Silicon valley immigration lawyer

Sarah McBride, the author of Bloomberg, tells the story of the founder of a Silicon Valley startup struggling with the board of directors. China entrepreneur Zhu Haoran valued the company at $2 billion, but his unorthodox style and nervous relationship with investors cost him his job.

On April 26th, Zhu Haoran was walking on Broadway in San Francisco when he was suddenly called to attend a conference call and then fired.

He is the CEO of digital marketing startup Iterable Inc His co-founder Andrew Boni and the company's board of directors told him that he was going to lose his job, mainly because he took psychedelic drugs before the 20 19 conference.

The full name of LCD is lysergic acid diacetamide, which is a strong hallucinogenic drug.

This statement is true. Zhu Haoran said he wanted to take a small amount of medicine to improve his concentration, but he accidentally took too much. There are other reasons for his dismissal.

In the past 10 months, Zhu has been interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, telling about his experience as CEO, the challenges faced by Chinese in Silicon Valley, and his disputes with two major investors in Iterable.

Investors told him to shut up and he didn't listen, which was the last straw after a long-term disagreement.

Zhu's dismissal has developed into a bizarre story, touching many classic cultural contacts in Silicon Valley. Unlike traditional businessmen, the founder will seek extra energy by taking drugs and openly talk about the risks of work stress. This is also a story immersed in tense racial politics, which is currently puzzling the scientific and technological circles and the whole American society.

"In the early days, they were looking for strange things," Zhu Haoran of 3 1 said of venture capital. He turned Iterable from an idea into a company worth about $2 billion, which was an amazing success in most ways. But he said that when a company develops to this stage, the new slogan becomes reducing risk.

Zhu Haoran started working as a software engineer on Twitter on 20 1 1. Two years later, he and Boni, now 32, invested their life savings in a new company, Iterable, and launched marketing activities and notices for target customers in a highly customized way, such as reminding customers of the status of their food delivery orders by email or SMS.

Not long after, the company began to have customers at home, and investors rushed to sign contracts. By the end of 20 16, the valuation of Iterable was $65,438+25 million.

In Zhu himself, there is an eccentric temperament that fits with the spirit of free thought in Silicon Valley. At a recent business lunch, he wore a blue-green velvet sweatshirt with planets and stars on it. He said he bought this sweatshirt because it reminded him of the little prince.

He likes to discuss the immorality of capitalism, the principle of cosmic debt, and the need for more love in the world.

Even when Iterable flourished, Zhu said that he sometimes felt alienated and sad, thinking that he and the company were too focused on sales and making money at the expense of altruistic goals.

In 20 19, when Zhu Haoran attended an investor's wedding in Lebanon, he met an entrepreneur who advised him to take a small amount of LSD to improve his concentration and overall happiness. Zhu studied this idea and found that studies show that small doses are related to improving attention and reducing stress.

After returning to San Francisco, Zhu is going to hold an important meeting with a famous investor group. He had never used this drug before, believing that a small amount of LSD could improve his speech, so he decided to give it a try and took a small amount of LSD before the meeting.

Things are not going well. When trying to get these potential investors to approve a series of financial forecasts, Zhu Haoran looked at the screen, and the numbers and images on the screen were flickering, making it impossible to distinguish.

He said his body felt as if it were melting. After an awkward silence, a colleague came in. Zhu took a gulp of tea and continued to speak by memory.

The meeting brought no investment.

Justin Zhu's Twitter

Zhu's relationship with venture capitalists became tense. He wore overalls and a T-shirt to meet Geodesic, a venture capital company founded by former American ambassador to Japan John Russ. An Iterable board member later told him that Geodesic would not invest, suggesting that part of the reason was that he was dressed too casually. However, a person familiar with Geodesic's thinking said that the company did not consider Zhu's dress when making this decision.

At another investor conference, Zhu pointed out that the abbreviation AI of artificial intelligence sounds like "love" in Chinese. Later, a colleague asked him if he wanted to be Adam Neumann.

Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork, is famous for endlessly talking about similar topics.

Later, Zhu Haoran heard that an investor questioned whether he was taking drugs. He said no, and said that his use of micro-dose in the workplace was only a one-time event.

Boni told him that he preferred cautious Justin Zhu. Zhu replied that he finally showed the truth, and here he used his own Chinese name.

At the end of 20 19, after Iterable successfully raised USD 60 million, Murat Bisell, the general partner of CRV, and Shadur Shah, the partner of Index Ventures, took Zhu Haoran out for dinner to celebrate. In a corner of Hakka restaurant, two venture capitalists led the topic to the topic of company leaders.

Zhu was shocked and asked if they would consider arranging someone to replace him as CEO.

"This is still your company," Zhu said. At that time, Bisell assured him, but he also asked him to consider the benefits of more experienced leaders.

Born in Shanghai, said he remembered an earlier conversation with an Asian investor, who said that Zhu might one day be asked to give way to a white executive.

So he told investors that he wanted to stay, partly to set an example for other East Asian immigrants.

"I didn't feel any understanding," he recalled. "They said, OK."

Then he said that Bisell changed the subject.

When asked about the dinner and other details described by Zhu, Index Ventures declined to be interviewed through a spokesman. CRV did not respond to repeated requests for interviews, and Bisell did not comment.

At the beginning of the outbreak, Zhu applied for a loan of 30 million dollars to maintain the operation of the enterprise and prevent the economic downturn. In order to complete the loan, the bank asked his board of directors to provide a letter of recommendation.

Zhu Haoran said that Shah had been stalling for time. Finally, Shah asked to meet and chat with co-founders Boni and Bisell in South Park, a venture capital center in San Francisco. These people gathered on the bench outside, and investors once again raised the topic of finding a new CEO.

"You were just doing pattern matching," Zhu recalled. "Your top 20 listed CEOs may all be white."

This is not a crazy assertion. Most Silicon Valley CEOs are white, many are from India, but few are from China, Japan or South Korea. However, both Index Ventures and CRV have supported some famous East Asian CEOs. CRV is an early investor in DoorDash, led by Tony Xu, who was born in Nanjing. Index invested in Zuora and other companies run by East Asian executives.

Zhu believes that his disagreement with Shah is due to his East Asian background. Zhu said that he likes to seek knowledge, not to block different opinions or noisy debates. His investors mistakenly believe that this is a weak cultural feature, which is also the stereotype of East Asians by academic researchers and is considered to be the reason for their underrepresentation in leadership positions in the United States.

In a phone call later that week, Zhu said that Shah asked him to be "more elegant" and "tougher" in the board meeting, and he replied that these habits were not in his nature. Most board members also hope that Zhu will take the company's key indicators as part of his performance improvement plan.

Zhu said that he agreed to the plan and the loan was approved by Shah. But Zhu Haoran is still very unhappy about it.

"I run the company with oriental values," he said. "This doesn't mean that I don't have the ability to be a CEO."

Zhu Haoran said that this argument is a kind of discrimination, even if it doesn't conform to the inherent image of racial prejudice. Bisell grew up in Turkey, and Shah is a South Asian. After he was fired, the board replaced him with Boni. Boni is the president of Iterable, and like Zhu, he is also an East Asian.

Zhu said that he suspected that the board of directors used Boni to occupy the pit and eventually found someone to replace him.

By the end of the summer of 2020, Iterable's business was booming again. It's time to raise more money. However, Zhu Haoran has become distrustful of Shah and wants him to trade as little as possible. With Shah's cooperation, he arranged for Silver Lake to acquire about half of the shares of Index, and obtained Shah's board seat as part of Iterable's $2 billion round of financing.

In March this year, after eight people were killed in Atlanta, the whole United States began to discuss prejudice and violence against Asians. Zhu Haoran remembered that he was beaten by a bully on campus and was told to return to China, so he helped organize a campaign called "Support Asian Americans", which was supported by 7,500 Asian American business leaders and allies.

From then on, Zhu thought he needed to tell his story in his own way. He told the board that he had been talking with a reporter from Bloomberg, and told the story of micro-dose drugs for the first time. The board of directors asked him not to discuss the matter with investors or express his consideration.

Zhu Haoran said he wanted to tell everything, even if he lost his job. "The only reason to share this is to help the founders who are suffering and those who are going through what I am going through."

At the end of April, Zhu's investors once again asked him not to be interviewed by the media. Soon after, he received a phone call saying that he was fired.

He sat in a park in the financial district of San Francisco, trying to make himself understand what had happened.

"This is the price of justice now," he said. "I'd rather tell this story and fire it."