connection), the more unhappy they were (“Further Examining the American Dream: Differential Correlates of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Goals,” March 1996). “recent Silicon Valley history”: The New York Times story about Zenefits ran on September 20, 2014. pushing for faster growth: Eighteen months later, the New York Times profiled Zenefits’ downfall as well (“Zenefits Scandal Highlights Perils of Hypergrowth at Start-Ups,” February 17, 2016). “it does seem like a rational decision”: Andrew Mason’s comments about Groupon were reported by New York Magazine (“The Super-Quick Rise and Even Faster Fall of Groupon,” October 2018).

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anne Wojcicki, artificial general intelligence, bank run, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Build a better mousetrap, California gold rush, cashless society, colonial rule, computer age, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, deep learning, digital nomad, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Extropian, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fake news, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, hacker house, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, intentional community, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, obamacare, Parker Conrad, passive income, patent troll, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-work, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, RFID, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social software, software as a service, source of truth, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, technological singularity, technoutopianism, telepresence, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize, Y Combinator, Zenefits

(He never explained why it was illegal: because brokers who received kickbacks from insurance companies would have every incentive to push worse policies on their clients, ultimately screwing over everybody who paid premiums.) However, Zenefits found a loophole. It was, in Conrad’s opinion anyway, not explicitly illegal for a broker—which Zenefits was—to provide its clients with free software and services—as Zenefits did—while at the same time receiving compensation from insurance providers that might otherwise be illegal. Because its clients weren’t paying Zenefits to act as an insurance broker, the compensation was kosher … or so Conrad hoped. In most states, insurance regulators failed to notice Zenefits’ egregious end run around consumer protection rules. But Utah regulators did notice.

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“I was like, ‘Uh-oh, maybe we’re going to be in really big trouble here.’” It didn’t help, perhaps, that he had announced his intentions onstage at the highest-profile startup competition in the world, TechCrunch Disrupt. But where there was cash, there was hope. Coached by the investors who had poured $84 million into the startup, Zenefits “went to the mat” with the government of Utah. Zenefits staged a petition and made itself a techie cause célèbre. Then the company hired “some folks” in Utah, as Conrad put it, to “kind of help us out on the ground and make introductions so that we could sort of plead our case to the various different legislators.” Those folks included at least five lobbyists, including the former deputy mayor of Salt Lake County (“a confidant to many lawmakers”); the former head of the state’s largest political fundraising committee; and the former executive director of the Utah Republican Party.

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Startup entrepreneurs describe their schemes in detail to investors hoping to buy in to the next epic heist. Should these founders run into any trouble, the investors have the money, know-how, and connections to fight the law and win. It’s the perfect crime—when it works. In a 2013 Shark Tank–style live investor pitch, the founder of a startup called Zenefits, Parker Conrad, feistily promised “to mess stuff up for two very large industries”—insurance and human resources. “If you’re an insurance broker,” Conrad explained, “we’re going to drink your milkshake.” The catchphrase was borrowed from the ruthless oilman portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, who uttered it shortly before murdering a business rival.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Burning Man, California gold rush, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, company town, data science, David Brooks, deal flow, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, game design, gender pay gap, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hacker News, high net worth, Hyperloop, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microservices, Parker Conrad, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, pull request, reality distortion field, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Zenefits

The list of “begats” goes on. Sacks went on to become COO of the fast-growing HR software start-up Zenefits. When the founder of Zenefits, Parker Conrad, was kicked out amid accusations of cheating state compliance regulations and creating a bro-y culture that led to “sex in the stairwells,” according to an internal memo, Sacks was promoted to CEO. Sacks promptly brought in Peter Thiel as a board member. Even though the valuation of Zenefits was slashed amid the cheating scandal, it still reached $2 billion. (Sacks has since left Zenefits.) And this is just a partial list. The PayPal Mafia became so dominant that in 2017 Adam Pisoni—an entrepreneur who never worked at PayPal but was recruited by Sacks to be his Yammer co-founder—cited what he called the Mafia’s “dynastic privilege” as “one of the major contributors to the lack of diversity” in Silicon Valley.

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“This is college journalism written over 20 years ago”: Kara Swisher, “Zenefits CEO David Sacks Apologizes for Parts of a 1996 Book He Co-wrote with Peter Thiel That Called Date Rape ‘Belated Regret,’” Recode, Oct. 24, 2016, https://www.recode.net/2016/10/24/13395798/zenefits-ceo-david-sacks-apologizes-1996-book-co-wrote-peter-thiel-date-rape-belated-regret. “I do believe in diversity”: David Sacks, “Zenefits CEO on Closing the Chapter on Compliance Issues,” interview by author, Bloomberg, Oct. 18, 2016, video, 12:23, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-10-18/zenefits-ceo-on-closing-the-chapter-on-compliance-issues.

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Except for the office manager, who was female: Jodi Kantor, “A Brand New World in Which Men Ruled,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/23/us/gender-gaps-stanford-94.html. “I think there is this way”: Thiel, interview by author, Bloomberg, Dec. 18, 2014. “of the six people”: Thiel, Zero to One, 173. “I ended up recruiting”: Ibid. “sex in the stairwells”: Rolfe Winkler, “Zenefits Once Told Employees: No Sex in Stairwells,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 22, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/zenefits-once-told-employees-no-sex-in-stairwells-1456183097. Mafia’s “dynastic privilege”: Adam Pisoni, “In Defense of Diverse Founding Teams,” Medium, Jan. 12, 2017, https://medium.com/@adampisoni/in-defense-of-diverse-founding-teams-e9f0b5b81f25.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 90 percent rule, Adam Neumann (WeWork), adjacent possible, Airbnb, Apple II, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Bob Noyce, book value, business process, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Didi Chuxing, digital map, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dutch auction, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, family office, financial engineering, future of work, game design, George Gilder, Greyball, guns versus butter model, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Masayoshi Son, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, microdosing, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, mortgage debt, move fast and break things, Network effects, oil shock, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, plutocrats, power law, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, super pumped, superconnector, survivorship bias, tech worker, Teledyne, the long tail, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban decay, UUNET, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Vision Fund, wealth creators, WeWork, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Zenefits

But by 2016 the company was careening off track, missing revenue targets by a mile and reportedly violating insurance laws in at least seven states.[5] Amid embarrassment and scandal, the firm’s valuation was slashed by more than half, from $4.5 billion to $2 billion. The Zenefits story did have one redeeming feature. Andreessen Horowitz, being a real venture firm, quickly ejected the Zenefits founder when the legal problems surfaced. A new chief executive was installed, and the corporate motto changed from “ready, fire, aim” to “operate with integrity.”[6] But it was easy to imagine a hybrid of the Zenefits and Theranos cases in which a hands-on venture shop invested alongside passive financiers. The passive financiers might be amateurish outsiders, as in the Theranos example.

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See Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech (New York: Penguin Press, 2017). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2 Carreyrou, Bad Blood, 16. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3 William Alden, “How Zenefits Crashed Back Down to Earth,” BuzzFeed, Feb. 18, 2016. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 William Alden, “Startup Zenefits Under Scrutiny For Flouting Insurance Laws,” BuzzFeed, Sept. 25, 2015. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5 Rolfe Winkler, “Zenefits Touts New Software in Turnaround Effort,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 18, 2016. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6 Wondery, “WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork | Episode 1: In the Beginning There Was Adam,” Jan. 30, 2020, YouTube, youtube.com/watch?

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Seasoned venture capitalists might hope to avoid similar disasters, but they could hardly count on doing so. In 2014, Andreessen Horowitz had led two investment rounds in an online insurance startup called Zenefits. The company had become one of a16z’s largest positions, and the partnership had agitated for growth: later, the founder recalled his a16z board member barking, “You guys gotta get your heads out of your asses, start focusing on going big here.”[4] Goaded to expand by all means possible, Zenefits attained a valuation of $4.5 billion in the extraordinarily short period of just over a year. But by 2016 the company was careening off track, missing revenue targets by a mile and reportedly violating insurance laws in at least seven states.[5] Amid embarrassment and scandal, the firm’s valuation was slashed by more than half, from $4.5 billion to $2 billion.

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Tom Eisenmann

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, call centre, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, clean tech, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, drop ship, Elon Musk, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, growth hacking, Hyperloop, income inequality, initial coin offering, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, Network effects, nuclear winter, Oculus Rift, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, performance metric, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk/return, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software as a service, Solyndra, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

Hem was subsequently sold: Ingrid Lunden, “Hem.com Is on the Block; Swiss Furniture Maker Vitra Likely Buyer,” TechCrunch, Dec. 30, 2015. “I allowed silos”: Shontell, “Tech Titanic.” Uber, for example: Kate Taylor and Benjamin Goggin, “49 of the Biggest Scandals in Uber’s History,” Business Insider website, May 10, 2019. Zenefits, a licensed health insurance broker: Claire Suddath and Eric Newcomer, “Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup. Then It Self-Disrupted,” Bloomberg Businessweek, May 9, 2016. It helps to have a radar detector: The origins of the RAWI test are shrouded in mystery, but I believe my HBS colleague Shikhar Ghosh should be credited with the invention, with some assistance from me, Felda Hardymon, Toby Stuart, and other members of our teaching group for the required HBS MBA course on entrepreneurship.

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Middle managers start to wonder if senior management really knows what’s going on and what needs to be done—especially since the CEO is spending so much time out of the office, trying to raise more capital. Step 9: Ethical Lapses. Sometimes, the relentless pressure to sustain growth leads entrepreneurs to cut legal, regulatory, or ethical corners. Uber, for example, was accused of encouraging its employees to book and then cancel rides with its rival, Lyft. Zenefits, a licensed health insurance broker, created software that allegedly allowed its new salespeople to cheat on state licensing exams to sustain the startup’s rapid growth. At Fab, however, Goldberg avoided this ethical slippery slope. Step 10: Investor Alarm. As the venture burns through cash, its stock price declines.

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We’ll explore these questions in Chapter 10, which lays out the moves entrepreneurs can make if they think they are on a path toward failure. Variations on these themes play out over and over among startups that scale too quickly. Some survive by trimming head count, cutting marketing, and refocusing on more loyal and profitable customer segments. Birchbox, Blue Apron, Groupon, Zenefits, and Zynga are examples. However, for Fab and many other startups, such as Beepi, Homejoy, Munchery, and Nasty Gal, the Speed Trap is fatal. The RAWI Test How to avoid or safely pass through a Speed Trap? It helps to have a radar detector, and for entrepreneurs, that is the RAWI test.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us by Dan Lyons

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

Local tour guides now sell “innovation tours,” shuttling visitors around on buses to visit start-ups. In 2017 on one trip to San Francisco I met a group of German businessmen whose companies had sent them on a two-week safari. When I met them, Zenefits, one of the hottest unicorns, had just booted out its CEO, Parker Conrad, in a scandal that involved allegations of cheating on licensing tests and letting unlicensed brokers sell insurance policies, as well as having an out-of-control frat-boy party culture. (Conrad and Zenefits would later settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that they misled investors; they paid a fine but did not admit or deny wrongdoing.)

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AOL-Time Warner, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deplatforming, Donald Trump, drone strike, fake news, Filter Bubble, Frank Gehry, full stack developer, future of journalism, hype cycle, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, lolcat, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, moral panic, obamacare, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, public intellectual, reality distortion field, Robert Mercer, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, slashdot, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, subscription business, tech worker, TikTok, traveling salesman, WeWork, WikiLeaks, young professional, Zenefits

The downtown New York scene by now was a distant memory. The 2010s were, for many, a regret. Marc Andreessen, in particular, later told others he was remorseful about ever investing in BuzzFeed. He’d come to believe that BuzzFeed News and I had taken a hard line on one of his companies, a failed insurance startup called Zenefits, specifically in order to prove our independence from him. The thought hadn’t crossed our minds; we hadn’t thought, or realized, he was that important, though by 2022 his and Chris Dixon’s massive investments in cryptocurrency had made them both even larger players in American life. Others who had gotten on the bandwagon a little late had regrets too.

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, 69, 74, 106, 196, 202, 286 Yelp, 66 Yiannopoulos, Milo, 293–94 YouTube and BuzzFeed’s news and social content, 167 and BuzzFeed’s video content, 264–65 and Contagious Media Showdown, 49 and devaluation of traffic, 267 and Gionet, 292, 295 and Jezebel’s style and content, 96 and Maker Studios sale, 201 and Ozy’s traffic manipulation, 285–86 and Peretti’s speeches, 200 and shifting media environment, 128 and social engagement on Facebook, 272–73 and Upworthy, 181 Z Zaleski, Katharine, 107 Zenefits, 299 Zuckerberg, Mark and backlash against progressive activism, 132 and BuzzFeed’s news and social content, 160–64 and BuzzFeed’s traffic growth, 205–8 and Daulerio’s background, 138–39 and Facebook’s dominance of social media, 270 and Hughes’s background, 109 and origin of social media politics, 114–15 and privacy issues at Facebook, 141–42 and social engagement on Facebook, 271–73, 275–76 SPAC deal, 303 and Thiel’s investment, 85 and Upworthy, 182, 184 and Valleywag’s launch, 65 and Yahoo!’

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin

3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, anti-communist, bank run, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Boeing 747, borderless world, Cambridge Analytica, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Brooks, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Extropian, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Frank Gehry, Gavin Belson, global macro, Gordon Gekko, Greyball, growth hacking, guest worker program, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, helicopter parent, hockey-stick growth, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, life extension, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, moral panic, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, operational security, PalmPilot, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, Peter Gregory, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, social distancing, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, techlash, technology bubble, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the new new thing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vitalik Buterin, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Y2K, yellow journalism, Zenefits

“what they want to hear”: Julia Carrie Wong, “Peter Thiel, Who Gave $1.25 Million to Trump, Has Called Date Rape ‘Belated Regret,’ ” The Guardian, October 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/21/peter-thiel-support-donald-trump-date-rape-book; Ryan Mac and Matt Drange, “Donald Trump Supporter Peter Thiel Apologizes for Past Book Comments on Rape,” Forbes, October 25, 2016; Kara Swisher, “Zenefits CEO David Sacks Apologizes for Parts of a 1996 Book He Co-wrote with Peter Thiel That Called Date Rape “Belated Regret,’ ” Recode, October 24, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/10/24/13395798/zenefits-ceo-david-sacks-apologizes-1996-book-co-wrote-peter-thiel-date-rape-belated-regret; Andrew Granato, “How Peter Thiel and the Stanford Review Built a Silicon Valley Empire,” Stanford Politics, November 27, 2017, https://stanfordpolitics.org/2017/11/27/peter-thiel-cover-story/.

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil by Hamish McKenzie

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Ben Horowitz, business climate, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, Colonization of Mars, connected car, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, gigafactory, Google Glasses, Hyperloop, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, megacity, Menlo Park, Nikolai Kondratiev, oil shale / tar sands, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Solyndra, South China Sea, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, Zenefits, Zipcar

The so-called PayPal Mafia includes Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn; Max Levchin, whose most recent of several start-ups is the financial services company Affirm; Peter Thiel, a Facebook board member and President Trump–supporting venture capitalist who cofounded “big data” company Palantir; Jeremy Stoppelman, who started reviews site Yelp; Keith Rabois, who was chief operating officer at Square and then joined Khosla Ventures; David Sacks, who sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion and later became CEO at Zenefits; Jawed Karim, who cofounded YouTube; and one Elon Musk. In a similar way, Tesla alumni are involved with many of the ventures that make up Silicon Valley’s new-auto ecosystem. Ian Wright, the founder of Wrightspeed, was one of Tesla’s five founders and left the company in 2005. Proterra’s CEO is Ryan Popple, a former senior finance director at Tesla (he left in 2010).

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland

agricultural Revolution, Alexander Shulgin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Burning Man, classic study, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Drosophila, experimental economics, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, hive mind, invention of agriculture, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, lateral thinking, lockdown, lone genius, meta-analysis, microdosing, Picturephone, placebo effect, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, search costs, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Zenefits

(2014). “Modernity, Tradition, and Intoxication: Comparative Lessons from South Africa and West Africa.” In Phil Withington and Angela McShane (Eds.), Cultures of Intoxication, Past and Present (Vol. 222, pp. 126–145). Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Brien, Sara Ashley. (2016, February 26). “Zenefits Lays Off 250 Employees.” CNN. O’Brien, Sara Ashley. (2018, October 31). “WeWork to Limit Free Beer All-Day Perk to Four Glasses.” CNN. O’Connor, Anahad. (2020, July 10). “Should We Be Drinking Less? Scientists Helping to Update the Latest Edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Are Taking a Harder Stance on Alcohol.”

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Burning Man, business logic, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Didi Chuxing, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Elon Musk, financial engineering, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greensill Capital, hockey-stick growth, housing crisis, index fund, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Larry Ellison, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Maui Hawaii, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plant based meat, post-oil, railway mania, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, supply chain finance, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, Zenefits, Zipcar

That monsoon of money trickled through everyday life in San Francisco, the new capital of Silicon Valley startups. The city quickly became a terrarium of money-losing startups that turned former jewelry and rug storage spots into buzzy offices with Ping-Pong tables and macchiato stations. Employees at VC-funded HR software companies (Zenefits) would line up for lunch at VC-backed salad purveyors (Sweetgreen) and stop for coffee at VC-backed coffee shops (Philz), wearing VC-backed wool sneakers (Allbirds). They’d get rides for well below their cost from unprofitable ride-hail companies (Uber) or park their cars below cost with unprofitable on-demand valets (Luxe).