Ron Conway: Blowhard
Ron, would you like some cheese with your whine?
This week, SEIU-UHW will submit a very large number of signatures to the California Secretary of State’s office in order to qualify the California Billionaire Tax Act of 2026 (CABTA).
This might surprise Ron Conway, the well known San Francisco venture capitalist and pontificator on all things he deems worthy of his attention, and by implication, ours.
Last month Ron participated in a podcast called “Uncapped with Jack Altman” which is best described not as an interview but a fawning, forty-one minute masterclass in ass-kissing.
Jack, is the younger brother of Sam Altman, currently the CEO of OpenAI. Jack is very rich; Ron is fabulously rich and Sam is on the verge of becoming world-historically rich when OpenAI goes public. They are all tech bros.
What is it about tech bros?
For guys with functionally unlimited resources, who are well known to exude a certain type of arrogance about their own brilliance, they regularly get the most basic facts wrong. Given how rich and smart they are it’s hard to believe they aren’t doing it on purpose.
In the forty-one minute puff piece titled “Silicon Valley’s Relationship Broker” Ron goes on at length about many topics beyond how rich and smart he is. For instance, he talks about his love for “founders” (extra-special tech bros) who clearly operate on a level above the rest of us and thus deserve special consideration and treatment.
The last eight minutes are the best. It is here that Ron opines on CABTA, a “horrible piece of legislation” that apparently is chock full of features tech bros find abhorrent. The thing is, his most strident and heartfelt criticism related to the treatment of “super voting shares” held by his beloved “founders” is just flat out wrong. And not just a little bit off, but hugely, incomprehensibly (maybe intentionally and dishonestly?) off. A complete and utter whiff.
What’s with the reading comprehension skills of these guys?
Ron claims, as have other tech bros, that CABTA will tax billionaire founders at their portion of voting control against the overall market capitalization of the company. Again, this is utterly incorrect. It’s like asserting that two plus two is seven. Moreover, the example of “Larry and Sergey” (the Google founders each worth over $250 billion) cited by Ron involves a publicly traded company. Publicly traded companies, like Google, are explicitly exempted by CABTA from the kind of valuation assessment claimed.
To be clear, CABTA will impose an emergency, one-time, five percent asset tax only on California’s two hundred or so billionaires, in order to restore cuts caused by the One Big Beautiful Bill to our healthcare system, particularly Medi-Cal which covers 15 million people.
Ron’s claim that founders like “Larry, Sergey and Mark” will be assessed a tax commensurate with their voting control (of their publicly traded companies) is as preposterous as it is dishonest.
Ron doesn’t mind telling whoppers. The podcast interview provides real insight as to how financial and tech elites think about themselves, the economy, politics and implicitly all of us.
Ron’s tone of clubbiness and easy familiarity regarding billionaires, the Governor and the previous Speaker of the House of Representatives gives the game away. His stories of conversation and interactions with “Larry, Sergey and Mark” as well as “Gavin” and “Nancy” is the talk of a man who is used to getting exactly what he wants, when he wants it. It is the talk of someone who has come to believe his personal interests are the interests of the whole, the common interest. He presumes the preferences and needs of two hundred of the most fortunate people on the planet are more important than those of the 150,000 healthcare workers projected to lose their jobs; the 3.5 million individuals who will lose their healthcare coverage; or the more than 20 million of us, in California, who are already paying higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles as a result of Trump’s OBBB, which of course, lavished unnecessary tax breaks on billionaires, tech bros and elites of all kinds.
This is why people are so irate about the state of our country. Although Ron would undoubtedly disagree, his values, preferences and prescribed policies are, in fact, what produced President Trump. Trump, in large part, is a consequence of the elite tech bro worldview. He preys on the understandable outrage of people who are treated like suckers and chumps and don’t have the privilege of calling up Larry, Sergey, Mark, Gavin and Nancy to talk about their “problems”.
So, memo to Ron: we peasants have the signatures to put CABTA on the ballot in November. It wasn’t that hard. People get it. We understand your hustle.
We wish you would exhibit a small portion of the outrage and concern for the great majority of the population that you do for the luckiest and wealthiest among us.
Think of CABTA as the new economy’s version of pitchforks.
And call Gavin.
See you in November, Ron.
Spot on