
The Death of a Dreamer - fullshark
https://quillette.com/2019/01/30/the-death-of-a-dreamer/
======
alevskaya
I have the misfortune of having cofounded Cambrian Genomics with Austen. I led
all of our technical work. I have almost never spoken publicly about the
experience.

Cambrian Genomics was a small team working on building a high-throughput DNA
cloning and synthesis pipeline using high-throughput sequencing and laser
processing tools. That’s all we ever worked on, none of this other crazy
stuff. We achieved an amazing amount of technical innovations on a shoestring
budget and tiny staff - internally it was an amazing experience.

In the beginning Austen was the right amount of crazy for an early startup
CEO, but as we grew he never matured as a person or founder and became ever
more erratic in public. In the last year of our existence and his life he
oscillated in full bipolar fashion between insane manic episodes where he
talked on stages and to investors about glowing cat feces, feminine microbio
hygiene products, terraforming mars, etc. All in defiance of the rest of us in
the company.

He was clinically unhinged, though I don’t blame the press for not knowing
that. His statements made himself a target… and when the PR machines turned
against him he fell apart as a person and became a ghost. I tried everything I
could to fix the mess, save the company, and help him out of it, but we came
in one morning to find that he had hung himself in our office as a final
parting gesture.

He might have been a dreamer, but he was also a narcissist and a jerk. He
destroyed everything we had set out to do with his behavior and he never
thought about anyone but himself.

To the young entrepreneurs: don’t be content to be a dreamer, and don’t be
content to work with “dreamers”. Find builders with the strength, character,
and vision to see things through... and if you ever feel the darkness closing
around you in a startup, know that you really can walk away. Seek counsel. The
end of a company should not be the end of your life.

~~~
lioeters
Thanks for sharing your experience - what a lesson!

------
dang
One thread about this from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077147).
I feel like there were others at the time.

p.s.: if you're going to comment, please steer clear of the black hole of
ideological battle. It's predictable, therefore boring, therefore off topic.
Whatever is of interest is in the specific story.

------
whatshisface
The media suffers from the same problem as the people who watch it, they're
inseparable as a system. The problem is that everything has to fit in to the
stories you already have running in your head. Nobody hits this limitation
harder than people with new ideas and the capability to do new things. In the
case of this victim, the new thing was GMO diagnostic tools, and the story
that was already running in everybody's heads (if you permit me the liberty of
guessing) was "nerds and women are fundamentally opposed on a metaphysical
level."

This has a very practical takeaway for HN: if you ever find yourself pitching
or selling, the question you need to be asking is, "how has my audience
already thought of this idea."

~~~
Jun8
I agree. This is exemplified by the author of the original piece that started
the media storm, Jeff Bercovici himself, in his sorry excuse of an apologetic
article after the suicide ([https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/austen-
heinz.html](https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/austen-heinz.html)):

"I didn't know anything about Austen Heinz when I met him, except that his
behavior seemed to confirm certain notions I had about the way young men in
the tech industry too often behave. To wit: They're oblivious to the concerns
of women, and blind to their own biases; they talk endlessly about changing
the world with technology while building frivolous things; they're arrogant
and lacking in tact. I had a mental box marked "Silicon Valley tech bro" and
his chatter about making women's sex organs more aesthetically pleasing fit
neatly into it."

I didn't know anything about about Bercovici until this post on HN but his
writing seems to confirm certain notions I have about the way clueless tech
media people like him cover "entrepreneurship and innovation" in the Valley
(this guy is now SF bureau chef of Inc., BTW) in their trigger-happy, zero-
research way. His "breezy article" not only greatly harmed Austen Heinz but
also seems to have done so for Audrey Hutchinson, the founder of Sweet Peach,
who, after 4 years is now a manager in a NYC art gallery. I hope the clicks
Inc. and other media outlets got out of this thread were worth it.

And so the bias wars continue to take their toll.

~~~
trhway
> Jeff Bercovici himself

so this guy and his followers didn't like suggestion of peach odor. Yet i
don't see any outrage from him and the likes about "tropical rain" or french
vanilla for example:

[https://vagipal.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=59](https://vagipal.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=59)

googling "vaginal deodorant" brings a lot, including various vaginal
yogurts/probiotics, aromatized and not, intended to fight the bacteria and
yeast infections and the resulting bad odor.

So, what was the original noise about beyond the peach odor?

~~~
gldnspud
It seems that the Sweet Peach company was doing something that had nothing to
do with scents or deodorants, but instead were doing something with microbiome
analysis and personalized health products. Then it was misrepresented by
investors (to the surprise of Sweet Peach's founder), which was then blindly
parroted by Bercovici.

------
h0l0cube
Was he being sexist? Or was his detractors being ableist? I can't be sure
whether Heinz lives on the autistic spectrum, but so many gifted intellectuals
do, and have real struggles with reading other people (let alone the crowd).
It's ironic when loudmouths come out of the woodwork and call a socially-
awkward ASD as 'tone-deaf', or just go ahead and use 'autistic' in the
pejorative, often by 'well-intentioned' people fighting for some other brand
of identity politics. It's hard to gauge whether the vitriol would be tempered
if they knew they might be driving someone of great sensitivity to suicide, or
if there truly is blood-lust driving this kind of collective outrage. In
hindsight, it's pretty obvious he should not have been the public face of his
own enterprise, but I hope one day we all learn to cut people a little slack.

~~~
whatshisface
> _Was he being sexist? Or was his detractors being ableist?_

Or option three, the entire thing was based on a mis-portrayal of an idea that
might not have been that great to start with, but wasn't really _wrong_ in a
"we must bring justice" sense. This article, at least, makes the initial
coverage seem pretty unfair. Most people in this thread, myself included, are
tending to make this a discussion about spectrum disorders, but it's also
worth remembering that this could happen to you or I if we ever end up in an
unlucky combination of being off the well-beaten path, in violation of a
social norm that is one of newly invented, not universal or applied
retroactively, and receiving an uncharitable interpretation from the first
person to write about us. The Public Death Squad can be called down on
_anyone_ , and having a natural propensity towards saying the wrong things
only makes it more likely. It could also happen if you ever find yourself
knowingly going against social norms because your goal is to change them.

~~~
Mirioron
Furthermore, it's not like products that alter the smell of _any_ body part
are unheard of. So I'm definitely leaning towards a misportrayal. Outrage
culture is _dangerous_ and the people wielding this to do harm need to have
some accountability.

------
ebcode
I see a couple take-aways here. The first is that it hardly matters what the
"real story" is (about an endeavor/person/etc), it's what the media reports
the story as being --- and that's the story that is going to cause the most
outrage/grief, and sell the most advertisements. So if the story is outrageous
on the face of it, that story is most likely not the "real story".

The other is that if you're going to say/do anything substantial (these
days/online), you're going to need very thick skin to withstand the barrage of
verbal and textual hate that will be directed at you by "the internet".

~~~
whatshisface
> _and that 's the story that is going to cause the most outrage/grief, and
> sell the most advertisements._

I'm not sure if it's that calculated. What it looks like to me is that one
journalist writes a poorly thought through hot take, and then everyone else
copies the article without really thinking about it themselves either. There's
a bias towards mainstream storytelling because the journalist that writes the
original hot take is usually immersed in the mainstream.

~~~
lazyjones
It is calculated. Publications like the Daily Mail are famous for trying to
come up with the most outrageous headline (however distorted in meaning) about
anything - and admittedly, they‘ve become really good at it.

------
kendallpark
> Most of the news outlets now attacking Heinz and Gome were quintessential
> products of the internet age, relying for much of their survival on the
> sowing and harvesting of moral outrage.

"Sowing and harvesting of moral outrage" is a great metaphor.

~~~
shaki-dora
And yet, this article is also just profiting from moral outrage, as
exemplified by the near-universal blanket disparagement of journalism and “the
media” in this thread.

~~~
kendallpark
Moral outrage all the way down, I guess. The irony.

------
archibaldJ
This is my first time reading about Cambrian Genomics and the story of Austen
Heinz. I am extremely impressed by the ingenuity in such a neatly coupling of
ambition and execution - it was as if at the age of 27 Austen had managed to
secure almost all the right puzzle pieces to co-found a high-impact start-up
that will change the world - and of course tremendously startled by what
happened after the DEMO Labs incident which led to his death. It was so wrong
on many levels.

There is a surrealistic irony about the nature of Austin's synthetic dream
which does not quite entertain the idea of messy nature and the notion of
fault tolerance and, that, in my humble opinion, is the fundamental trait
which would enable one to realise the greatest dreams such as that of
Austin's. On the contrary the synthetic dream puts a great emphasis on
purpose-orientated design and doesn't appear to care about the process of
evolution, least fault tolerance, and that, in my humble opinion again, is
often what people need the most when they are depressed (it will be nice to
see more cognitive research done on the development of this trait and its
interplay with the depressive state of mind).

Rest in peace, Austen Heinz. Your accomplishments are very inspiring and it
was very sad that things turned out this way. There are so much we can learn
from the mad unfolding of chaos and this tragedy of yours would continue to
serve as a post-mortem precautionary tale for the future generations of
aspiring young entrepreneurs.

------
DoctorOetker
1) yes, the big spotlight was a ridicule fest

2) but, essentially that which was ridiculed was the person's actual inability
to read / estimate / understand the market demand: the facts are that he did
repeatedly try to convince the Sweet Peach founder to have the product express
a peach scent. It seems like this person was highly skilled in the technology,
but incorrectly believed the rest of the world was more superficial than it
was, and he seemed to genuinely believe people would want this feature (i.e. a
nerd trying to serve an imaginary set of users, who are not representative of
the intended users, a kind of bias or prejudice of nerds towards the rest of
society)

3) As an investor, it probably _is discomforting_ to realize that the person
who runs a company can be so substantially out of touch with the intended
consumer. I genuinely believe he could have easily regained their trust by
taking on a different role, or by having a more capable person lead the
determination of the product goals and requirements.

~~~
whatshisface
The point is that hovering over every nerd in a position of power is the
potential to accidentally turn yourself into a universally despised social
pariah overnight; and when that happens the flames will be stoked
professionally by the media. Nobody thinks for a second that nerds don't say
stuff that's "kind of weird" regularly, that's what makes them nerds. The real
discussion here is, do we want to hound people to death for that? Recent
memory is littered with similar examples, although they are usually heavily
politicized so I won't link them for fear of degrading the discussion.

The recipe for death is, 1. be on the spectrum or have a bad day, 2. speak in
public, and 3. get unlucky. To put it as viscerally as possible, the only flaw
that guarantees you'll never be assigned any power isn't incompetence, it's
autism. This all leads to a very clear implication for leaders in tech: if you
don't want to be surrounded by empty smooth talkers, you need to dial your
sensitivity to "kind of weird" versus "seems like a great guy" way down,
because the factory default hands the keys to the kingdom to whoever asks for
them most nicely.

------
9099thr
First time I read about this, but I was involved in a related project and
ideas. What freaks me a bit is that I wrote a short fiction story about that
project and from all the possible names I picked "Internet of Smells". Is here
[1] or archived [2].

[1] [https://telegra.ph/Internet-of-Smells-04-26](https://telegra.ph/Internet-
of-Smells-04-26)

[2] [https://archive.is/Ir9GG](https://archive.is/Ir9GG)

~~~
9099thr
I come back with an update because the link [2] appears to be blocked due to a
request from EU IRU. As that is a fiction around a project which is fully OA
and OS and moreover my name is not hidden in that page, I have no idea what
happens and I want to understand why.

~~~
9099thr
Problem solved, I can't edit the last post. Everything OK.

------
motohagiography
While I thought part of the solution would be to cite the individual
journalists who made these claims against him, but having written
professionally, often even the writers do not have copy approval on their
stories before publication.

There are some terrible people writing these days, but a relatively anonymous
editor slipping in something awful, ideological, or vicious under someones
byline is quite common. If you don't play ball, you don't work again.

The way Heintz is described, I've encountered similar personalities among
people we might describe as super high IQ (a kind of narrow dimension
intelligence) where it's like you're a millionaire in a currency almost nobody
accepts, and the meta-problem of how to apply and deploy that wealth leads to
recklessness, paranoia, and seeking out self destruction.

This was a sad story about a clear trajectory of decline, but one facilitated
and enabled by journalists.

------
rdtsc
> The irony of the new digital world that’s enabled the rise of these kinds of
> incidents is that it relies for its success on some of our most ancient
> characteristics. We’re tribal, and we’re wired to want to punish, sometimes
> savagely, those who transgress the codes of our in-group.

There is something interesting there. It lines up with what I observed as
well. There is a pleasure in publicly taking down an opponent. There are two
things going on there - one is simply defeating the "enemy" so one less
problematic person to worry about. The other, more sinister pleasure is
getting approval and adoration from "friends". Remove the audience, and it's
just not as fun anymore.

The other problem is the audience is not just the local village, but basically
everyone on the internet today and the future potentially. Everyone is
watching, commenting, liking, up-voting and so on. Pleasing them all is very a
nice high. And well you also have to be first. No waiting around or somebody
"braver" and quicker will jump in front. Even better, you can do it wearing
pajamas too. No need to go out in the cold, sharpen the pitchfork, look for
the torch in the barn and so on.

If the enemy is not there, no big deal, there are usually ideological
frameworks already built to generate easy "targets". Here the stupid comment
meant that he hates all women, and is sexist, and is a tech-bro and deserves
to be eliminated. Other such frameworks from the past were about communists,
anti-communists (in ex-Soviet union), witches, terrorists and many others. If
you hated your neighbor's haircut for example, you could write a letter to the
police saying they engaged in anti-state propaganda and there was a good
chance their life would be ruined forever. There is a similar mechanism at
play here as well. There was another recent example with red hat wearing
teenagers and the media and Twitter mess that followed. It's just becoming the
norm and it's disappointing to see.

~~~
lazyjones
> _The other problem is the audience is not just the local village, but
> basically everyone on the internet today and the future potentially.
> Everyone is watching, commenting, liking, up-voting and so on_

One can blame the Internet for many things, but in this case, it didn’t
contribute anything new. Many famous people who had fallen out of favor with
the general public decades or even centuries ago suffered and sometimes died
in poverty. Perhaps bad news travels faster now, but it’s not less accurate
than before the digital age and while it spreads more efficiently, it also has
to fight more for attention with all the utterly pointless bits of information
the media disseminate (e.g. last week: „Matt Damon lost his luggage and had to
borrow a suit“ - in the headlines all over the world).

~~~
smithmayowa
God I thought that Matt Damon headline was not real, turns out I was wrong,
just googled it's very real.

------
corey_moncure
If he had only said he was going to make semen taste like ice cream.

------
masonic
Yet another triumph for Buzzfeednews, Gawker, HuffPost, Salon, the Daily Mail
and Business Insider. This kind of yellow "journalism" makes me sick.

~~~
dang
Please don't post denunciatory rants to HN, regardless of how provocative some
material is. It makes it harder for the community to function the way it's
supposed to.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
Karunamon
What would you have us say instead? The story in the article describes
behavior that's nothing short of reprehensible, with a tragic, absolutely
unnecessary outcome.

A man was literally hounded to death for politically slanted clickbait.

Anything other than denunciation isn't really called for, here. Is
commiseration really so wrong?

~~~
dang
I'd say denunciation doesn't really go with commiseration. Denunciation shuts
down the heart and commiseration comes from it.

Since you asked what to do instead, here's my take. When a hot, provocative
topic flares up, most of us experience rapid reflexive reactions. Those are
determined by how we already feel about the topic, i.e. which side we identify
with. Discussion at this stage can't be anything new, because there isn't
enough time for anything new to develop. All we can do is lash out, or ward
off a perceived attack. This is predictable because fight-or-flight isn't
about learning anything, it's about quickly dealing with threats. Any
creativity at this stage goes into devising ways to hurt or block the other
side.

What you can do instead is track those reflexive reactions in yourself and
wait until they subside. Once they've subsided, it becomes possible to
reflect, i.e. to take in new information, process it, and generate new
responses. This is necessary for discussion that isn't predictable. It doesn't
mean that you abandon your position, but it puts you in a more flexible place,
better able to respond to the specifics of a story—i.e. things you haven't
heard before—and better able to take in other views.

If you wait out the reflexive phase and get to the reflective phase, I think
you'll find that your feelings get softer and your thoughts subtler. That's
better for community. One can still disagree, but in a richer way and without
feeling surrounded by enemies. When we do this, we exchange a lot more
information, making discussion more interesting.

I've written a bunch about this in the past if anyone wants more:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20reflexive%20reflecti...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20reflexive%20reflective&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
s_m_t
Have you considered that what this essentially leads to is the only acceptable
emotional response being either classic nerd commiseration or over-
intellectualizing yourself out of any position that risks any sort of
conflict. Essentially, a website of mostly socially stunted nerds with a set
of rules to reinforce their unfit social behavior.

~~~
dang
You bet—I've considered that, or similar objections to that. The thing is, it
doesn't work out that way in practice.

The opposite is true as well. That is, while one might think that full-out
conflict would lead to more honest, explicit communication, in practice it
doesn't work that way. What happens is that people's range becomes narrower.
There's a lot of energy in it, and a lot of anger, but not much information.
That makes such discussions repetitive: mostly people repeat the same hostile
points in ever more intense ways. Repetitive discussions can be agitating, but
they're not intellectually interesting, so they're the thing we're trying to
avoid here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
s_m_t
Cool, thanks for the consideration

------
fwip
Dude shoulda got some help. Everyone around him was offering it to him, but he
wouldn't take it.

I know that using the phrase "toxic masculinity" is gonna offend anyone who
thinks that SJWs are real, but for real, you can't solve the crisis of men's
mental health without fixing the problems that keep men from getting
professional help, whether that is therapy, medication, or whatever.

~~~
_iyig
In the article, it's said that he kept in close touch with family members,
regularly told them about his feelings, and received professional help.

Please don't shoehorn in a narrative that doesn't match the facts of the
article.

------
towaway1138
If you think SJW outrage is harmless, you need to read this.

~~~
stebann
This is not about SJ, it's about how misunderstanding of an idea and
deliberately falsifying the goals of this "dreamer" attracted negative
feedback. Ill people that can't deal with this kind of harassment could kill
them selves.

~~~
towaway1138
Indeed, SJWs could not care less about social justice, and greatly harm those
causes by their self-righteous pretendings.

