John Doerr and Jim Barksdale are on a mission: They want to lead us into the Brave New Economy, where securities litigation is all but extinct and every child has a shot at surviving the rough-and-tumble of a job market where flexibility is valued more than loyalty.
To further those modest ends - reforming the country's legal and education systems - the two Silicon Valley moguls announced Tuesday the formation of the Technology Network, a bipartisan coalition aimed at giving tech companies a more significant voice in politics at the state and national level.
Doerr, a partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and TechNet co-chair, says the coalition initially plans to focus on implementing state testing standards, introducing education technology into school systems, and supporting the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act, a US House bill that would keep frivolous shareholder lawsuits from being filed in state courts. The group will also fund national and state political action committees.
"Across the country, conventional wisdom says the American Dream is over," Doerr said. "But Silicon Valley is a symbol for the rest of the country. In Silicon Valley, every segment of society is coming up together. That's a phenomenon that can extend nationwide."
That the tech community, which has evolved into a mature industry responsible for generating 40 percent of recent growth in the nation's gross domestic product, would take its place as a political power was inevitable. And so perhaps, was its entrance strategy.
After all, who can argue against the need for public-education reform? It's the feel-good political cause of the '90s. Last year, Bob Dole touted it and Bill Clinton went out on a limb, proposing school uniforms for every student. So why shouldn't Barksdale and Doerr start calling for standardized testing? Certainly it's a more practical first step than dressing semiliterate, mathematically challenged kids in standard-issue plaid in the hope that a little discipline will lift their test scores and life skills. And as for whether the public education system offers a reasonable starting point for a bunch of tech companies to leverage their collective political weight, again, why not? As Netscape CEO Barksdale put it, "You can't manage what you can't measure."
The second prong of the strategy - securities litigation reform - is even more of a natural. The idea for TechNet sprang out of Doerr's successful campaign to defeat California Proposition 211, a 1996 initiative that would have lowered barriers to class-action lawsuits charging stock fraud and opened individual corporate directors and officers to personal liability.
And of course, the dual strategy has a not-so-hidden virtue - TechNet's education agenda will open a lot of Washington doors on both sides of the political divide. Then, once inside, TechNet reps can begin whispering in pols' ears about the need to finish the 211 fight and once and for all protect the New Economy's financial giants from irate investors. And given that the reps will be name players like Barksdale and Doerr, rather than professional DC lobbyists, those whispers could have significant reverberations on Capitol Hill.
"Believe me," said Dan Schnur, TechNet's Republican political director and California Governor Pete Wilson's sometime-press-secretary, "company CEOs carry a lot more weight with politicians than some random Capitol Hill professionals."
So far, TechNet's chorus boasts a number of high-profile CEOs including Cisco Systems' John Chambers, Intuit's Scott Cook, National Semiconductor's Brian Halla, Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy, CNET's Halsey Minor, Marimba's Kim Polese, Robertson Stephens' Sandy Robertson, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO John Young. And their list of listeners is no slouch either: On 22 June, the group had a preliminary meeting with President Clinton, and another is scheduled with former Congressman and sometime-vice-presidential-wannabe Jack Kemp.
The group, which has a US$2 million budget, also plans to help fund sympathetic candidates, and begin developing other initiatives in conjunction with a more grassroots membership, which will soon be able to join TechNet for $100 a year.
"What we really want is to initiate and facilitate contact between the technology community and politicians," said Doerr. "That's the way we plan to make an impact."
