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Comment by freyr | Hacker News Reader

Ito reminds me of Epstein in that I have no idea how either got their money.

Wikipedia must be skipping over some important details, but it describes him as a two-time college dropout, a nightclub manager in Japan, (EDIT: nevermind, mystery solved! His MIT bio says he was the founder of Japan's Digital Garage and CEO of its first ISP [1]), then he's the president of MIT Media Lab, visiting Harvard Law School professor, on several boards of directors, and runs a VC fund.

I'm not implying he got his money by nefarious means, just that it's interesting to see people who find success (and in this case, downfall) within these institutions despite their unconventional backgrounds.

[1] https://www.garage.co.jp/en/company/

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Aside from this MIT issue, Joi is a very impressive person who earned his money honestly against great odds. Joi was treated as an outsider in Japan and still managed to become successful. I’ve known him personally and found his story to be inspirational. Not defending any of the behavior at MIT but it would be sad if this is how he’s remembered.

I have only read about him but he seems very talented. He represents the think-outside-the-box attitude that characterizes some of the best Media Lab work and he's very good at raising money, which is critical for the person in his position.

That said maintaining the connection with Epstein in spite of repeated warnings was unconscionable. Joi Ito needs to step down and think hard about what he's doing. Not every rule is meant to be broken.

Beyond the business stuff, he was basically Japan's first Western-style (Wired, Mondo 2000, etc.) New Media personality. Back in the early 90s he also took form as an action sports impresario, techno culture maven, and theorizing gadabout.

>Back in the early 90s he also took form as an action sports impresario

Could you elaborate here / further reading? That aspect of Joi’s background interests me.

So he fit right in with the Media Lab?

I remember articles from when he was hired about how his last big leadership role was running a World of Warcraft guild

In my own memory, at the time Ito was best known for having a gee-whiz style tech blog. Then for some reason he got hired to manage MIT's Media Lab -- a real head scratcher.

You're both right, here's his blog entry on leadership in World of Warcraft:

https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2006/03/13/leadership-in-w.html

I'd guess by this point, he'd already made some money as a tech founder and CEO in Japan. He was apparently an early investor in Twitter, which was founded eight days after he wrote this blog post.

Among other things, before joining the Media Lab, Ito had served on the boards of the Mozilla Foundation and Creative Commons (where he was also Chairman of the Board).

Joi was a behind the scenes player in a lot of successful Valley startups. Once someone reaches investor level it’s impossible to fully understand where their wealth is generated because it tends to be diversified. But he was a very well connected and respected technologist and investor who pretty much pursued whatever his interest were at any given moment, read his blog and you’ll see that it was pretty diverse.

I believe Ito was instrumental in helping to launch Yahoo Japan. That may be where some of his wealth came from.

From his MIT Media Lab bio: In Japan, he was a founder of Digital Garage and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider.

Probably netted him enough to set the rest in motion. Still, landing professorships at MIT and Harvard without a college degree is pretty wild.

The Media Lab in particular is a corporate PR/money vehicle, it’s not really an academic lab like a cancer research institute. There is some real research there but also a lot of “stick 25 Arduinos in something and make a video for a Fortune 50 company who will give you $10 million”

and/or a random portfolio investment of one of the VC funds he is an LP of

and/or a lottery ticket

and/or employment from multiple sources and picking stocks

and/or a particularly lucrative real estate holding

and/or it probably wasn't linear at all just like your wealth probably doesn't materialize linearly either

so doesn't that make this whole discussion rather odd and clickbaity? I saw similar articles regarding Epstein and thought "thats not how any of this works?"

if I was ever put under similar analysis nobody would know anything accurate, they would just google me and see a big crowdsale I was on the executive team of and saw that it collected several million dollars and assume "thats how I made my money" even though they have zero transparency on who was paid what and how, or how the organizations made its revenues or not, or the investing patterns and homeruns and leveraged losses I had - which resulted in a useful exemption from capital gains tax on my next homerun, and would have zero information about what partnerships I'm part of, what hedge funds I'm invested in, how any of those things perform, etc.

Among other things, Ito co-founded Digital Garage which is a Japanese publicly-traded unicorn.

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