> Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments in a video. “This tweet did not land the way I thought it would,”
What an asshole. He could have gotten the kid killed, not to mention the damage to his social reputation. And he can't even manage a "sorry if you were offended" non-apology.
The "did not land" video they're talking about, that was his response to people being mad at him for calling Mamdani an Islamist (and being "from a culture that lies about everything"). Also, "partially" is doing a lot of work there: he starts that video saying "cancel culture is alive and well" and doesn't in fact back off at all from his claim: the "did not land" part is even just Maguire lamenting that he accidentally helped Mamdani by targeting him.
Anyway, when he went after the Brown student saying he was "very likely" the shooter (also bringing in Mamdani again), he did less: he simply deleted the video.
I can't express how puzzled I am that Maguire is still at Sequoia. Forget cancellation; anyone should be free to say whatever they want. This is about judgment, humility, discretion and dare I say empathy, which are fundamental skills in any investment process and which a partner at the most storied venture fund in the word ought to have.
In what world is it good or right to dox a random undergrad based on speculation, simply because maybe just maybe it will net you Internet points? Note that Maguire never apologized once it became clear he was wrong; he simply deleted the post. He gets to keep the engagement and outrage points and move on, paying no price for spreading a dangerous lie. The undergrad he and others doxxed can't say the same.
Shaun would be just another rage-baiter if it wasn't for the Sequoia imprimatur.
With an investor like this on your cap table, who needs enemies? It shouldn't matter if Shaun is the "Elon guy" at Sequoia or indeed the best investor in the world. Integrity should and does precede returns in time. But maybe I am naive and this just isn't true for megacap venture as an asset class, where so much depends on sidling up to the 50 or 100 founders who can reliably produce decacorns to return your fund.
Perhaps all we can do is vote with our feet. Sequoia is on my cap table today, but if I was fortunate to have the choice between them and a similar firm that actually demonstrated integrity instead of just talking about it, I would not take money from them again. In all likelihood they won't care a whit about me, but they may care more about some of you, reading this.
I'm mostly surprised that someone can so consistently and repeatedly demonstrate an inability to filter information he receives and still be trusted with LPs' money. It's another form of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Rich guys are mainly incompetent. They'll tell you they're rich because of meritocracy, but I've found that too much money has the opposite effect. You end up surrounded by yes-men and can buy your way out of any failure, so your skills (if you ever had em) atrophy.
Everyone knows sequoia can't invest... but this is too far
> Maguire, acting as a self-appointed digital detective, has shared posts suggesting that an entirely different man was behind the crimes—a Palestinian student at Brown University...
> On July 4, Maguire made inflammatory comments calling New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani an “Islamist.”
Jokes aside, maguire does seem like an emphatically despicable person
> > Maguire is Jewish, with ancestral ties to early Jewish settlers in California.
> Sir, we are going to have to ask you to leave.
This comment appears to be reacting to the first one by assuming the first one is saying that Jewish people lie about everything, and it responds by saying this is unacceptable to say.
I have been off Twitter for 2 months and when I go there I can't understand anything. People are always saying "can I say something?" and "we know what this means" and shit like that and either the 2 months have killed my brain or something because I never know what the first guy isn't going to say and the second guy knows.
Now Hacker News is similarly incomprehensible and I'm starting to think my mind is no longer able to handle human speech. If this is happening to anyone else, then I hope the interpretation helped. If it didn't, then maybe I'm just losing my mind.
Thanks for the explanation -- I also had no idea what this meant.
I am disturbed that in-group code has been normalized as a way to state socially abhorrent positions out in the open, as if it offered plausible deniability.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91463942/sequoia-shaun-maguire-b...