Weed Agency : A Comic Tale of Federal Bureaucracy Without Limits (9780770436537) by Geraghty Jim

Author:Geraghty, Jim [Geraghty, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7704-3653-7
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2014-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

Ava checked in to her hotel in Palo Alto, showered, changed into what she thought were good interview clothes, and Raj drove her to GlobeScape’s campus, just a bit off Sand Hill Drive in Menlo Park, at that moment the most expensive patch of commercial real estate in North America.

“Our founder, Len Silver, inherited some wealth from his grandparents’ tire company,” Raj said.

“Lenny,” she chuckled, noticing he looked surprisingly like an old hippie in the company’s portrait in the brochure and on the Web site.

“He legally changed it to Lennon in 1980,” Raj corrected her. “Invested the wealth he inherited in a few startups, also got in on Apple and Netscape early. I’ve seen a lot of executives who have brains, but no vision. Well, Lennon Silver has vision by the bucketful.”

WIRED PROFILE

When you walk into the Palo Alto offices of GlobeScape.com, the first thing you notice are the giant portraits of world leaders in the hallway leading to the office suite of CEO Lennon Silver. They’re originals, copying Andy Warhol’s Day-Glo-style portraits of Marilyn Monroe: John Kennedy, Gandhi, Che Guevara, Evita Peron. At the end of the hallway is a specially commissioned portrait of Lennon Silver, in the same bold red, green, pink, and blue.

The implicit comparison is a big boast, and Silver is a man determined to back it up.

“I’m not a man who plays it safe,” Lennon says in an interview. “I’m different from a lot of other people because I really care about things. I really mean that.”

In past years, California investors derided Lennon Silver as one of the higher-risk venture capitalists playing in the silicon sandbox. He racked up some legendary wins—getting in on Apple and Netscape early—and some spectacular failures, including ill-fated efforts to sell produce, jewelry, and coffee beans over the Internet.

Now GlobeScape is Silver’s latest thriving baby, and the venture capitalists are swarming. And he’s particularly excited about his company’s newest project, EasyFed.com. Like many of Silver’s ideas, a personal moment of frustration provided the spark of inspiration.

“Some House Budget Subcommittee was talking about increasing the tax rate on carried interest—an absolute war crime of a policy idea—and I had no idea how to get in touch with them,” Silver recalls. He found his calls to the IRS, the Joint Tax Committee, and the Securities and Exchange Commission only generated what he called “stunningly unhelpful” responses, and so ending that frustration, on a global scale, became his all-consuming vision.

Enter EasyFed.com, where the average John Q. Public can log on, search for the government service or interaction they require, enter some data and use some dropdown menus, and voilà!—the frustration of taking on City Hall is gone in a puff of electrons.

Silver and his team are betting there’s a mint to be made in handling inquiries to the U.S. Mint, but he’s playing his cards close to the vest about how EasyFed.com will operate beyond its currently undisclosed—but reportedly quite considerable—sum of venture capital.

Asked to detail EasyFed’s revenue model, he demurs. “To truly find something, first you have to lose yourself,” he says with a cryptic smile.

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