If I'm being honest, we all know the "rich guy sponsors girlfriend's vanity company" thing. Everyone usually knows what it's about. We can all sit here in schadenfreude but it's just the really rich version of the tchotchke and artisanal honey shop in Kalispell. So yeah, it's going to say grand things like "being a transformational mechanism for deep-lasting change" and "rejecting short-termism for true long-lasting success" and stuff like that. I bet if you go check out their website it'll be that stuff. Some people will performatively pretend this company is not like that, but it is almost certainly that.
The honey in that shop in Kalispell is not going to be that great, but at some point the proprietor will be on a TedX talk about how she's donating $1 of every purchase to fund hand-plucked honey fruit from honey trees in Africa and how this has been a truly transformational women-owned business or so on that is a vehicle for lasting change.
This is the same as that except at the big level.
It's okay that it exists since getting rich people to spend their money is a reasonable way to move money from stored wealth into the economy.
While I think many would agree that Schmidt has done some questionable business things, the undertone of the article is just distasteful. If all you do is do head-honcho stuff, then why is it unusual that you would date another like-minded person and do a "side project" together? Also, why is his poly relationship being tossed out there in the same context as this 100M venture going sideways? Lots of companies go sideways, especially when you've been too used to working at a nice big one. This is probably going to be a learning curve for anyone coming from that world, to get used to being small and scrappy again, while holding onto what knowledge they gained before.
Exactly, for one this seems like just another Schmidt Futures, which is a non profit version of the same thing which he and his wife Wendy launched together
And secondly, having run in those circles for a little while, everything I read in this article was typical.
If you’re relying on other companies in order to do or announce anything, then it works on the other companies schedule. Lots of “letters on intents” and things that do not translate into a wire transfer. Lots of talks at hotel cafes near the actual conference, that are overhyped as anything meaningful. Everybody does this. I don’t enjoy this but I know many many people that operate this way.
And the article also failed to mention what’s failing. If it’s an investor in other companies as an incubator, it can be an investor. It is very common for one company to lead the relationship while another company moves the funds. That’s nobody’s business. Declining to mention your other investors doesn’t mean anything.
Schmidt Futures is a vanity project too. It is just structured in the best way for not getting that perception, using the non profit tax code. Like every other “philanthropic arm” that’s not leveraging anonymity that the state affords non profits.
So who cares?
This is just celebrity gossip.
And misogyny.
for two reasons:
1 being that I don't see the same denigration from other companies operating the same way, when it could be applied to many wannabe founders.
2 the whole thing is supposed to be about a 29 year old woman taking advantage of a billionaire. which even if that was the entire extent of the relationship, being annoyed by that choice is based on disdain from not having the hardware to have the same choices. if its not the total extent then the article has no reason to exist, especially without quantifying whats not going well.
is it “not going well” at investing in a fruit salad of AI startups? why were the expenses so high? is it because it has a bunch of illiquid investments because it successfully invested? the article didn’t say.
I'd prefer not to see disparaging comments about someone's personal relationship here.
Sometimes there's a legitimate business reason to know that two executives have a strong personal relationship of some kind. Since strong personal relationships can present conflicts of interest. (No need to go into details, nor publicly editorialize.)
Other than that, the personal lives of people are their own business. We don't have understand or agree with everyone else's situations; only to coexist with the people. Let's not be conditioned by the awful "celebrity news" industry and Twitter culture.
Often wonder if these former CEOs invest in/start health companies. I would love to try and accelerate research in a few niche fields that are underfunded.
If anyone else was just wondering what the company even was...
> Schmidt later described it as “an AI and analytics company of companies” that would invest in a fruit salad of verticals from virtual reality to space. Elaborating on that mission to some employees, Ritter invoked the empires of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk as an array of world changing companies run under the aegis of a single person, according to three former employees.
Also the name...
> Steel Perlot’s name is something of a mystery, and several former employees said they still don’t know its origins. Forbes found an image of Ritter standing next to a small teak sailboat, named Steel Perlot. She described it as a gift from a friend that she named after the company, not vice versa. Beyond that, she would say only that she uses the name’s origins as an interview question for prospective hires. “It's a secret no one knows other than me,”
Since they won't deign to explain it, I guess it's fair for me to go with my gut and assume that "Steel Perlot" means nothing and was chosen simply because it sounds pretentious.
Imagine you work at this place for a year and find out that it has a similar meaning to what Citizen Kane’s “rosebud” really meant (or at least what it meant to Hearst)
Obvious first guess on the name Steel Perlot that came to mind: Remington Steele (a business name persona created by a capable female entrepreneur, to work around sexism), Perot (wealth, libertarianism/conservativism), Merlot (faintly French or cosmopolitan or upscale, not the chugging Red Bull flavor of startups).
