Tears in Silicon Valley: No More Crying on the Inside

John Doerr's appearance at the TED conference last Thursday took a few days to become news. Some internet sharks are missing the point, looking for the odd video clip of the actual moment he started feeling emotional. (TED is one of those invitation-only networking events that are seldom talked about in the papers. For what it's worth, I'd never heard of it before today. The conference has its own blog for anyone who's interested.)

John Doerr is one of the most successful venture capitalists around; some have called him the best ever. He funded Google, Amazon.com, Netscape and others. Mr Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and has appeared on shows such as Charlie Rose to discuss advances in green energy; Doerr heads his VC firm's greentech program. I'll embed the Charlie Rose episode below; it's a good one. (NB: the man in that picture with Rose is not Doerr, but Scott McNealy, the head of Sun Microsystems.)

Anyway, at the TED conference last Thursday, John Doerr had climbed up to the podium to talk about global warming and green energy. Towards the end of his speech, Mr Doerr started crying. What did Doerr say?

"I'm scared. I don't think we're going to make it."

Now his emotional speech is making headlines; Business Week, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times have all written about it.

Many critics are calling Doerr depressed. I don't know.

Mr Doerr certainly knows as well as anyone of his calibre where we're at with technological discovery, resource availability, and other key parameters. He is extremely well connected and successful by any measure. But the fact that someone like Mr Doerr would put himself out there to be potentially shot down and ridiculed is pretty huge, because where he's at, you do NOT cry in public. You just don't. The fact that he did speaks volumes about his state of mind.

American business thrives on presenting a positive front no matter what: even if the ship is sinking, spin it. Doerr's breakdown is disconcerting, because it's diametrically opposed to what people expect of someone like him. They don't call some of these guys vulture capitalists for nothing. Let me just say that for what my opinion is worth, I applaud this man for showing his feelings on an issue that ought to stir up emotions in millions more. Brave move.

It would be easy to just say John Doerr is depressed and that's that, but frankly, I don't think that's it. Getting concerned about Doerr's mental health isn't the issue here, that much goes without saying, even though one wishes for him to regain the optimism for which he's known. What issues moved this man to tears, in public no less, should be our chief concern. Of course, it requires the kind of gentleness and open-mindedness that Wall Street and Silicon Valley aren't necessarily famous for. I'm sure that Doerr is the talk of the town this week, with former business partners wondering if he's still good for business or if he might need help. Perhaps Doerr is just tired of pulling people along while witnessing others on his side of the income gap allegedly doing something like this -- who knows. But to disregard Doerr's tearfulness as a bad judgment call, a sign of depression or male menopause or an insincere publicity stunt would miss the point. Mr Doerr is likely just really, really concerned and anxious: even though he is doing enough, he's probably acutely aware that most of the rest of the world isn't.

It doesn't matter what the issue, looking from the outside in we can always rely on Someone Else to do the work. Even if we bought a year's worth of carbon offsets, Someone Else is going to have to do the actual roll-up-your-sleeves business and get down to it. Anyone can collect a pile of money through dubious means and try to feel good about giving it to charity when the end is near, but Someone Else is going to have to be out there, doing the work, whether it's a Doctor Without Borders patching combat wounds and bringing babies into the world on refugee camps or a treeplanter picking up mangrove seedlings in dirty water. Well, to bring this home, someone is going to have to decide that they'll forego a lucrative position in traditional industry and work for a Net Impact type industry or social cause. When people ask why, they'll need to explain why they won't just let Someone Else do it.

Sometimes that Someone Else we rely on is a person like Mr Doerr, and frankly, for all he's got I don't envy him. I look up to the work he's been doing with green energy; I don't wish to be him. It must be incredibly demanding to realize this is it and there's no "someone else" to turn to for ideas or guidance. Ignorance is, as the cliche goes, quite blissful, for this, I'm sure, isn't really news to anyone: on a global scale (which is Mr Doerr's scale) "Someone Else" does not really exist. The closest thing, to some, is probably God.

You know what, I'll pay a hundred euros if you can get me in the same room with Someone Else. I've waited my whole life to meet Someone Else. I've wanted to shake hands with her (or him) and say, Thanks, I owe you. Actually, I think I first relied on Someone Else when I swept the bread crumbs off the kitchen table onto the floor at age six and thought to myself that Someone Else will clean it up. (Mom cleaned it. Thanks Mom.) Her hands may have been invisible, but that was just because I wasn't looking.

The thing about market externalities is, the markets with the greatest externalities (including carbon dioxide) rely on Someone Else to clean up the crumbs.

Now I'm blue. Kind of. Shoot. It's contagious. Anyhow, happy Tuesday all, especially John Doerr.

Warren Buffett on Life, Love, Family, Wealth and Value Investing

In a rare interview, Mr Buffett talks about his remarkable career and family. This documentary is about an hour long. Look for his investing tips (on Gillette: "Hair isn't going to stop growing on men's faces and twice as many women's legs"), his views on business ethics, his friends' interviews, and his lifelong love story.

Buffett still lives in the same house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1958. "It's dumb", he said in an interview, "to let possessions rule you". He has decided to donate most of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, combining the wealth of the world's richest and second richest men into one gigantic philantropic effort.

Buffett's children won't inherit any great wealth when he dies. Buffett has said, "There's no reason why future generations of little Buffetts should command society just because they came from the right womb. Where's the justice in that?"

Frankly, I find Buffett's commentary so unique, inspiring and powerful that I'll add one more citation from his Wikipedia page. I'm fully partial: I find this guy remarkable.

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well - disproportionately well. Mike Tyson, too. If you can knock a guy out in 10 seconds and earn $10 million for it, this world will pay a lot for that. If you can bat .360, this world will pay a lot for that. If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow (re)distributes that? No, I don't think you can do that. But I do think that when you're treated enormously well by this market system, where in effect the market system showers the ability to buy goods and services on you because of some peculiar talent - maybe your adenoids are a certain way, so you can sing and everybody will pay you enormous sums to be on television or whatever -I think society has a big claim on that." (Lowe 1997:164-165)

"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die." (Lowe 1997:165-166)

Wal-Mart Class Action Suit

According to Helsingin Sanomat, Wal-Mart faces a class action suit for gender discrimination. An American court accepted on Tuesday a historical suit involving millions of women who have worked for Wal-Mart after 1998. The suit alleges that Wal-Mart paid women lower wages and limited women's opportunities to advance into managerial positions.

In the clip, the CEO of Wal-Mart talks about sustainability issues at Wal-Mart. The interviewer is Charlie Rose, who doesn't exactly take a stand but leaves it up to the viewer to make up their own mind. More Charlie Rose interviews here; some of us know him as one of the most well regarded US talkshow hosts (he works for PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service.) GoogleVideo offers hour-long interviews with Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, artist Shirin Neshat (whose photos were up at EMMA in Espoo last fall!) and others on issues like climate change, alternative energy and human rights.



Here "High Cost of Low Price" producer-director Robert Greenwald and a Wal-Mart representative talk about the firm's labor practices.