Let them eat veggies: Obama has dinner with Steve

http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/let-them-eat-veggies-obama-has-dinner-with-steve/

by evo_9 • 15 years ago

79 67 15 years ago

tastybites• 15 years ago

Maybe Obama should have dinner with a few small business/startup founder people instead of a couple of billionaires in a giant hilltop compound.

edw519• 15 years ago

Why bother? He already knows what they'd say: "Cut spending, cut taxes, and stay out of our way."

gte910h3• 15 years ago

Really? I've seen several people who think taxes are too low, not everyone is a republican who does startups.

On the "Stay out of our way" I do think the feeling is pretty broad across the board.

staunch• 15 years ago

I don't know of any startup that's struggling because of government spending or taxes.

In fact taxes are probably too favorable for VCs. They have a completely unnecessary and unfair loophole that should be closed.

Immigration is the biggest government policy issue impeding startups, and that's something Obama could help fix.

nostromo• 15 years ago

That's exactly what he'll hear meeting with a bunch of billionaires with huge market share. As an actual startup, my issues are much different:

* I can't afford health care for my first employees.

* Stop making it so difficult to visit the US.

* Let me help my employees abroad emigrate to the US.

* Fix the patent system.

danilocampos2• 15 years ago

If I understand correctly, he was there with Jobs and Zuckerberg, among others. Two generations of hard core startup OGs, I think that's pretty tough to beat.

edit: I mean, isn't the best startup guy to talk to the kind who made himself a billionaire?

yummyfajitas5• 15 years ago

It's useful to talk to an average person and a marginal person, as well as wildly successful outliers.

arepb• 15 years ago

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5455525432/

danilocampos2• 15 years ago

Driving home last night, maybe around 10 PM, I heard a deafening whump-whump-whump over San Mateo. It was almost extraterrestrial in nature. Crane out the car window to see one of those beefy helicopters with dual rotors. It passes. Then another one. This would have been Obama's entourage, yes? If so, a much smaller footprint than last time he was on the Peninsula. His motorcade shut down a nice stretch of the 101 for a few minutes.

goodgoblin• 15 years ago

I used to work in NYC and we could see the helipad out of our window, and when the president came to visit there were three identical choppers, presumably so that if you wanted to try and shoot him down you'd be playing 3-card monte.

kmfrk4• 15 years ago

That, and at least one of them probably carries the ad-hoc hospital, weapons and agents, ABC bomb detection system, etc.

The Atlantic had a great article with a break-down of the motorcade: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/the-pres....

elai• 15 years ago

3 shooters, 3x the cost?

Hovertruck• 15 years ago

I used to live and work in DC, and on my way to the Metro in the morning I'd regularly be passed by the vice presidential motorcade. Not quite as interesting, but still fun.

russell• 15 years ago

Sometime in the late 90's I was driving north on I280 near Woodside CA. I got off at the Sandhill exit and found myself in the middle of Al Gore's motorcade to one of those private residence fund raisers. Evidently the offramp had been unblocked a moment too soon. Half a mile later I turned off onto the road home without having been forced off the road or tailed or visited by the secret service. I realized what was going on at the time, which made it a very strange experience.

swombat• 15 years ago

It was, of course, just an interesting coincidence but I used it as an excuse to accuse them of brand hijacking. Wouldn’t you? So we’re literally moving toward the White House getting an IP license from me.

I'm not a lawyer, but hasn't he just effectively torpedoed his legal case for accusing the White House of anything to do with brand hijacking?

jaysonelliot• 15 years ago

Neither am I a lawyer, but I'd look at it this way: suppose I had never heard of Google or Android, and I tried to name a new operating system "Android" purely by coincidence.

They could still sue me, couldn't they?

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

Given his writings on this subject in the past, I think he's really using it as an excuse to have a dialog with the White House on how to help startups. How else could he have gotten their attention?

juiceandjuice• 15 years ago

I was wondering why Woodside Rd was so packed with cops when I went to my friend's house in Woodside last night. She thought there was a flood or something. This explains it.

dabent• 15 years ago

"In Silicon Valley you decide to start a company then look for ideas. In real America you have an idea that eventually becomes a company."

That certainly seems to be the case. I know some successful business people locally who didn't have to pivot, or face many of the problems tech/web startups do.

imperator• 15 years ago

Agreed. I think that was Cringley's best point, and also why I sometimes get frustrated in the valley. Some people say they like ideas here, but what they really like are startups and the effects of the ecosystem.

chailatte• 15 years ago

Topics of conversation:

- How to get 2% corporate taxes paid down to 1%

- How to get more printed dollars into SV, nevermind skyrocketing gas/food prices

- Best way to offshore jobs

- Toast to code monkeys

timmins• 15 years ago

Let me get this straight... they discussed innovation?

What was Y! CEO Carol Bartz doing there? Another Obama party crasher?

gord• 15 years ago

wheres pg ?

6ren• 15 years ago

> In Silicon Valley you decide to start a company then look for ideas.

It was true for HP, the original Silicon Valley startup, but not for all of them (e.g. Apple, Adobe).

Interesting, fits with a focus on the company, not the tech. I personally prefer the tech-based approach.

Let them eat veggies: Obama has dinner with Steve

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