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Comment by auganov | Hacker News Reader

"Apologies" like Chris Sacca's [0] don't make you too hopeful.

  Often I have committed as their first limited partner and encouraged them 
  to use my name and participation to attract other investment. I’ve 
  introduced them to my fund’s most loyal investors and made sure they have 
  had the opportunity to make their case rather than get lost in an inbox. 
  I’ve also connected them to our trusted service providers saving them the 
  time and frustration I experienced when trying to get my first fund off 
  the ground. Above all else, I’ve rolled up my sleeves and spent the time 
  mentoring many of them in how to approach the business itself and how to 
  navigate the inevitable challenges that arise.

Yea, that's what VCs do? Just apologize and take a bit of time to rethink stuff, nobody's going to be reassured by lame platitudes.

[0] https://medium.com/@sacca/i-have-more-work-to-do-c775c5d56ca...

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What would be enough to you?

It would be a good start if he came to this realization on his own, instead of right after being contacted by the New York Times going "Hey, we're going to publish a story about your sexual harassment, do you want to dispute this account".

People make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes go back years, and sometimes a sudden traumatic event can snap someone out of the patterns of behavior they fell into.

The point is that it's probably a mistake to treat him the same way you'd treat certain kinds of felons. Part of that is to give him an opportunity to contribute in a positive way to the world, like everyone else. If he's genuine, then isn't there some way to do that?

Normally people have to do some penance before forgiveness, especially as the crimes grow more heinous. Continuing to live the rich and privileged life you were leading before, more or less untouched by the hand of justice, does not count for much in this dimension.

Certainly. But what does justice look like here?

If nobody knows or nobody's willing to venture a guess, then we should at least acknowledge that complete social ostracism is a massive penalty. Are you sure the punishment fits the crime? It seems more likely that there's a reasonable middle ground, but maybe someone has a persuasive argument to the contrary.

- Reparations to all he harmed directly.

- Further reparations to groups representing those similarly situated.

- Meaningful engagement with mental health professionals to attempt to work on the source of the problem.

- Less defensive, less self-promotional apologies.

These four are the bare minimum. Until he has done each of these, he's receiving a failing grade from me.

I don't see any sign that "complete social ostracism" is the actual outcome here, or even a plausible outcome.

His reputation is in ruins. It remains to be seen whether anybody will do business with him. Both of those combined equals social ostracism, so we should at least be sure it's warranted.

This sounds remarkably like the sort of sky-is-falling rhetoric I heard on this website when Brendan Eich was pushed out of Mozilla. He's now the CEO of a of a two-year-old startup with $7M in funding. I'd love to have my reputation ruined in the way Brendan Eich's was!

It is technically true that it remains to be seen whether anybody will do business with him, but I strongly suspect they will. For the purpose of accurately testing this hypothesis, note that he already retired from both Lowercase Capital and Shark Tank a couple months ago: https://lowercasecapital.com/2017/04/26/hanging-up-my-spurs/

There are a couple of projects listed there (Zach Braff's new ABC show, his new podcast, some different form of investing): we can see if those come to fruition.

Dragging my name into threads about harassment is lazy analogizing. Adding the post hoc, propter hoc fallacy (I got a CEO startup job and funding after being "pushed out", therefore because of that) is just dopey. I founded Brave, it was not just a job offered to me.

Nothing about my exit from Mozilla made fund-raising or building Brave easier than it would have been without my exit. If I had stayed at Mozilla and managed to sell the Brave plan internally (unlikely), I'd have had lots more funding and market power. What I've done has been achieved through careful planning, hard work, and help from the great team I recruited.

You can stop dragging my name into these kinds of HN threads now (two and counting!).

I'd be a lot more inclined to believe that if the blog post weren't a bunch of "I am sorry for unwittingly participating in reinforcing systems of oppression" / "I am sorry for not calling out colleagues" / etc.

He knew exactly what the NYT article was going to say: they contacted him to see if he wanted to dispute it. If he were being genuine, he could have said "I did this thing, I apologize to the specific person I hurt". I'm absolutely giving him room to be genuine, he's just staying well out of that room.

... and, apparently, he's now updated the blog post disputing the NYT's account: https://medium.com/@sacca/i-have-more-work-to-do-c775c5d56ca... This is so bizarre.

THIS IS NOT A MISTAKE!

He didn’t spill milk. He didn’t pick the wrong wine for dinner. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew it was wrong. He did it anyway.

I’m sorry, but I just cannot stand so many people having this “boys will be boys” attitude toward this.

Also, like, I thought Silicon Valley was a meritocracy. And venture capital is literally a job where your social skills and business acumen, not your ability to write high-performance C or whatever, is the entirety of the job.

Isn't someone who is too stupid to realize they're harassing their business partners unqualified for the job?

> The point is that it's probably a mistake to treat him the same way you'd treat certain kinds of felons. Part of that is to give him an opportunity to contribute in a positive way to the world, like everyone else. If he's genuine, then isn't there some way to do that?

You could really make the same point for most felons, if you got to know them.

Crazy thing is, because I don't believe in punishment but prefer rehabilitation, I actually think that most felons deserve it more.

Remember that the USA is the land of the 98% free.

Just deleting most paragraphs would already make a big improvement.

"The billionaire who exploited his wealth and position to engage in and perpetuate consequences free garbage bro culture said sorry like 5 times, what more do you people want?"

It would be great if him and his ilk would stop sexually harassing women.

He explicitly says "I am sorry" at least 5 times. That seems pretty genuine to me.

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