Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince buys local paper, feuds over mansion build
archive.ph
archive.ph
> Rogers says he doesn’t believe Prince’s ownership of the paper (or his current living arrangements) poses a conflict of interest.
Sure, Don.
This is his chance to build an American Neuschwanstein, why not bring quality to the table?
The problem is not the architecture but that certain people can't stand anyone building anything near them, once they've built their own thing. Pure unadulterated nimby-ism.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-the-early-1900s-doz...
For example, at least one of the BH insurance companies makes serious money from the estate tax, a tax that doesn't hit Buffet's estate....
There's also the fact that he lied about his dealings with Epstein (Coffeezilla made a video on this).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/cloudflar...
> His new home would cut into a mountainside just beneath an open space that taxpayers had bought for $64 million to fend off future development.
> After many discussions of rules and regulations, city officials eventually cleared Prince’s plans. But a group of locals led by residents Eric and Susan Hermann have appealed, maintaining that his house would violate ordinances.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/cloudflar...
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
To make a simple text-only page:
x=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/cloudflare-billionaire-matthew-prince-fights-utah-locals-over-house-dogs-wall
tnftp -4o\|yy089 $x > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
If this is a DNS issue (e.g. CloudFlare blocked due to refusing to send DNS location), just put the IPs in your hosts file, it's easy. https://dns.google/query?name=archive.ph
23.137.248.133 archive.ph
23.137.248.133 archive.today
23.137.248.133 archive.is
23.137.248.133 archive.md
23.137.248.133 archive.fo
It changes every few months.
Mostly because the rancher / local types would rather spit in their eyes just to make a point that not everything can be bought. Kudos to them.
Want to throw your dollar weight around? Do it in California, New York, or Florida. There are towns there that are happy to kowtow.
Edit: Watching the wild karma +/- swings on this comment has also been entertaining. Strong opinions!
Ranch/mineral family money seemed tied to land/place/town in a way that's fundamentally different than corporate wealth.
Which isn't to say that those folks can't be assholes too! But I gotta support rich assholes who have generations of history in a place, over rich assholes who are transplants.
Matthew Prince actually grew up in Park City and his family has been there for generations, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Prince
And also to his PR team: that's one of the slickest Wikipedia pages I've seen!
But can't fault someone for reinvesting in their roots, even if your roots town is pretty bougie nowadays.
I think the point here is they are all rich a-holes.
Guy wants to build a home on land that he owns? Hard for me to fault the guy. Stupid he has to take it this far.
After awhile though, I don't know whether to be amused by rich people pissing on each other, or disgusted.
Seems from the article he wants to build something that doesn't adhere to local code restrictions on height and size limits.
It seems to be a part of the human condition to want to say "we should make these rules!" and then say "but I don't mean for me" It's just that people with a lot of money have more options when it comes to that second part.
Meh. It seems as if his plans were approved, and now those plans are being reviewed, because a few noisy neighbors want to meddle with how he wants to use his land. If those neighbors didn't want someone else to use the land, they could have bought his land, like the town bought the acreage above.
> It seems to be a part of the human condition to want to say "we should make these rules!" and then say "but I don't mean for me"
It seems more like these neighbors are trying to achieve what they couldn't achieve with their dollars. Like -- now that they've bought some land ~4000 feet up the mountain, their wish, through regulation or otherwise, is to make sure no one builds any higher. Again, this is simply rich people pissing on each other.
If this was about water rights, something important, etc.? I could understand the meddling. But, here, I don't tend to think this is very principled. So, if there is a principle I'd defend, it's that this guy owns it, and he should be able to build what he wants.
Don't California my Utah.
He's just a regular Joe Billionaire trying to build his McMansion and buy the local press to give him positive coverage. Everybody needs to take a good long look at themselves and then stop bullying him by playing the victim card.
It just seems like unsustainable absurdity for the primary purpose of rubbing everyone else's face in it. I suppose that's what makes some people good at being CEOs, but consequently, it makes them terrible neighbors that no one wants to be near.
The arrow points the other way: Power corrupts, corruption then loses power.
Spending resources on rubbing people's faces in 'it' doesn't produce anything of value; it wastes valuable resources on personal desires, which is corrupt.
A traditional model of Chinese history is the pattern of the dynastic cycle: The dynasty rises to power, then they are corrupted (I'm not sure of the model says 'corrupted by power' specifically) and decay, and then finally lose their mandate and fall.
Much better to have democracy, where you can vote them out much sooner and generally they can't stay for generations. And also, better to have well-governed corporations where the board is independent from the CEO.
But realistically, I also think are just automatically more critical of billionaires. If this had been anyone nameless building a house on this property I imagine people would be less inclined to protest it as much.
As for "hideous", I guess that's a matter of taste but the style is frankly very common and popular these days, and IMO not at all out-of-place compared to some of these...
[0] https://www.parkrecord.com/news/dissenting-planning-commissi...
[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7475-Foxglove-Ct-Park-Cit...
[2] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/680-Hollyhock-St-Park-Cit...
[3] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/795-Hollyhock-St-Park-Cit...
[0] https://www.redfin.com/city/10943/MN/Minneapolis/filter/prop... [1] https://www.redfin.com/NM/Albuquerque/Coyote-Canyon-DR-SE-87... [2] https://www.redfin.com/NM/Albuquerque/800-Salida-Sandia-SW-8...
It truly is amazing how government enables this kind of assholery at an institutional level under the guise of property rights. I can't even imagine trying to join a community with my first move being to piss them all off by building an eyesore right in front of the nature conservation the town just paid for out of their own pockets.
The monopoly on force protects us from billionaires taking over even more than they already have.
The fact that this guy very nearly got legislation quietly passed against the will of the larger community means something is terribly broken.
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose,
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone,
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine,
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don't escape,
If they conspire the law to break,
This must be so but they endure,
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman,
Who steals the goose from off the common,
And geese will still a common lack,
Till they go and steal it back
- 17th century English folk poem, post Enclosure Acts
But...
He's a self made billionaire that seemed to want to build a big mansion around where he grew up ( did a sanity check in this)
He's involved with websites/piracy/..., so he's more accustomed to law suits and legal affairs than us/me.
He's not doing anything illegal and there seems to be a build violation from ( his also rich) neighbor.
Probably they can't agree on something and the court will decide.
Ps. It's also private matters, but I don't see much actual off.
Bought the newspaper, but also the guy is now living/working, seems to be more close involved than just trying to influence something. Perhaps they just hid it off as friends too and things led to unexpected ways?
Either way. It's his personal life and private matters. Just didn't want to jump to conclusions as many others and has not much value here in hn.
I see this thrown around and want to understand what this means. When I hear "self made billionaire" I imagine someone with zero connections or family money or money at all, going out and starting a business with loans that then years later they become a billionaire.
It seems as if Matthew Prince doesn't meet my qualifications for that:
"His father, John Browning Prince,[3] is a former journalist, restaurateur, and owned a stock brokerage firm, while his mother owned several gift stores; in high school, Prince worked for his mother. The Prince family, who have resided in Park City for multiple generations, assisted in the construction of various buildings in Park City, such as the Parleys Summit Ski Resort, the Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley, and the Yarrow Hotel."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Prince
So it seems to me he had a great head start being born in an affluent family, which I would hardly consider "self made".
Not to be a pedant, just curious what people's definitions of this are.
How many times have we seen a billionaire declare “look what I did!?” when something works, and then when something doesn’t work, suddenly they have a team behind them who messed up.
For so many of these people they take credit for the “self-made” wins and distribute blame amongst others when something goes wrong.
The myths we let certain people build are wild.
Getting the right attitude, connections and perspective on life/business on how to approach things, is something that you need to learn/observe early on from your parents.
That's almost always related to your parents being rich in this case ( multiple millions), but not billions.
Bill Gates, Elon Musk, ... Are all self made billionaires. But their parents were still rich before they were billionaires.
That's my perspective fyi.
They mostly depend on some money and what you learned early in life ( not school related, but in how to connect with the right people even later in life)
- You can go bankrupt and start again without problems in my country.
- Education is good and cheap, the US is an exception in comparison to Europe
- Networking can be done at any age.
To become super rich though, you'll probably be better off in the US. Investors are easier with giving you a bunch of money and if you tried well, could give you another shot later on.
Most of all, I think, is you need exposure to how others did it to find your own "place".
- I'm speaking from the point-of-view of a US citizen in the US. Education is, on average, fairly limited/poor without money. Getting an education, without money, even with grants/scholarships still typically burdens a person with significant debt before they've even entered the workforce.
- Networking can be done at any age, but if my father is a CEO I'm going to have access to other CEOs, if my father is a welder I'm going to have access to other welders. Neither of these things are bad, but one of these things provides significant advantages when it comes to future employment opportunities and avenues for early investment.
Student loans suck in the US, sure.
Is a bankruptcy really a black mark as you think it is? Is anyone actually stopped to start again? Will their network actually consider them a complete failure and disband ties with them? Can't they get any loans after? I don't think so tbh.
Since a bankruptcy is just lost money for banks and you'll need to rebuild the credit score for some time. But nothing is stopping you from planning ahead and retry.
> For me, would be that you earned the billions yourself.
I think that would be billionare.
At the least, yours seems to be an uncommon understanding. It deviates from 19th and 20th century use where self-made was applied to wealthy people that started without any access to privilege - commonly immigrants and their direct descendants.
This was during a time when historical class divisions were still in play. There was real distance between the upper classes and everyone else.
Consider it a ladder with 5 steps representing dirt poor to super rich and you can at most go up or down 2 steps in 1 generation.
If you grew up poor, chances to get rich and stay there is almost non existent.
It's not related to hierarchy like in the middle ages, although I'm presenting it like that.
It's about multiple factors at once.
The hierarchy of the middle ages may be gone, but personal interpretations of life are still influenced by how you grew up. That still matters a lot.
Your dismissal of these actions exposes a lack of objectivity and betrays your partisan stance.
I have them based on how it's management is, the company/employees and the product.
I'm not saying there couldn't be an ethical issue.
I'm saying I don't see proof atm. I see suggestions in that direction, but not proof.
There are many unknowns here and I'm giving the benefit of doubt based on past perception, but yeah, I don't know him in person.
What I think:
- neighbor feud, never fun. We don't know a root case
- a newspaper that got bought close to where he grew up. There are tons of variables to consider here. Perhaps read their interpretation and take it into consideration: https://www.parkrecord.com/opinion/tatiana-and-matthew-princ...
- he has a big place. As far as I can see, he worked for it. Nice
What I see from his company ( my so called bias):
- fair in the amount of possible, growing pains
- accurate quarterly reports ( low balling future revenue) with detailed info on delicate things and interesting perceptions ( eg. Marketing headcount replacement during mass layoffs in other companies) - new boss in the department too then
- good products that I want to use, interesting approaches ( eg. Egress costs vs. ml ingress). My employer uses them
- potential cloud competitor ( huge market)
Business wise. Sure, I'm biased because of my past analysis :)