Yeah the 30 under 30 list was so bad it seriously hurt its reputation.
Even before the people were 'outed', the 30 were 'ehhhh'. Like sure you'd have some cool stuff with big money, but you'd also have something so obscure like "Founder of women's magazine for healthcare equipment" that would make you scream:
"Wonder what nepotism made that happen?"
Thus you pay 0 attention to the list and laugh at whenever it gets made fun of.
James O'Keefe's minor infractions seem out of place on this list. It sounds to me like Forbes might be disappointed in him for other, more philosophical reasons.
> Project Veritas is an American far-right activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010. The group produces deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations, which use secret recordings in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups.Project Veritas also uses entrapment to generate bad publicity for its targets, and has propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations.
> In 2009, Project Veritas associates published misleading videos that depicted ACORN employees providing advice on concealing illegal activity, causing ACORN to shut down after losing funding; the Attorney General of California cleared ACORN of wrongdoing in 2010, and the associates paid a total of $150,000 in settlements to an ACORN employee who sued for defamation. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned in 2013 after Project Veritas released a deceptively edited video portraying another NPR executive making controversial comments about the Tea Party movement and NPR's federal funding. Project Veritas unsuccessfully attempted to mislead The Washington Post into publishing false information about the Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations in 2017; the Post won a Pulitzer Prize after uncovering the operation.
> The organization's board fired O'Keefe in February 2023 for what it said was financial malfeasance with donor money.
O'Keefe's content isn't much more egregious than Maddow's Russiagate coverage or any of the insane content pushed by politics streamers with huge reach (to children, no less) like Hasan Piker...but yet they're media darlings for being on the correct side along the overton window.
I only know him from his Project Veritas work, so I went to his personal Wikipedia page to see what redeeming activities he’s performed but it looks like just a lot more of the same - lies, attempted entrapment, attempted sexual assault, attempted voter fraud, etc.
So I must ask, what has he done that’s “objectively right?”
To be frank, what has Project Veritas done that is objectively right? All of their explosive "revelations" turned out to be fake, and when they tried their scam on an investigative journalist, said journalist instead pulled the thread and thoroughly outclassed Project Veritas. Only then did they have the temerity to proclaim that their goal all along was in trying to keep media honest.
Do you think it makes a difference if the person is bad person but their work contributes meaningfully to their field vs if the person is affable but their work is geared towards reducing the signal to noise ratio of other channels of communication?
This is certainly a topic of debate (obviously) and not settled within, as far as I can tell, any "section" of society.
Anyway, even assume you buy into that, it's usually unidirectional: a person's personal infractions don't necessarily have to destroy one's appreciation for their artwork.
The O'Keefe case (not that I necessarily do or do not agree with it) is the reverse: his work reflects poorly on his character. This directional flow, as far as I can tell, is not really hotly debated. People don't really debate "does engaging in bad behavior make you a bad person?" they just debate whether specific behavior is bad or not. Totally different from the art/artist debate.
I mean that may be, but the dude also cranked the price of insulin for no reason beyond he could and it would make him richer. So like, good luck finding some sympathetic ears for him.
Insulin? He didn't have anything to do with insulin.
It was Daraprim/Pyrimethamine. It's used to treat toxoplasmosis. It's also been off-patent for over 40 years and another pharmaceutical could have made a generic but none thought it would be profitable enough to even bother.
I accepted your correction and reaffirmed he's still a piece of shit because jacking the price of any drugs for no reason apart from your ability to do so makes you a piece of shit. The specific drug in question may make you a smaller or larger piece of shit, but a piece of shit you remain.
For that matter, not even isolated to drugs. Charging a higher price for the same product when you are already a ludicrously profitable entity for no reason is a shitty way to treat customers.
But there is a reason to increase the price of a drug.
To fund research of new drugs. Also if you raise the price of an off-patent drug, other pharmaceuticals are incentivized to manufacture a generic to compete with you and bring your prices down. At the time nobody was touching it for 40 years.
Keep in mind that this price is what was charged to insurers. Insurers negotiate the price back down. Uninsured patients up to 5x the federal poverty level were promised the drug for free.
Pharma companies in the US will charge what insurance companies are willing to pay. It's not an issue of individual greed, it's an issue of a regulatory system and set of incentives that collectively are fucking you. There are far more expensive drugs out there than Daraprim with worse markups and nobody is identifying the CEO of those companies and calling them the most hated man on earth.
It's not that really. At least not the whole of it. It was just easy to tie him as a face to the kind of corporate entities that people hate. Also his position was much more vulnerable than other pharma executives who can afford to pay armies of PR teams, etc.
He has a need for attention and a poor sense of self-preservation -- sort of like weev but without being a massive racist.
All pharma companies price gouge. His company was giving a lot of the drug away for free to people who couldn't afford it, and insurance companies were paying the higher cost in other cases. Shkreli was singled out because he's addicted to getting attention on the internet so he put it on himself, and he has an easy to make fun of physical appearance.
If you actually watch his livestreams and listen to what he has to say instead of reading legacy media, you'd get a different perspective on him.
Perhaps, but only Shkreli decided to 10× his drug prices overnight. Or, as one person put it, "[Shkreli] is to a research-based company like a loan shark to a legitimate bank"
The patent had expired on the drug four decades prior and no other pharmaceutical bothered to try and make it available.
We really got the best outcome out of this stunt. He exposed real weaknesses in what we're doing and also the FDA process to market generics and instead of doing anything to fix it outside of the context of this one drug, we shot the messenger.
Hopefully this is a harbinger of the end of the emphasis VCs and Universities put on pushing 22-year olds to be founders. There's a reason most successful entrepreneurs average 42 when they start a company
I cofounded a company back in 2021, at the time I was 37. I still felt too inexperienced to be doing what I was doing. Can't imagine having the hubris to think you know how to start a company in your early 20's.
It's largely driven by the investors. People in their early 20's are maybe 25% less likely to have a successful startup, but 50% more likely to give away equity.
So from a VC perspective, you have a riskier asset but greater ownership.
Not only that, they also have less to lose so are able to take more chances, and work more hours to achieve their goals. Which gives the possibility of producing a unicorn. Older people will be more conservative, taking fewer risks, so probably less likely to hit that hyper-mega valuation.
Interesting comment, I don't think anyone does just look at Steve Jobs as a prime example he founded Apple at 21 with Wozniak, he didn't have any idea of how to start a company, but he knew he would regret never starting one in the first place. A few YC unicorn's have been started by people who were 19, or even 20 but age isn't the primitive factor to a business success it's execution and innovation.
In order to become a founder you need to have experience and connections (future colleagues, investors and customers). Both things you cannot have with 22 unless you dropped out and born in Silicon Valley
Why don’t we preemptively put anyone who works in finance in the hall of shame. Unpopular w the hn crew I’m sure, but the field does disproportionately more harm than good.
Hilariously the Forbes article notes that they weeded her out from the 30 under 30 list, maybe they just forgot that they then put her face on the _front cover_ instead!
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadNone that just fizzled in legal ways.
Even before the people were 'outed', the 30 were 'ehhhh'. Like sure you'd have some cool stuff with big money, but you'd also have something so obscure like "Founder of women's magazine for healthcare equipment" that would make you scream:
"Wonder what nepotism made that happen?"
Thus you pay 0 attention to the list and laugh at whenever it gets made fun of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V36kSqwjaaw
> In 2009, Project Veritas associates published misleading videos that depicted ACORN employees providing advice on concealing illegal activity, causing ACORN to shut down after losing funding; the Attorney General of California cleared ACORN of wrongdoing in 2010, and the associates paid a total of $150,000 in settlements to an ACORN employee who sued for defamation. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned in 2013 after Project Veritas released a deceptively edited video portraying another NPR executive making controversial comments about the Tea Party movement and NPR's federal funding. Project Veritas unsuccessfully attempted to mislead The Washington Post into publishing false information about the Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations in 2017; the Post won a Pulitzer Prize after uncovering the operation.
> The organization's board fired O'Keefe in February 2023 for what it said was financial malfeasance with donor money.
source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas
John Lennon beat his wife (and wrote songs about it!!) but I still see morons with "Imagine" t-shirts preaching peace.
O'Keefe's content isn't much more egregious than Maddow's Russiagate coverage or any of the insane content pushed by politics streamers with huge reach (to children, no less) like Hasan Piker...but yet they're media darlings for being on the correct side along the overton window.
So I must ask, what has he done that’s “objectively right?”
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe
Besides, if you get hired to work on a Polanski film, free travel outside the US! Why bother working for the pedophile rapists already in LA?
Anyway, even assume you buy into that, it's usually unidirectional: a person's personal infractions don't necessarily have to destroy one's appreciation for their artwork.
The O'Keefe case (not that I necessarily do or do not agree with it) is the reverse: his work reflects poorly on his character. This directional flow, as far as I can tell, is not really hotly debated. People don't really debate "does engaging in bad behavior make you a bad person?" they just debate whether specific behavior is bad or not. Totally different from the art/artist debate.
No, he isn't the problem, the system that enables him is. But he is an opportunistic piece of shit.
It was Daraprim/Pyrimethamine. It's used to treat toxoplasmosis. It's also been off-patent for over 40 years and another pharmaceutical could have made a generic but none thought it would be profitable enough to even bother.
For that matter, not even isolated to drugs. Charging a higher price for the same product when you are already a ludicrously profitable entity for no reason is a shitty way to treat customers.
To fund research of new drugs. Also if you raise the price of an off-patent drug, other pharmaceuticals are incentivized to manufacture a generic to compete with you and bring your prices down. At the time nobody was touching it for 40 years.
Keep in mind that this price is what was charged to insurers. Insurers negotiate the price back down. Uninsured patients up to 5x the federal poverty level were promised the drug for free.
Pharma companies in the US will charge what insurance companies are willing to pay. It's not an issue of individual greed, it's an issue of a regulatory system and set of incentives that collectively are fucking you. There are far more expensive drugs out there than Daraprim with worse markups and nobody is identifying the CEO of those companies and calling them the most hated man on earth.
He has a need for attention and a poor sense of self-preservation -- sort of like weev but without being a massive racist.
If you actually watch his livestreams and listen to what he has to say instead of reading legacy media, you'd get a different perspective on him.
Perhaps, but only Shkreli decided to 10× his drug prices overnight. Or, as one person put it, "[Shkreli] is to a research-based company like a loan shark to a legitimate bank"
We really got the best outcome out of this stunt. He exposed real weaknesses in what we're doing and also the FDA process to market generics and instead of doing anything to fix it outside of the context of this one drug, we shot the messenger.
So from a VC perspective, you have a riskier asset but greater ownership.
and the kids will work like dogs because they haven't been in the industry long enough to know what is normal