
Saudi Backlash Threatens U.S. Startups - nradov
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-backlash-threatens-u-s-startups-1539707574
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cwkoss
The tone of this article is laughable. "Poor startups are having a hard time
because people are bullying them for something to which they are barely
connected"

No, taking blood money is a risk - and now a bunch of companies who took the
money and repetitional risk are now going to have to pay for the harmful
externalities of the greedy mindset: "we want money, doesn't matter the morals
attached to it"

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thatoneyouthrow
Throwaway on this one for obvious reasons.

Everyone makes mistakes and it is clearly a mistake to take money from
repressive regimes. The #metoo movement should take a look at some of these
companies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia)

~~~
enraged_camel
How easy or even feasible is it to track where the money is coming from? Let's
say you're a startup and a VC wants to invest in you. Can you ask for that
information?

~~~
supercanuck
Or they could go public and avoid the problem entirely. Let's not pretend
there aren't other alternatives.

Public, Open markets are there for a reason.

They cost more, but are more ethical.

~~~
vkou
> They cost more, but are more ethical.

They aren't.

If you go public, you have zero control of who owns your company. It's not
more ethical - it just launders your ethical responsibility.

There are plenty of people or organizations - who also happen to have a
horrific ethical record - who can buy shares in a private company. And there's
nothing you can do to stop that.

~~~
tartoran
I'd argue in this case with Saudi money that zero control is better than blood
money

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KerrickStaley
I think employees at companies that are backed by Saudi Arabia (via Saudi's
Public Investment Fund or indirectly via Softbank's Vision Fund) should feel
empowered to push back against upper management and ask them to refuse further
investment (easy) and/or work with other investors to buy out Saudi's share
(hard).

If you work at a company that's backed by Saudi Arabia, the proceeds of your
work are funneling up into the hands of an increasingly autocratic and
persistently repressive government. You have the power to do something about
it.

Disclosure: I work at Lyft, which has among its investors Al-Waleed bin Talal.
Al-Waleed bin Talal is a member of the Saudi royal family but (apparently)
does not have much influence in the current regime.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Morality only exists once you have a comfortable life and your basic needs are
met. When your life (and startup's) life depends on funding and you have spent
all your life saving's in bootstrapping your startup let me know how much you
would push back on Saudi money? And would you stop at Saudi but not Australia
which has a worse human rights records for minorities, lesser women
representation in parliament than even Saudi Arabia and much more xenophobic
than even the middle east countries? (Fox news has minority viewership in US
but Murdoch has close to 90% viewership in Australia)

For what it's worth, the West always had a myopic and sledge hammer approach
to solving these issues with threats and violence.

~~~
KerrickStaley
People won't want to use products that are backed by shady investors.
Employees won't want to work for companies that are backed by shady investors.
It's in the best interests of both company leadership and shareholding
employees to avoid affiliation with these bad actors. If the upper management
doesn't recognize that, it's up to the employees to raise the concern.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
[https://www.moral-relativism.com/](https://www.moral-relativism.com/)

Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions
of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's
individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves. You decide
what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me. Moral relativism
says, "It's true for me, if I believe it."

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dsfyu404ed
Caring about the politics of who you do business with is a two way street.
Other people will care about your politics. Not wanting do do business with
people who you don't like is perfectly reasonable but it's also a luxury.
There's a lot of shitty people and organizations in the world and you can't
not do business with all of them. The world needs oil and money a lot more
than it needs Uber for goldfish.

Unless there's some actual backlash I think this will blow over and thus far I
don't see any "actual backlash". The Google censorship thing barely touched
the evening news so I'm not gonna hold my breath.

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supercanuck
They chose Saudi blood money over public markets.

Let them reap what they sow. Hopefully this serves as a lesson to the next
generation of technology companies.

I don't have sympathy for these companies not doing due diligence and taking
money from despots.

~~~
babyloneleven
Saudis can invest in public markets too.

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mrkstu
I hope everyone who condemns the Saudis and those doing business w/them are
doing the same with those doing so with China.

China regularly disappears its citizens, and now openly is sending them by the
hundreds of thousands to re-education camps.

Xi and Prince Salman are two sides of the same coin and if you're comfortable
with one and not the other, you're just virtue signaling.

I'm just a IT guy at a business that doesn't have to do business with either
regime, so I don't care where people come down on this per se, other than
being tired of rampant hypocrisy.

~~~
dmode
There are some similarities, but there are VAST differences between China and
Saudi. In China, women's rights and conditions are far better than Saudi.
There are no restrictions on women driving or taking the subway or wearing
whatever they want or working wherever they want. China is miles ahead of
Saudi in equality. I am not sure about LGBT rights in China, but I will go out
on a limb and say that they are probably better than Saudi. And then the
spread of Wahhabism. China is not funding thousands of Madrasas in foreign
lands to spread extremist views. China is also investing massively in
renewable energy. China has its issues, but let's not conflate them with
Saudis.

~~~
ArchTypical
> China is miles ahead of Saudi in equality

That really has nothing to do with the issue of totalitarianism. Some people
are treated equal, some people are eliminated, so you get more equality? I
think China is just as immoral as SA.

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40acres
Hindsight is 20/20, but with so much cash flowing around in VC land there was
obviously a lot of "dark money" involved. Whether it's funding from sovereign
wealth funds of nations whose actions go against the overall beliefs of SV, or
dollars that were generated as a result of war and shady business practices
(tax evasion, etc.).

Many industries took a stand against conflict minerals, it was an action that
could be directly traced back to a very sympathetic group. Money is a
different beast, you can obscure its origin in many different ways.

At the end of the day the buck will stop with VCs and the entrepreneurs who
take their money. If you have a dream and your company needs cash to fulfill
that dream, how deep are you willing to go with due diligence to verify that
the check you've received isn't covered in blood? Motivated reasoning is a
hell of a drug.

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meuk
This is exactly the reason why the Saudi-Arabian _government_ will most likely
get away with killing and probably torturing an innocent man. This is
absolutely unheard of in any developed country.

Saudi-Arabia is filthy rich, and apparently, that makes murdering an American
citizen on Turkish ground legal. I feel disgusted, and everyone who does any
business whatsoever with the Saudi-Arabian government is a hypocrite.

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14
At some point people draw their line in the sand and would rather go without
then do business with an entity that goes against ones own beliefs and morals.
Unfortunate for the startups but in my opinion that is a risk you take when
entering a foreign market.

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rayvy
Anyone have the non-paywalled version?

~~~
thg
[https://outline.com/https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-
backl...](https://outline.com/https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-backlash-
threatens-u-s-startups-1539707574)

------
jballanc
I doubt this will be a popular opinion on HN, but...this is what comes of
libertarianism.

What is a government other than a group of people who agree to work together
toward certain goals and hold each other accountable to certain moral and
ethical standards? Yet somehow, "government" has become the enemy, a thing to
be done away with or reduced in scope.

When you do that, and replace government with "voted for with your dollars"
corporations, suddenly corporations become the standard bearers of morals and
ethics. Now, if I want to stand by my own moral code, I have to research every
corporation I interact with. Can't buy those shoes, they employ slave labor.
Can't hail this ride sharing service, they endorse autocratic regimes. Can't
rent an office over there, they eat meat...or whatever. It's exhausting!

I'd much rather go to the polls, cast a vote for someone who represents my
values, and have the government DO ITS JOB!

...but alas, that seems like the least likely thing that will happen in this
situation.

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cat199
not a libertarian, but what do the alleged actions of of a theocratic monarchy
have to do with the potential excesses of free market capitalism?

~~~
jballanc
Sorry if I was unclear. I didn't mean to link "libertarianism" and "despotic
theocratic monarchy", but rather "libertarianism" and "ethics via purchasing
power". Ideally, governments should be worried about ethics and businesses
should be worried about making money. Instead, in the US today we have
businesses worried about ethics and the government worried about making money.

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qwerty456127
I can see no problem in the very fact of taking money from whatever bad
people. The problem can only be in what do they want you to give in exchange.
As long as they can't force you to support their evil policies or do anything
to fulfill them, what's the problem with the money?

~~~
iscrewyou
Here’s one example: Because eventually they expect you to multiply that money
and then they can use that multiplied money to commit more crimes.

