I like to say that you can’t make up the crazy stuff people are doing in tech. But venture capitalist Bradley Tusk has me convinced that maybe you can.
His second book, Obvious in Hindsight, which was released to a handful of independent bookstores this week and will be more broadly available later this month, is his first attempt at fiction writing—but the politicians and technological mishaps all stem from his lived experience as a political consultant to startups. Tusk, who was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign manager for his 2009 re-election, made a name for himself in Silicon Valley after he successfully lobbied against Bill de Blasio's attempt to cap the number of Ubers in New York—helping Travis Kalanick keep his ride-hailing startup alive in an important market. Tusk runs the political consultancy firm Tusk Strategies and early-stage venture capital firm Tusk Venture Partners, where he’s worked with startups like scooter company Bird and crypto exchange Coinbase.
Tusk’s new novel details the short life of a flying car company named Flight Deck that had raised more than $80 million from a handful of venture capitalists who hardly understand its technology. It’s a written drama on New York and Austin politics, with the company hiring on an ethically compromised political consultant to do whatever it takes to get its cars in the air. Meanwhile, the founder, Susan Howard, is putting pressure on her chief engineer, Yevgeny Kolnikoff, to deliver technology that is absolutely unprepared for launch.
“Everything in the book is exaggerated,” Tusk told me in an interview. But it’s a depiction of very real tensions within the startup world—tensions between founders and politicians, growth and discipline, and innovation and public safety. Particularly in the last few years, with valuations so wildly inflated, Tusk says that “everything is predicated solely on growth, so that a CEO and founder is under a lot of pressure to really grow as quickly as possible, kind of regardless of the cost.”
Tusk says he hopes that his book will help people better understand what drives the behavior of all the different players in the ecosystem. “I just think that if readers can understand how and why founders think, how and why investors think, how and why politicians think—then you’re in a position to do something about it,” he says.
We’re seeing some of these tensions play out in a very real way at this very moment—particularly in San Francisco, where California just last month banned the GM-owned autonomous robo-taxi company Cruise from allowing its autonomous taxis on its streets. Tusk calls that “a really bad decision” and a “really sad example” of politics overriding the needs of the people who live there.
On Wednesday…Equity management startup Carta laid off more members of its workforce on Wednesday—marking at least its third layoff event this year, I reported yesterday. It is unclear exactly how many employees were impacted. A Carta spokeswoman declined to comment.
Have a good weekend! Until Monday,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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