Founder Double Standards in Silicon Valley
Key Points
- The speaker uses the recent CrowdStrike outage to illustrate how accountability standards differ for founders versus regular employees in tech.
- Despite a high‑profile bug that crippled millions of Windows machines under his prior CTO role, the founder still secured funding and leadership positions, highlighting a lenient view of past failures for founders.
- Similar patterns appear in other cases like WeWork’s Adam Neumann, where investors continue to pour money into founders even after major missteps.
- The speaker argues that the tech industry should apply the same rigorous evaluation of priors to founders that it applies to employees, rather than automatically celebrating “been‑there‑done‑that” entrepreneurs.
Full Transcript
# Founder Double Standards in Silicon Valley **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj-uiKt-GWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj-uiKt-GWs) **Duration:** 00:05:30 ## Summary - The speaker uses the recent CrowdStrike outage to illustrate how accountability standards differ for founders versus regular employees in tech. - Despite a high‑profile bug that crippled millions of Windows machines under his prior CTO role, the founder still secured funding and leadership positions, highlighting a lenient view of past failures for founders. - Similar patterns appear in other cases like WeWork’s Adam Neumann, where investors continue to pour money into founders even after major missteps. - The speaker argues that the tech industry should apply the same rigorous evaluation of priors to founders that it applies to employees, rather than automatically celebrating “been‑there‑done‑that” entrepreneurs. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj-uiKt-GWs&t=0s) **Silicon Valley Accountability and CrowdStrike Outage** - The speaker criticizes the tech industry's lax accountability culture by using the recent CrowdStrike outage and the prior bug released under a former McAfee CTO—who later became CrowdStrike’s CEO—to illustrate how major failures are often glossed over in career advancement. ## Full Transcript
I want to talk about the culture of
accountability and how it differs in
Silicon Valley for Founders and I want
to use the crowd strike outage as a way
of talking about that because I think
it's a really good example let's imagine
for a minute that you are an employee
maybe you're a manager maybe you're a
director maybe you're a vice president
or maybe you're just an individual
contributor who's actually keeping the
lights on and doing the work
anyway what if you went to your next
role and you said hey I would like you
to hire me by the way I took down a good
chunk of the internet and I released a
major bug that required a manual reboot
of hundreds of millions of Windows
machines uh but I'm sure I'll be better
this time and please let me come work
for you I doubt that that would be the
kind of resume or the kind of interview
style that would earn you the
role yet that's exactly what happened in
the story of crowd strike so Mr CTS is
the CEO of crowd strike and he was
previously the Chief technical officer
over at McAfee and as Chief technical
officer he oversaw the technical team
that was responsible for releasing a bug
that looks eerily like the one that was
released by crowdstrike this past week
it affected Windows machines it was
globally impacting it took down a good
chunk of the internet the parallels are
kind of
eerie and despite all of that he went on
to continue to serve at Intel after
McAfee was sold to Intel once he had
vested at Intel and he was free he went
on to found crowd strike and he's been
the CEO ever
since and it got me thinking about how
we in tech seem to have a different
standard when it comes to Founders and
we even have written it down in some
places I've seen people talk about right
celebrate the idea that Founders are a
special crew of people that they are
people who should be celebrated for
building something regardless of their
faults regardless of their
flaws and we've had a lot of really
prominent flameouts as companies just
can't scale as a result and I'm not just
thinking of crowd strike in this
situation I'm also thinking of Wei
workor wework was another example where
a Founder was celebrated has
subsequently got a bunch of funding I
don't know what he's done with it and
the whole company flamed
out and yet that didn't seem to bother
the people who invested another billion
dollars in
him and I think that the stated
rationale is that you want to build with
someone who's built before and I I get
that to an
extent but as someone who values
understanding the past as a way of sort
of shaping the future or the short hand
for that by the way is basanis as
someone who appreciates priors as a way
of shaping our
decisions it feels weird for Founders to
be the ones where you ignore the priors
like for employees we just obsess over
whether or not they've done enough to
deserve working for us but for Founders
we don't for Founders we say have you
built before sure have you grown
anything before do you have a world
changing idea but we don't ask ourselves
did the thing you were building before
disappear and smoke and it feels like
that's a pretty relevant question to ask
and it's definitely top of mind for me
because now it's gotten so bad that Mr
Curts has been called into Congress to
testify and I actually do not know if he
is being called in to testify just about
this most recent crowd strike issue or
if Congress is actually going to open
the books and look and ask him about his
pattern of behavior as a leader that led
to two globally impacting bugs in 14
years I'm not sure I I kind of would
guess considering sort of how Congress
testimony goes that it might be the
ladder they might like dig in and like
ask him about his previous work
experience if so I bet you that that is
the most serious conversation he will
have ever had about that that's my sense
because Founders just typically don't
get the same degree of scrutiny and I
think that as a result we sometimes
build weaker companies than we should
and I think that we sometimes
overvalue giving money to existing
Founders versus giving money to new
Founders and I understand why in the
sense that new Founders are an unproven
bet but I don't understand why in the
sense that the founder you know may be
one that you know to have burned out a
company and I think that that that
really comes back to the Newman Wei work
thing if you burn out a company so badly
it becomes a major Hollywood
movie it probably doesn't make sense for
you to build
again it just doesn't so so all of this
to say I feel like we have a double
standard here it
matters and I would like to see us think
about how we can hold existing Founders
accountable to a higher standard while
celebrating in welcoming new
entrepreneurs who want to build whether
or not they want to build with outside
Capital that strikes me as a better way
to build companies that lost and endure
I don't know tell me what you think