Chris Allen ☦︎ 希腊天主教 ☦️🇻🇦

I’m going to lay out why I believe Kamala Harris is the better choice as president when it comes to fostering an environment for America to continue to be the best place in the world for business and leading in technology. In one candidate —Trump— we saw four years of regular distraction for businesses with never-ending fights with the business community, supply chain disruptions due to antagonistic trade negotiations and tariffs, rhetoric and policies that reduced our competitiveness for much-needed high skilled talent from around the world, and in many cases clear misalignment with future technologies like solar, electric vehicles, and more. If we didn’t have a short memory span, we’d remember that the frequency with which businesses had to stand together and call out ridiculous Trump policies and messages was unlike any other administration (one extraordinarily notable example being the Business Roundtable –made of up the country’s top companies– had to tell Trump to support a peaceful transfer of power after his presidency). Trump’s most recent debate performance was just another reminder of what those four years looked like. In Harris, we have a potential president that is leaning into pro-business and pro-tech stances. At the debate this week, and in Harris’s published policies, we have a clear message on her positions on a variety of important business topics.  First, it’s worth noting that Harris has been core to an administration that has created more jobs in four years than any other in modern history, enabled record solar energy production (while also supporting the record production of oil), continued to fund critical science research, embraced the need to lead in AI without overly-stifling regulation, created thoughtful approaches to antitrust to enable more startup competition, experienced a booming stock market, helped accelerate the on-ramping of more high-skilled immigrants to launch and work in US companies, and is bringing back semiconductor manufacturing to the US with the CHIPS Act.  Now, building on this momentum as a presidential candidate, Harris has laid out a goal of 25M new small business applications during her presidency, tax deductions for new small businesses, less red tape for small businesses, and improved child care efforts to help working parents. She has also been unmistakably clear on the need for America to lead in advanced technologies like AI, clean energy, quantum, and more. Importantly, a core part of continuing to build on our economic leadership positions in nearly every field is the ability to recruit, retain, and enable highly competent government officials in a range of fields, which I believe Harris is more suited for compared to the revolving door we saw under Trump.  Now, to be clear, I don’t agree with every viewpoint that the democrats espouse on business topics. I think the democratic party should shamelessly evaluate its positions and adjust when there’s a better idea (such as reduced regulation in key industries, or backing investment-stimulating tax policies). But I believe that Harris can build an administration that can work through these issues thoughtfully, and that we will have a competent administration that produces a more stable business environment.  We need a president that believes in the unique role of startups in the economy, the amazing talent of immigrants, the need for continued research in the public sector, the need to lead in AI and advanced technologies and manufacturing, and someone who can thoughtfully coordinate with global partners. What we don’t need is a president creating a daily deluge of distractions and changing policies, initiating culture war fights that require unsustainable levels of attention, or one that is surrounded by conspiracy theorists that drain our collective energy and productivity.

2) Stigma: this goes with timing, but at the time, people don’t realize this, but I was personally protested. If I showed up at tech events there was this contingent of people who worked very hard to try and make my life a living hellscape for daring to be a startup in this space. This means I wasn’t able to hire easily like other startups. This wasn’t a company you could call home and brag about to your startup. So, we sometimes had to sacrifice our values to hire people who were long term not a cultural fit and in hindsight, I should have fired them.