[CPWG] [GTLD-WG] Jacob Malthouse : Who’s Going to Run .ORG? Billionaire Republicans

[Greg Shatan]

I wouldn’t focus on who the investors are — this is a very US-centric
“pitch” to get signatures on the petition. We don’t need to get caught up
in US partisan politics.

Instead, focus on what the investors are not — they are not “impact
investors,” “Zebra investors,” “green investors” or any other term that
would describe investors and investment companies who value conscience over
capital, who value doing right by the world over doing well for themselves,
who value the global net effect of their investments over the “X” multiple
they get when they implement their exit strategy.

There are investors, private equity firms and venture capital firms like
this.  They do exist.  Ethos Capital could be read as saying that they are
one of them.  If they had a track record, one might even believe them.
Without that, it’s entirely fair to judge a new fund on the identity of its
investors. A fund needs to decide what kind of investors it will target.
Meanwhile investors are looking for funds that are aligned with their goals.

We don’t know the the Ethos pitch that attracted these investors.  And we
don’t know what chord that struck in these investors’ hearts.  Maybe they
all became big marshmallows full of love for non-profits and responsible
management of a TLD aimed at the non-profit community.  Maybe they decided
that they didn’t need this chunk of money to “work hard” to maximize
profits — that their other investments were big and bad enough to cover
their financial targets.  Maybe they all became “impact investors” for one
transaction.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.  Instead, it appears like one more reason not to
like this deal — even if some deal, and some investors would have been
acceptable or even inspiring.  Imagine that the investors were huge
non-profit foundations, already imbued with a mission aligned with the
mission of .org.  What if the list of signatories on the savedotorg.org
letter was instead the list of investors?  That would at least put a
different spin on things.

Best regards,

Greg

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 3:45 PM Kaili Kan <kankaili at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Dev,
>
> Thank you for the info.  However, does this article's title mean the
> Republic Party of the USA?  Although it is good to know about the .org
> deal's investors, but it seems like this article is aimed at USA's domestic
> politics, and I am not sure if we want to be related to it.
>
> Best,
> Kaili
>
> On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 2:27 AM Dev Anand Teelucksingh <devtee at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> As a FYI, Here’s another bit of news regarding the three other US
>> investors in addition to Ethos Capital in .org :
>> * Perot Holdings (affiliated with Petrus Asset Management Co/Petrus
>> Holding Co)
>> * FMR LLC (affiliated with Johnson family)
>> * Solamere Capital (affiliated with Romney)
>>
>>
>> https://medium.com/@jacobmalthouse/whos-going-to-run-org-in-a-word-the-gop-8809ef6f9679
>>
>> Dev Anand
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-- 
Greg Shatan
greg at isoc-ny.org
President, ISOC-NY
*"The Internet is for everyone"*
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