How does someone fall into a rabbit hole of such hot garbage?
From the outside, you'd think that a successful tech founder would have some qualities that help them to avoid falling for such blatant misinformation. He would have needed to research the market, competition and investors, but apparently the same rigor didn't need to apply here.
At the very least, you'd think he would have been smart enough to keep his opinions to himself. Like, he starts with email saying that the recipients "will think I’m crazy after reading it", and still decides to hit the send button.
He's probably been saying only slightly less unhinged things for years and years and years, to pretty much the same people. Yet none of the people now "outraged" every said anything about it, or acted like anything was amiss.
Probably not explicitly racist stuff, and perhaps not to the Gov directly.
But it's a safe bet he was probably sending out lower-key versions of this kind of stuff to an ever-expanding circle of people. Until he felt, you know, "safe" enough to finally let his freak flag fly.
Being a founder seems to coincide with confidence, not qualifications.
I worked at a computer repair company in Sacramento where the CEO was openly racist and regularly verbally abused employees. Both he and his HR manager gave me death threats. HR manager also made an insanely racist remark about my Mexican wife.
I tried suing them after being forced onto permanent unpaid leave for all the laws they broke plus my in writing equity statement for a startup i was forced to work in while there. They hired the biggest defense first in California and stalled it out (they knew I was with a pro bono lawyer because they paid like shit)
From the outside, you'd think that a successful tech founder would have some qualities that help them to avoid falling for such blatant misinformation. He would have needed to research the market, competition and investors, but apparently the same rigor didn't need to apply here.
At the very least, you'd think he would have been smart enough to keep his opinions to himself. Like, he starts with email saying that the recipients "will think I’m crazy after reading it", and still decides to hit the send button.