Vinod Khosla Wants Californians To Keep Out of Martins Beach
npr.org
npr.org
This is the kind of stuff protesters hate about rich techies. Apparently, this beach was historically used for a long time to teach surfing by local surf schools. A guy swoops in, who probably will rarely use this beach/vacation home, buys up the land, and closes off access. Attempts to "hack" the legal system through a loophole to achieve an exception to the state wide public beach system.
If he had been appreciative of the history of the beach and local surfers, he could have actually got some benefit out of it, maybe built some local facilities people would pay to use, add some exhibits on Khosla investments, etc. It would have generated positive press and positive externalities instead of negative press and negative externalities.
I like Vinod, but this just comes off as being a rich jerk.
Someone who is that rich doesn't do it by being a nice guy, and that drive which makes him so rich bleeds over into non-business parts of his life because it's impossible to be nice for some things and ruthless in others.
When I was young and naive, I thought serial entrepreneurs were just like other people, just really smart and driven. After meeting a bunch, I realized they are very different than me and most other people I'd met. They are driven beyond imagination, and that warps their sense of almost everything. Things we shrug off (losing some negotiation) becomes a really big deal to them.
Being an asshole isn't required to be successful. It's a nice think to think the world is "fair" like that, that anyone who is successful has to be an asshole (or that smart people are ugly, or that successful people are unhappy, or whatever), but it isn't true from experience.
There are certain industries which are win/lose, corrupt, and generally horrible, but I don't think tech, especially startup venture-funded tech, is one of them. Would you want to join a startup for below-market-rate pay with high risk of failure and spend 100h/wk for a few months around people who are horrible?
However, I'm qualifying "assholes" because the few I know are actually very, very charming... but are in fact sociopaths/exibit some sociopathic traits, like being extremely artful manipulators, using half truths and lies, etc.
Examples: the CEO of a multinational company. As an example of his behaviour, much like Scott Thompson, he lies about his degree. He also skims off the company profits.
I also know of a few enterpreneurs that are really nice if you meet them , but work their employees to death and then cheat them out of profits (I think it has been discussed to death here on HN)
Just a few examples:
http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-ceo-not-alone-7-execs-busted-res...
http://news.yahoo.com/zynga-greedy-game-industry-scum-steals...
BTW I agree with rdl, I believe sociopaths will be more common in large, established companies, than in startups.
If you work in such dysfunctional environments (for example certain financial industry companies, or governments), yes, you'll end up believing that to be succesful it's required to be an "asshole".
I think the conversation has changed. I never used the word "asshole" and didn't for a reason. I don't think Kkosla is an asshole, and I don't think anyone (at least, when I read the comments) was calling him one. Quite the opposite. It was a douchey move, but he's not an asshole. He is driven to win more than most people can imagine, and that plus his intelligence are two huge factors in his serial success.
I'm glad you've had a better experience than I. I really am. I know my sample is small, but I'd done a lot of reading over the years. Steve Jobs, for example, fits my profile to a t, along with the people I've had direct contact with. (The group I'm talking about can be assholes, and I think Steve Jobs was one. It's not required, though.)
Let me add an angle. I started a company almost 30 years ago. It's still going. We've been profitable almost every year, but not wildly so. If I were to give the name, most here would say it is not a successful company. I'm by no means rich. We have never missed a payroll in that 30 years. Not once. Yes, I've fired people. I've done layoffs. I've never done one thing that I can't live with at night when I go to sleep. None of my decisions keep me awake.
However, I was presented with many, many forks in the road. One road (the one I took) was a "good" one. The other would have allowed me to profit, sometimes much more than the other decision. I've watched very successful people over the years and I came to realize that they often take that more profitable road.
Because of the types of decisions we make, outsiders call us a "family" business. That is CEO-speak for we can't make the hard decisions needed to increase profits, often at the expense of the people that work for us. I've had long discussions with serially successful people, and their primary advice, stop being a family business, don't be friends with your employees and start squeezing everyone for productivity and profit. It's what potential investors and buyers want to see, they say.
So, my sample is relatively small, but I've talked with lots of potential investors, VCs and just plain successful people, and I've definitely seen a real pattern.
Wouldn't it have been more beneficial to society, in the long run, if you'd maximized profits by making those hard decisions?
In the end, that is, right now, you would be a powerhouse instead of a "family business," which would allow you greater positive influence on humanity
And, to answer your question: no, society wouldn't be better off. It would be worse off, because those decisions would have caused other people distress while bring me more power or money.
[I am only taking issue with this portion of your response and not the entire narrative]
Would you care to elaborate on this? Would you list some striking success stories - besides the Hastings' and the Hoffmans' of the startup world - that have prominently animated our collective imagination and have generally informed us of what special kind of a person it takes to truly strike it big, in the big leagues of startup triumph?
I ask genuinely and without a heightened degree of cynicism.
Diane Greene, by all accounts, is a great person. VMware is pretty successful (ok, they're dicks now under EMC to some extent, but she also left long ago)
Dr. Amar Bose (Bose audio, not Bose physics) was one of the most amazingly good people I've never encountered; Bose doesn't make the best audio equipment in the world, but it's a successful company.
Stripe is pretty successful so far; the Collison brothers are widely regarded as decent people.
YC itself has been quite successful; none of the YC partners are dicks.
There are clearly counterexamples (Zynga alone makes up for a lot...), but I think it's pretty clear being an asshole isn't necessary to be successful. It might be somewhat correlated, or not, but I think there are a lot of other traits which are far more predictive of success or failure.
Gabe Newell.
John Carmack. While he doesn't have the reputation of being a super-nice person, he certainly doesn't come off as being an arrogant dick.
Marc Andreessen. Similarly to Carmack, doesn't necessarily have the reputation for being super-nice, but certainly isn't a dick.
Mendel Rosenblum (Diane Greene's cofounder).
Max Levchin.
There are countless others, really. People in these positions typically have to make some really tough choices (should I fire Bob?) and you can't reach any significant level of success without leaving a trail of disgruntled people behind you. Being forced to make choices that leave some people unhappy isn't the same as being dick, though it might look that way from afar.
It is one thing to do something great and be successful. It's another to do it over and over again. The former is much easier than the latter. Sometimes it's just being in the right place at the right time. Doing it over and over requires great skill and intelligence and drive. (I don't put myself anywhere near that category.)
Bill Gates. Perhaps you have heard of him.Anyway, few people who reach Gate's age have done nothing blameworthy. That's just the price of adulthood.
As fo
Warren Buffett, on the other hand, seems to have gotten rich through being basically fair but brilliant (and of course lucky, and hard working), and is making huge charitable contributions as well (both before pledging his wealth to the Gates Foundation and after).
I had hoped he would be above being an ass, understanding community, history, and honoring the way things were. Nope, hiding behind a holding company? Par for the course it seems.
Edit: At least Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs were up front with changes they wanted to make with historic properties - constructive or not.
In India, if you're rich (or even middle class), you have servants and you do what you want. In his view, this is his, and he doesn't have to share it with the lesser people.
Sure, many people born in America would do this too, but they would possibly feel a bit more guilty about it.
But Ask the Korean made an excellent point about culturalism: "The term "culturalism" is my coinage ... is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined. Because the culturalist impulse always attempts to explain more with culture than warranted, the "cultural difference" used in a cultural explanation is more often imagined than real. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, to a man with a culturalist impulse, every problem looks like a cultural problem."
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-...
FYI most Indians in the US like the more egalitarian, US way of lower "power distance" better.
Yes, sometimes people ascribe things to culture which aren't due to culture, and sometimes the converse is true too.
It's one thing to say "No, actually you're ascribing something to culture which isn't part of Indian culture at all. This is just him being a tool" but you've made no effort to explain why you think his actions aren't in line with his cultural upbringing.
PS: As a child of immigrants, I constantly see how culture is the root cause of a lot of my parent's "bad"/unacceptable-in-America behavior.
Yes, but kindness is not one of them.
My dad, for example, studied K-12* in a school where his medium of instruction wasn't English. He got into IIT because he placed first in his school district/state but he couldn't converse fluently in English and spent his first year basically learning English and "mapping" math/science concepts he had learned in our native language to English.
* - My recollection is weak on this, but I think India (or some parts of India at least) may have had a K-11 system at this time instead of a K-12 system.
We have a 5 year bachelor's here (Uruguay) for all engineering degrees (including Computer Science which is bundled with engineering here), and many have told me it's equivalent to a Master's in the US.
Being said that, I doubt how "feeling less guilty" make any difference, if they are going to do it anyway.
Edit: One link to substantiate my claim: http://www.upworthy.com/take-two-normal-people-add-money-to-...
The thing common between you two here is that both are drawing wrong and uneducated conclusions here. There is no causal relationship between being an Indian and being 'unkind' (Yes, I still know you didn't use a direct word, but you didn't reply to my next comment to you, so I assume you meant something very similar to that).
Really? You are accusing me of thinking I am superior based on genetics (which is essentially what racism is), because I made a cultural observation which you don't agree with?
I don't like the culture in the United States' Deep South, so I guess I'm a racist for that too. I don't like Saudi Arabian culture either, again I'm racist, right?
If you don't like me ascribing things that are personal to an entire culture, then have at it. But to infer that its based on race is absurd. One of my main mentors in my career is a man who came to this country from India. I have immense respect for him, and according to you he falls into the "elitist" category due to his withering criticism of Indian culture. I'm sure that because he was born to a Dalit family you would call him biased. I think he just gets it.
I love how when a person of Indian descent disagrees with you, you label him an "elitist."
No True Scotsman. Look it up.
By the way, the diplomat who got arrested here deserved it. She should have done what everyone else in America who can't afford a live-in servant does. Don't have a fucking live-in servant. Wash your own damn dishes like the rest of us do.
I hope people in India can conclude the same about all Americans on one isolated incidence of Steve Jobs being an asshole (much more than this Khosla is). Or one Monsanto Corp. ready to compromise global health and life for money.
Yes, sir, you are not 'being' a dick, you are a dick.
I grew up in a rural household. We never once hired anyone to do any of the things you mentioned, by the way. We did them ourselves. The cultural difference is there, and your weak attempt to draw parallels is absurd.
You might not have used these services. I was clearly talking about "yours" culture, which you are using to draw differences. But you'd be living in a cave if you don't think that most of the Americans who can afford use these services. But still, let's blame Indian culture without knowing much.
Cultural differences are always there. The important thing, however, is to know where does it apply and where it doesn't.
Edit: And why doesn't my example of the unkind Steve Jobs doesn't apply here - because you don't like it? Did he share anything of what he earned with the 'lesser people'? :) In fact, he shut down all the philanthropic activities that were going on in his company instead. So why shouldn't I, by that analogy, generalize that to be the "American culture"? I think my argument definitely applies here and there's certainly a similarity. You might not want to accept that, of course.
Vinod Khosla is not a master of any universe.
Honestly, if I was given the option of appearing to be a massive dick to the general public in exchange for a private beach, I'd probably take it.
Guys like Khosla will want their private beach and want the state to fix it for them as well. Florida is full of entitled rich guys like this. It's their beach until a storm washes the sand away. Then it's our beach because the state has to dredge sand to backfill the hightide mark.
He looks like the type of person that leaves home at 6am and returns 10pm including weekends
If he wants to go to the beach he can get a private jet to the Bahamas and stay in the classiest resort available.
So it looks like it's being a douche for the sake of it.
But maybe he can sell for a "private beach" price and leave the issues to the buyer ;)
In Vinod's case he bought an investment property and probably tried to minimize general public's pooping and loittering activities that always comes with a shared territory.
At least I understand his angle of view after spending $20+M for something.
The judge's ruling skirts the fundamental conflict between the rights of private property owners and the rights of Californians to access the shoreline. Instead, Judge Buchwald rooted his decision in the land's history during the mid-19th century. Since there was no public easement attached to the property at the time the United States acquired California from Mexico, the judge reasoned, the question of whether the California Constitution now guarantees access to the beach is immaterial.
The original owner of the property was Jose Maria Alviso, who received a provisional land grant from the Mexican government in the late 1830s. He later transferred the property to his brother, Jose Antonio Alviso, whose rights to the property were upheld under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which settled the Mexican-American War. The U.S. government challenged Alviso's land patent, but the Supreme Court confirmed Alviso's ownership in 1859.
All that complicated history led Buchwald to a basic conclusion: The nation's high court exempted this property from the full reach of California law.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_24380282/vinod-k...
It sounds to me like the typical course of action is that the costal commission won't issue permits for any modifications without strings attached (i.e. an easement). So, Khosla may be able to hang on to his land with no easement, but he won't be able to do anything with it, close the road, or build on it without negotiating with the CC. There is a second lawsuit pending regarding the closure of the road that may make more headway on this basis.
what can the state really do if someone rightfully
owns property blocking access that doesn't contain an
easement?
Instead I write a check which helps far, far more. Here's an article on the subject: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/food...
An overflowing food barrel represents very little in value, compared to the large cash donations made by wealthy techies. Cash donations are buying entire warehouses of food that you just aren't seeing.
Since then, any and all cash donations, given on site at the pantry itself, are funnelled to United Way. The pantry never sees a single cent of the money and United Way does not provide any food (UW employs two people and sends a truck periodically that delivers food from an unaffiliated food bank). No one who works there has any idea where the money goes or what happens to it. The employees there are not allowed to explain this to donors. The donors, of course, have no idea either.
The pantry is only allowed to keep tangible foodstuffs that are donated directly to them, which they can then give to people who need it. The pantry often runs out of certain types of food. When they do, there's nothing they can do but hope someone will donate more of that specific item, meanwhile watching as the cash donations that could be used to buy it get sent away.
I realize this sounds implausible and I can't cite any sources for it[1]. Just be careful about the assumptions you make regarding where the money goes. Food is food and people can eat it. Money can get funnelled or turned into other things, and unless you're there to watch it happen, you don't know what's going on.
[1]: Howevever, if you haven't already, read the Wikipedia page on United Way sometime and see if you can figure out what it is that they actually do, other than collect money, build bureaucracy and get involved in major scandals.
According to the weekly Kroger ad for their store in north Fort Worth (Texas), a can of Simply Organic beans (very tasty beans, I should add) is $1 with a Kroger card; the same goes for a can of Hormel chili (no beans in chili, please). My back-of-the-mousepad calculations say that approximately 37 regular cans will fit in a 55-gallon drum, the kind usually used for these food drives. That means that, in a regular 8-story office building with two deposit locations per floor, filling all of them to the brim will cost $592. If you go the other way and just put three cans in the areas visible to the public, that's $111 to make a small but visible impact.
Yep, it's advertising and showmanship, but that food also does go to people who will actually use it, so it has the benefit of doing a little bit of good, unlike most advertising.
I'll be completely honest: I think much of this anti-tech sentiment (such as: tech people don't give) is wishful thinking and willfully divorced from reality. Most large tech companies have public giving foundations and publicize their donation programs. Here are a few examples:
http://csr.cisco.com/pages/employee-volunteers
https://www.google.com/giving/
http://ef.siliconvalleycf.org/blog/yahoo-employee-foundation
http://www.microsoft.com/about/technicalrecognition/charity-...
These kinds of programs are strongly promoted at most tech companies. A large amount of giving happens outside these programs as well, but they do help establish a baseline well in excess of any food drive.
While trying to dig up the data for some of the bigger tech companies in the area I also stumbled across this report, which claims that area workers not only donate above the average but spend significantly more of their time actually going out into the community http://ef.siliconvalleycf.org/blog/bay-area-companies-giving... The article throws around the term "average" a lot which tends to raise my eyebrows, but it does mesh with my anecdotal experience that tech workers on the whole care a lot more about their community in the bay area than workers in general in other regions of the USA.
Long Link to Data:
http://philanthropy.com/article/Interactive-How-America-Give...},"obj_data":null,"conveyor":0,"noSplash":1}
It's not clear techies actually donate checks, however.
"as wealth increases, people become more insulated, less likely to engage with others, and less sensitive to the suffering of others."
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/48725147 [2] http://philanthropy.com/article/Rich-Enclaves-Are-Not-as/133...
Just living in a building with 20 somethings shows that they are much more self-involved, no matter what industry you are in. The typical giving 30 something was probably the same way in their 20's.
I agree that the bus rage is completely misplaced. Google peons are more accessible targets, while the people who are actually destroying everything remain out of reach to the angry masses.
You guys have to overthrow your "leaders". Hit them hard and decisively, and free technology from them. The world will support you if you do.
Having taken money from him myself, I advise that nobody else ever do so.
1. I founded a company called Evernet in the 1980s, funded by Kleiner Perkins and others. Vinod negotiated against at least one founder, me, hard. Then KP made sad but traditional VC errors along the lines of changing the company's strategy from a good idea to a bad one, bringing in the wrong operating management and all that.
2. So I tracked news and anecdotes. Vinod prided himself on being a tough negotiator on behalf of his portfolio companies. But various other stories of negotiating hard against entrepreneurs were out there.
I should clarify that in the 1980s, even more than recently, there was a general screw-the-founder philosophy among VCs. I once asked a popular and likeable VC what some rules of thumb were for equity splits. After some back and forth, the VC said "You don't get it, Curt -- it's whatever we can get away with." But Vinod seemed like a particularly tough exemplar of the trend.
3. I advise 20-30+ tech companies at a time. Most are VC-backed startups. Khosla is the 2nd-worst target of negative VC anecdotes I hear, details of which must however remain confidential.
Just for gossip, what's the worst one?
I've heard that he's "incredibly cheap" (i.e. valuation sensitive), but haven't heard anything particularly negative other than that. If you're going to make a non-specific accusation, why not be more specific?
Build yourself in a position for others to come to you for money (exclusing IRS :) )
Can someone explain how blocking off access to a beach works here? Is it because the access paths are privately owned?
Lawyers will huddle, and I'm guessing in the end that people will again have access to public property.
(When bullshit arguments are used, use them against an adversary and raise the stakes.)
It was the treaty that gave California to the US, so not really.
Yep (well, maybe, I don't really know. But for the sake of argument: Yep). But dick moves are the type of thing that cause bounds of rights to be changed.
We're not lawyers here (or are, and are already aware that we're not before a court). In a conversation of what actions are tolerable to a society, laws can be changed. Without going on pedantic tangents about this or that, I just want to point out that: in general appealing to the law without making a case for the law looks like circular reasoning because changing the law (or using other, existing, laws to alleviate problems caused by the first one) is within scope of the conversation. That's probably why your post is currently gray.
If your property blocks access to another's property, you have to give up a slice of your land to provide access for the other property's owner. You can't simply buy up all the land around a property and then close off access. This is called an easement.
In this case the other property is the beach, which is owned by the government, no different than any other property. Khosla has no right to deny access to this property just because his home abuts it. The only issue here is an obscure treaty, apparently, but that will sort itself out.
If California has a law stating beaches are public land, it doesn't really make much sense if someone else is allow to prevent you from accessing it.
It's sort of like saying you have "freedom of speech", but then banning all forms of communication.
Why hasn't this gone to court already?
http://www.californiacoastaltrail.info/cms/pages/trail/price...
Q: How should the public access beaches and shorelines that are blocked by houses?
A: If private homeowners are obstructing existing public rights-of-way to the shoreline, HRS § 115-9 provides a remedy and up to a $2000 penalty for that kind of situation.
bonus - one of my favourites: http://goo.gl/maps/wqe8t
Because this concept is well-entrenched, rich people, have resorted to buying up the land adjacent to the public beaches and cutting off access that way. Some states have responded by requiring private property owners adjacent to beaches to provide reasonable access to the public through their property. This particular conflict isn't any different than conflicts that are happening all over the country over beach access. Incidentally, it's quite amusing to me to watch Silicon Valley techies' sense of "but no, really, we're different!" idealism slowly come crashing down as they realize that there is nothing new under the sun. "Rich guy tries to block beach access" wouldn't even elicit a reaction from a Floridian.
A few years ago, I was considering buying a home near Half Moon Bay, and at the time a few different "houses" on Martins Beach were available...for incredibly low prices. Forget that the homes are basically one bedroom cottages, they're on the beach!
I inquired about it and learned that the homes are on leased land, and the leases were guaranteed only for another 12 years. No idea what happens when they expire, and if this deal is something Khosola is interested in continuing.
I wonder if one could make a profit with a shuttle boat service to bring people to and from the beach for a small fee?
EDIT: Or, yeah, a homeless shelter. Perhaps a better idea.
If there is the political will, the government can win regardless - they could, if for no other reason than to deter future land-owners, make a tourist attraction out of this beach and completely ruin it for the land-owner.
It will be interesting to see if the cops prioritize showing up when they do.
Find a parking lot somewhere along the coast. Run a boat from there to Martin's Beach. Charge enough that you make a bit of money, but don't be greedy. You'll get to be on the beach every day, making money while you're at it.
Yeah, I know, you're going to have to get a commercial license and all, but... somebody ought to go for this.
Before him, the previous owner charged a fee to use the private road/property.
The media seems to be avoiding these points at all costs, which completely changes the story.
Talk about showing one's true colors.
The new good-ol'-boy network, the cancer cells of humanity's body, have made a statement: "We're going to take more and more every day, and we're not going away unless you force us". Time for some hard-core chemo. It's painful, but sometimes it's the only option for survival.
The statement is clear. So why waste time arguing? Why foolishly believe that you can peacefully outperform them when they will fund your competitors to spite you, use their own social contacts to ruin your reputation, and continue to corrupt every institution (high-minded or base) from government to education to business? Time to fuck some shit up. If there is a God, these are times to live by his (or her, or its) law.
Fuck the city government. I hope he can keep his private land private.
Why not leave the beach as it is, a secluded beach you need to kayak to, or take a motor boat if you really must be lazy.
Things earned have value, this constant need to have a road to everything I find so sad.