Stegosaurus

Mitt Romney & Meg Whitman

Mitt Romney & Meg Whitman
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

Meeting Mitt, part II

Unfortunately I didn't get particularly good photos of the Mitt Romney talk today.

I'm pretty sure the last time I went to the Quadrus center was early 2000, when I still worked for Signio (then in transition to its acquiring company, VeriSign). I remembered noticing this misspelled sign outside it seven years ago, and it's still there today:

I knew several people who had come for the talk, and recognized more (Meg Whitman, the eBay CEO, Steve Jurvetson, and a few others).

The gathering was small enough to allow Mitt Romney to shake everyone's hand individually before his talk.

MITT: (Almost imperceptibly glancing at my name tag, and pronouncing my name perfectly) Thane, nice to see you. [Said in an interesting tone—not quite "you're my best friend," but also far from "who the hell are you," also. ]

THANE: Hi. I'm looking forward to your talk.

MITT: Sigma Partners... [said speculatively, as if summoning vague associations. We shake hands. It hardly seemed worth it to explain that I don't really have much to do with Sigma (except knowing Wade), so.... ]

THANE: ...Nice to meet you.

Then Mitt moved on.

"I hope no one here is planning to vote Democratic. If anyone is, stand up, and I'll shoot you."

[ Laughter. One person stood up, at the back of the room. ]

"And now I don't have a gun."

[ More laughter.]

In any case, the talk was interesting. I'm sure he would be a capable "President as CEO," if that's what the country needs (many of the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs present seemed to think it was only too obvious that that's exactly what the country needs). But most of the issues that Mitt mentioned, including the need to "stop gay marriage," the need to confront "Islamic extremists," and a proposal for Iraq that we should "see what the results of The Surge will be," left me cold.

Various speakers, including Mitt himself, described Mitt as "highly analytical," or as "one of us." Another person pointed out that this was a "unique opportunity" to elect "one of our own" (ie, a venture capitalist) to the US Presidency. Romney said that if elected, he will run the US Government as he ran the state of Massachusetts, "with lots of group Vice Presidents...although we didn't call them that." Mitt told an interesting story about the venture firm he started, Bain Capital, and an early investment in Domino's Pizza—"We didn't know anything about pizza, and here's the guy who started it, the guy who knows more about pizza chains than anyone else, over 2,000 stores, deciding now was the time to sell, shopping it to everyone. And we're the schlemeil who's willing to pay more than anyone for it." I thought it was interesting that he used the word "schlemeil." It's hard for me to picture Mormon elders using the word "schlemeil" much. The pizza story was presented as a big success, but if so, it was not a success that led to better pizza (I've had plenty of Domino's at various points in my life, and it's always been bad pizza).

Leaving the talk, I was handed a contribution envelope:

I'll probably send more to Barack Obama, instead.

Thanks again to Wade for arranging my visit!

Meeting Mitt & the hydrogen atom

1) Wade arranged for me to attend this lunch meeting today between Mitt Romney and local VCs. It's at Quadrus, up in VC-land (Sand Hill Road). I'm planning to take a camera, but not my checkbook. Something that starts at 12:15pm has to include lunch, right? [Yes indeed—just confirmed it].

2) Bought a copy of Linearity, Symmetry, and Prediction in the Hydrogen Atom by Stephanie Frank Singer at the Stanford bookstore this afternoon, since it so closely matched what I was thinking of trying to understand myself, namely, how hard is it to go from the basic principles of quantum mechanics and get to experimental results about atoms. It seems to be precisely the topic of the book. Nice!