More than a few characters have been tweeted through the blogosphere about Silicon Valley and Donald Trump. But few have dealt with the underlying reason for the valley’s antipathy towards Mr Trump. He is, at least by Silicon Valley standards, and to use an epithet Mr Trump so readily lets loose on anyone that arouses his ire, “a loser” — both for what he stands for and because of his business performance.
Silicon Valley winners are people who fashion something from nothing. Many of them are the sort of people Mr Trump wants to keep from entering America and are victims of prejudice and oppression. Jan Koum, the founder of
Whats-App queued with his mother waiting for food stamps when he first came to America from Ukraine. Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!, could only speak one word of English — “shoe” — when, as a 10-year-old, he came with his mother from Taiwan. The family of Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, fled anti-semitism in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The late, great Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel, walked across the border from Hungary to Austria in 1956. Steve Jobs collected bottle caps to make extra money while at college. Even Bill Gates, though he came from a comfortable family, started Microsoft with a single-board computer and a handful of pocket money.