{"id":26218,"date":"2024-08-05T18:20:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T18:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/108016303"},"modified":"2024-08-05T18:20:07","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T18:20:07","slug":"trumps-tech-backers-are-making-a-big-mistake-sequoias-mike-moritz-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/trumps-tech-backers-are-making-a-big-mistake-sequoias-mike-moritz-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump&#8217;s tech backers are &#8216;making a big mistake,&#8217; Sequoia&#8217;s Mike Moritz says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"HighlightShare-hidden\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"InlineImage-imageEmbed\" id=\"ArticleBody-InlineImage-103073305\" data-test=\"InlineImage\">\n<div class=\"InlineImage-wrapper\">\n<div>\n<p>Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital<\/p>\n<p>Scott Mlyn | CNBC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p>As leading tech investors continue to vocally take sides ahead of the 2024 presidential election, legendary venture capitalist Michael Moritz is making his preference clear.<\/p>\n<p>In a <span class=\"waslinkname\">Financial Times opinion piece<\/span> published on Monday, Moritz wrote that those in the industry who are supporting <span class=\"waslinkname\">Donald Trump<\/span> &#8220;are making a big mistake.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Moritz, who joined Sequoia Capital in 1986 and went on to make hugely lucrative bets on companies including <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-3\"><span class=\"waslinkname\">Google<\/span><span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span>, PayPal and LinkedIn, criticized Trump&#8217;s <span class=\"waslinkname\">Silicon Valley backers<\/span> as self-interested and asked why so many smart and successful people are &#8220;prepared to&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">turn a blind eye to Trump<\/span>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised,&#8221; wrote Moritz, who stepped down from Sequoia last year, over a decade after giving up a management role at the firm. &#8220;Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Andreessen Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz recently threw their support behind Trump. <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-6\"><span class=\"waslinkname\">Tesla<\/span><span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> CEO&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">Elon Musk<\/span>&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">publicly endorsed him<\/span>&nbsp;moments after the assassination attempt last month. Other Trump backers include venture capitalists David Sacks and Joe Lonsdale as well as <span class=\"waslinkname\">Doug Leone<\/span>, Moritz&#8217;s longtime partner at Sequoia. <\/p>\n<p>Moritz, who is currently a senior advisor at Sequoia&#8217;s wealth management arm, wrote that Trump&#8217;s tech financiers and supporters were &#8220;making the same mistake as all powerful people who back authoritarians.&#8221; Moritz was referring to Trump&#8217;s conviction, earlier this year, on 34 felony counts in New York State court. Trump has said he will appeal, and many of his allies have dismissed his trial as a &#8220;sham.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Moritz said he doesn&#8217;t think Trump will prevail in Silicon Valley come November, noting his historically weak performance there. He&#8217;s hardly alone in vocalizing his opposition. <\/p>\n<p>LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has been a major <span class=\"waslinkname\">Democratic<\/span> backer, throwing his weight behind <span class=\"waslinkname\">Vice President Kamala Harris<\/span> and President Biden before that. And last week, more than 100 VCs <span class=\"waslinkname\">pledged their support<\/span>&nbsp;to Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee, as she ramps up her campaign to take on Trump. As of Monday, more than 700 people have signed the &#8220;VCs for Kamala&#8221; <span class=\"waslinkname\">pledge<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Moritz has a multibillion-dollar fortune that allows him to give generously to charity. He was knighted in 2013 in part for his philanthropic work. Moritz has made major gifts to Democratic causes, including a $4.8 million donation earlier this year to American Bridge 21st Century, which is planning <span class=\"waslinkname\">a $140 million anti-Trump ad blitz<\/span>. He has also given to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.<\/p>\n<p>His Republican giving included earlier support for Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was governor of California, Mitt Romney in 2007, and John Kasich&#8217;s 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial runs in Ohio, according to OpenSecrets.<\/p>\n<p>Moritz wrote that wealthy financiers believe &#8220;they will be able to control Trump,&#8221; or else are committing &#8220;another cardinal error: deluding themselves that he will not do what he says or promises.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That has not been the modus operandi of authoritarians over the centuries,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WATCH:<\/strong> <span class=\"waslinkname\">Tech for Trump<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-107426025\">\n<div role=\"button\" id=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-107426025\" class=\"PlaceHolder-wrapper\" data-vilynx-id=\"7000342573\" data-test=\"VideoPlaceHolder\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-videoEmbed\" id=\"InlineVideo-0\" data-test=\"InlineVideo\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-inlineThumbnailContainer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/trumps-tech-backers-are-making-a-big-mistake-sequoias-mike-moritz-says.jpg\" alt=\"Tech for Trump: Silicon Valley investors turn against Biden\"><span class=\"InlineVideo-videoButton\"><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital Scott Mlyn | CNBC As leading tech investors continue to vocally take sides ahead of the 2024 presidential election, legendary venture capitalist Michael Moritz is making his preference clear. In a Financial Times opinion piece published on Monday, Moritz wrote that those in the industry who are supporting Donald Trump &#8220;are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-26218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","has-thumb","has-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26218"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=26218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}