
Silicon Valley CEO Called Employees the N-Word and Hit Three Women, Suit Claims - borski
http://www.thedailybeast.com/silicon-valley-ceo-called-employees-the-n-word-and-hit-three-women-new-lawsuit-claims
======
mabbo
We've built a system where guys like this are the ones most able to succeed.
Why are we shocked that they do?

Martin Shkreli, Travis Kalanick, this asshole- plus a hundred more behind them
getting VC funding despite a complete lack of morals or ethics. In the short
run, they win. In the long run, they're toxic and their companies flounder
because of it. But still, the VC money flows towards these guys.

~~~
JBReefer
Arguably, it's better that these people are in private industry than in
government, which might be considered a feature of the system. Some have
argued that civilization is mostly concerned with the management of
sociopaths: this guy seems fucking horrible, but at least his ambition took
him here, instead of being the "Duke of Feeding People and Medicine" or
something where his shittyness would kill people.

I feel kind of gross writing that, for the record, but think it's true.

~~~
na85
They belong in prison, not in industry.

~~~
JBReefer
Oh absolutely, but making the steps they take to get there as non-genocidal as
possible is also very important.

There's video of him striking his SO 117 times, hopefully he goes to prison
and stays there.

------
tristor
There needs to be a website cataloging and calling out these sorts of people
and their behaviors so that they can never escape from posterity. Call it
"Silicon Scumbag" or something. It seems to be a trend that quite a few SV
CEOs after striking it rich turn into total human garbage, especially in their
treatment of women.

~~~
beager
I feel like Valleywag did a pretty good job of that, but it's now shut down.

One problem with Valleywag, or any enterprise that would chronicle these sorts
of things, is that while abhorrent behavior by SVites waxes and wanes, the
need to push constant volume leads them to be gossipy and vapid. Also, while
we might have a substantive discussion about this guy's abhorrent behavior
here, a normalized version of that discussion for general consumption may
gloss over some aspects of the despicableness of this behavior that require
addressing in order to promote higher quality actors in tech.

~~~
Apocryphon
Maybe TechCrunch or PandoDaily could hire a couple of muckrakers to run a
column, instead of devoting an entire site or periodical to gossip.

------
m13v
Gravity4 had signed a 1 year contract with my employer, a SaaS company. They
consumed millions of transactions through us over a 2 month period and never
paid. They said they're cancelling. When I explained we've signed a yearly
contract and it must be honored the employee claimed the signee had no signing
authority and she only kept this guy in CC.

I'm surprised Gravity4 is still operational, their employees are acting like
mini Chahals.

------
exogeny
He blocked me on Twitter, which I'm particularly proud of.

And in addition to all of this, he's also promoting a (likely) scam ICO
involving Paris Hilton. Good times!

------
wolco
When I see that yahoo paid 700 million for his company in 2007 it probably
gave him enough fake credibility to hang himself.

Curious was the 700 sale a good deal for yahoo at the time. The article spoke
of an initial 40 million or 25 million deal that went sour immediately. That
probably gave him enough creditability that yahoo felt it could make a 700
dollar deal because this young guy was a rasing talent.

Those who base decisions on credibility vs obserable fact are cheating
themselves. Credibility can be gifted as well as earned. For those who have it
gifted you begin to rely on a third party who may have relied on a third
party.

~~~
1024core
> When I see that yahoo paid 700 million for his company in 2007 it probably
> gave him enough fake credibility to hang himself.

Yahoo paid 300M, not 700M. It's in the article itself.

Of course, it's still 300M more than they should have.

------
JBReefer
For those who check the comments first - read this article. It's short, and
his behavior is honestly horrifying. He sounds like an actual sociopath that
has no human decency.

------
ringaroundthetx
People will simply have to drop their idea that reprehensible behavior should
get you shut off from society, or that disproportionate earnings of money /
status are only reserved for people that conform to a behavioral mode.
Obviously it is all unrelated, but prosperity preaching has warped society's
expectations.

His $100m cryptocurrency raise will go off without a hitch. When the revenue
event is front loaded like that, they will have no need to appease advertisers
or conform to any behavioral model to continue doing business.

Of course his lawyers didn't comment, the sale will happen by the end of the
month, and nothing else money wise will really matter.

The point of cryptocurrency is that the state couldn't even levy any sanctions
against his accounts, even if they had the justification.

So thanks for the informative article.....

~~~
QAPereo
On the flipside when his impulsive behavior, drug use, violence etc catch up
with him and eventually he's killed or dies of his own accord, no one is going
to care and no one is going to seriously investigate.

------
edshiro
Money can't buy human decency, but it can help you get Ferraris and
penthouses.

My question is thus: was he raised this way or did he become this horrible
person once he struck it rich?

~~~
whistlerbrk
I suspect he didn't grow up. Dropped out of high school at 16, knew he was
smart, never had any humbling experiences, etc, etc. Not at all to excuse his
god awful behaviour.

~~~
calbear81
Actually this makes a lot of sense, basically struck it rich as a child and
never had to go through the normal social experiences that help define who we
are and our values. Believes that money is what defines him and everything in
the world can be solved by more of it.

------
chiefalchemist
My knee jerk reaction was "Fuck him."

The reality is, he needs help. No one who is "normal" would do such things.
Abnormal (usually) doesn't just happen. That is, there is something somewhere
that drives these symptom to the surface. If there's a pattern, it's likely
there's a reason(s) for that pattern.

------
roflchoppa
If this crypto coin is all about just making payments to this add firm, whats
the point of even having the coin? Seems like vaporware.

If his personal actions are this morally void, would management turn blind eye
to wrong-doing by the company? Breach of client data, etc.

~~~
beager
Dodge regulators, capitalize on hype buyers who won't read the fine print.
Taken in context, I don't expect one satoshi* of this to go toward anything
real or good.

(sidenote: is a "satoshi" the right term for the indivisible unit of a
cryptocurrency that's not Bitcoin?)

~~~
roflchoppa
I guess like in everything, lookout for the schemers, they always around.

------
richardknop
A total sociopath and a danger to society (especially his violent physical
attacks of women). This guy should be locked somewhere so he doesn't hurt more
people.

~~~
uncoder0
But then where would we put these millions of non-violent drug offenders? /s

------
whack
I'm surprised no one's made a movie out of this guy yet. _The Wolf of SandHill
Road_

~~~
calvinbhai
SV is more than one lone wolf. You could probably have a series: "The Wolves
of Sandhill Road" :)

------
neo4sure
these guys are giving the valley a bad name.

------
avar
"N-word" and the article further says “n---rs” which matches "nosers",
"namers" and "niners" but not "niggers". [1] comes to mind.

1\. [https://youtu.be/dF1NUposXVQ](https://youtu.be/dF1NUposXVQ)

~~~
Eylandos
Reported.

------
pvaldes
The man was shown as an evil psycho, and maybe he is, but just to play the
devils advocate part here; as harsh and extreme as this sounds (and I agree
that it sounds a lot extreme) to hit your partner is "not a crime" if happens
in a _private, consensual, adult and freely accepted by all parts_ contex.
Human relationships can get very complicated sometimes.

> he was filmed hitting and kicking his girlfriend 117 times

Some parts of the history sound disonant to me. There was a camera in the
room? Why? Who was recording the scene and, If a third people, why he/she keep
recording instead to stop and try to help her? Why she do not just walked away
and left the room at the second hit? Standing 117 hits without leaving the
narrow camera angle is anomalous.

Without a minimum context atached to the video history we can't really know if
the man is just a psycho, or is another case of steroids fury, or drugs, or
somebody tending a trap (unprobable, but not impossible) to suck as many money
as possible from a millionaire, or...

~~~
chrisbennet
Women get abused all the time and there will be men who will defend the beater
in some way or imply she might be lying because "we can't be sure".

I probably shouldn't be surprised that even with video evidence of beatings
that some people will _still_ say "we can't be sure, maybe she asked to be
beaten".

~~~
pvaldes
Not. _Some_ women get abused all the time, and _some_ men also get abused.
Most men aren't rapists or kick their girlfriends for sport.

Of course we _must_ be sure before to put one human in jail, this means that
we need to be as cold as we can, study each case separately instead to
automatically link all with the discourse of the woman opression around the
history, and discard all the other options. Being too much emotional and
bursting in revenge's flames do not helps to find the truth in this kind of
cases.

A private video surveillance system is good enough for me, yes. It explain a
lot of things that would be strange otherwise.

