On Monday, while tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg sat on the dais at President Donald Trump's inauguration, dozens of company founders attended parties across Washington, D.C. , was attempting to have an audience with the new president's aides.
Listening to them, it wasn't that difficult. Valar Atomics founder Isaiah Taylor spent the weekend party-hopping, rubbing shoulders with Sean Spicer and conservative podcaster Jordan Peterson. Taylor's company wants to use nuclear power to produce synthetic hydrocarbon fuels. He sent a two-page letter to acquaintances with ties to Washington calling for changes to nuclear regulations, and won three invitations to Mar-a-Lago in the last month. “People are like, 'Tell me, how can we fix this?' We need to build things back up,” he said of the administration.
His story was surprisingly common. Across America's capital, founders were reaping the fruits of the industry's political maneuvering. They watched Snoop Dogg at David Sachs' Crypto Ball, attended an early morning crypto rave hosted by the Milady NFT Group, and were affiliated with controversial thought leader Curtis Yarvin. She dressed up for the “Coronation Ball'' sponsored by her publisher. Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.
Tyler Sweat, CEO of defense technology startup Second Front Systems, said a major complaint about the federal government is bureaucratic opacity. Founders often don't even know who to contact in government, much less secure a huge contract.
But as Mr. Sweat left events such as the Vice President's Banquet and the candlelight dinner before President Trump's inauguration, he said the country was witnessing a rare opportunity for the federal government, Big Tech and the startup ecosystem to work together to obscure the inner workings of government. It made me feel that the time was coming. It may be lifted. “Non-politically, it's a very interesting thing in terms of what we can do as a country,” he said.
At the watch party, hosted by the conservative group American Moment, Congressional staffers wore suits and red ties, and tech workers wore sneakers. Jacob Martin, general partner of cryptocurrency fund 2Punks Capital and co-founder of the gaming guild Ready Player DAO, said President Trump is the infamous founder of Silk Road, currently serving a life sentence. I continued to pay attention to the news of the immediate pardon of Ross Ulbricht, who is currently in prison. Despite pledging to do so at the Libertarian Convention in May, he did not do so.
Martin also lamented the missed opportunity to buy the Trump Meme Coin when it was launched on Sachs' Crypto Ball, a top crypto donor at the time. It was a time when I was away from computers. Trading for the coin immediately skyrocketed. “You could have bought it, but you didn't because it was obviously a scam, right?” Martin laughed. “Some people made hundreds of millions doing it.”
He hopes the Trump administration will “enable people to leverage blockchain technology to build better things and issue tokens on demand and not have to worry about jail time.”
DOGE is a big opportunity
Some of the company's founders felt that Musk's Office for Government Efficiency would open the floodgates for startups to pitch their products to the government, fulfilling its promise to make government more efficient. . James Layfield, chief sales officer at Samplify.ai, which helps companies identify redundant software, created a website called DogeProof.com. He said the concept is to make Samplify.ai's product available to government agencies for free, allowing them to eliminate irrelevant subscriptions before Musk comes in to cut costs.
Layfield threw it to Florida State Representative Byron Donald at the inaugural ball and said he too seemed intrigued. “This whole experience has been incredibly rewarding just to see how open people are to this possibility,” he said.
Meanwhile, Counter Health founder Rabi Alam is hopeful that DOGE will support his company's mission to streamline the health care system while keeping quality of care high. But first, like everyone in this country, he needs to understand what exactly DOGE is. As luck would have it, Aram won an invitation to the inaugural ball, where he was scheduled to scout DOGE personnel. “I'd like to get what's called finer granularity and more colors in terms of what the approach is,” he said.
If this weekend has shown us anything, it's that the toughest challenge a founder will face between balls and trips to Mar-a-Lago is simply staying focused on the day-to-day business. It's possible. “There are people trying to be in the right room,” Taylor said. “And there are people out there trying to get the job done.”