Don't Cancel Shaun Maguire But Please Stop Making Us Listen to Him
VC influencers & the cheap tricks of political provocation
From Tom Dotan, Newcomer’s senior correspondent —
One outcome of our low-barrier, infinite-distribution age is a barbell effect among social media influencers. On one end, there’s an explosion of unconventional, niche thinkers who can now find an audience. On the other, powerful people with existing status and followings have convinced themselves that all their opinions are important.
I’m thinking about this in light of Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire, who again sparked controversy on X, this time by calling left-wing NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a liar by dint of the ‘Islamist’ culture that he’d been ingrained in. The comment followed a New York Times report that Mamdani, a Uganda-born Muslim of Indian descent, was arguably misleading in identifying as both African American and Asian on his Columbia application. To Maguire, the alleged deceit reflected Islamist thinking.
Facing backlash, Maguire said he wasn’t intending to impugn all Muslims, just the ones who he categorized as Islamists. He apologized somewhat: “to any Muslim that is not an Islamist and to any Indian who took offense to this tweet, I am very very sorry. I know that things are difficult. I am not trying to stoke hatred,” he said in a follow up video, where he admitted his initial post did not have its intended effect. But if his other posts are any indication, he’s mostly giddy with the attention that he’s gotten for stirring up anger. He certainly hasn’t backed off his stance on Mamdani.
Posting political opinions on X is something Maguire says he’s morally bound to do. In a March podcast interview with Jack Altman, he cited Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel as the event that made him realize that he had to enlist as a soldier in the information warfare playing out online.
Yet Maguire’s feed is a typical mélange of hard-line pro-Israel politics you can find almost anywhere, alongside unfounded claims of election fraud that bounce around MAGA world. In the case of Mamdani, he veers into Islamic fear-mongering that essentially regurgitates the kinds of things Ann Coulter or Christopher Hitchens would have said on whatever Bill Maher show in the years after 9/11.
It’s unclear to me what he’s adding to the discourse beyond amplifying far-right views that are now mainstream among a certain cohort in Silicon Valley. If Maguire’s views get any carry, it’s because it comes with the imprimatur of a Sequoia Capital partner.
It’s easy for VCs like Maguire to see their big followings as a sign of interest in what they might have to say on any topic. But an investor at a prominent and influential firm getting online attention for posting rage-bait isn’t a sign that they’ve hit on something important. It’s a hack.
I’ve followed Maguire on and off over time because of where he works and that he’s close to Elon Musk, not because I care about his political opinions. But likely with the help of Musk, we get a steady serving of them anyway. And the shock value of a Sequoia partner posting trollish comments — and the attendant brouhaha — only add to his fame. (Maguire’s colleague Pat Grady tried to play why-can’t-we-all-get-along cleanup for Maguire and, of course, Grady’s anti-extremist plea received far less engagement on X’s angry algorithm.)
It’s worth contrasting Maguire’s activities with those of other VCs who are leaning into the politics racket.
Mike Solana, not quite an investor himself at Founders Fund, has built a following for his Pirate Wires newsletter, where he rides his contrarian id. Whatever you think about his politics, though, he’s attracted an engaged audience with paying customers. Marc Andreessen failed with Clubhouse to see if his vision of mobile Parisian salons would find traction, but I admired the attempt. The All-In podcast is a very successful show, whose hosts’ rapport is entertaining to the type of people who like that sort of thing.
But All-In has begun to seem like a warmed-over Crossfire panel. You can’t even say that about Maguire who comes across not so much as a sharp, media-savvy political pundit as a bumbling hack eager to put out his half-baked, conspiratorial political takes.
If I were at a dinner party and Maguire expressed what are now conventionally right-wing political opinions, I wouldn’t pay much attention to them. I feel confident saying this because I’ve been to a dinner party he was at where he expressed his conventionally right-wing political opinions, and I didn’t pay much attention to them.
We could all be better about ignoring loud internet personalities when we decide they’re not adding anything to the conversation — but that feels much harder somehow than excusing yourself from an obnoxious dinner party companion.
Of course, the specter of Cancellation hangs over all of this. There’s a petition circulating among founders that implores Sequoia to take some action in response to Maguire’s posts on Islamists. There’s also one countering it, with founders and friends saying he’s actually a great guy and supportive investor. Maguire has argued he has the strong backing from the tech community; to me his personal support shows that his politics aren’t all that salient.
In Silicon Valley whether or not someone will or won’t be Canceled for their Takes ranks near the top of things leaders think about. On a recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Replit CEO Amjad Masad bemoaned the scourge of wokeness and proclaimed that it was killed when Musk bought Twitter.
Masad is Jordanian-American and of Palestinian descent and one of the few people in tech openly speaking out against Israel’s actions in Gaza and throughout the Middle East (Paul Graham being another). But in tech, being against Cancellation crosses all political boundaries.
For what it’s worth, my take is it would be bad for Maguire to lose his job for expressing his political opinions. Not just because I’m against people trying to adjudicate social justice through the workplace and because, all things considered, I’d rather people not be afraid of expressing their opinions. But also because if Maguire had to go solo and make a career strictly out of his posts, I’m pretty confident there’d be no audience for that.
Don’t make this man shill his takes for a living, please.
If he had to, that could be a version of cancellation itself.
When a TV network exec axes a show, it usually isn’t because it’s too controversial; it’s because it had no ratings.
It turns out cancellation is Good, Actually, and is appropriate for exactly this situation. A guy in a high-profile job expressed disgusting, prejudicial opinions and gave an unremorseful non-apology and now a whole lot of founders who would have previously jumped at the chance to work with Sequoia will now have second thoughts about taking their money. He’s also made it clear that he can’t be trusted to assess founders who he might mistake as “Islamists.” I wonder how he decides who is and is not One Of The Good Muslims.
If this is a “conventional right-wing political opinion,” then I have bad news about what our default stance should be towards right-wing people in our social and professional lives.
Thank you for writing this article. No one should miss opportunities to point out negative, non-productive, opinions. Using Sequoia Capital's reputation and platform to spew bias is unwise corporate positioning and will not enhance the organization's reputation. Sadly, negative views and hate speech create attention for all of the wrong reasons.