California Forever's biggest PR problem may be its CEO
Jan Sramek has a talent for saying disastrous things
The point: California Forever CEO Jan Sramek has a talent for saying disastrous things. It's a gift to the residents of Solano County, who are resisting his effort to build a billionaire-funded tech city in their midst.
The Backstory: You know it’s bad when a CEO lands a glossy profile in a major publication and then pretends it never happened. Such was the fate of a Business Insider piece focused on California CEO Jan Sramek.
The May 5 story was headlined "Big Tech's Urban Hero: Here's why Silicon Valley is betting on a Goldman prodigy to build a glorious city of the future."
At a glance, it seemed like a win. The headline glowingly depicted Sramek as a visionary on a mission to shape the future. The story did feature criticism from California Forever's opponents, but that's normal. Overall, it framed Sramek in flattering terms.
A big victory, right? Not exactly.
Neither California Forever nor Sramek acknowledged the story after it published. No triumphant tweets, no boastful LinkedIn or Facebook posts. As far as California Forever is concerned, the Business Insider story never happened.
Insulting Solano County voters
The reason why is clear: Sramek totally blew it. He allowed his contempt for his opponents to get the best of him. When asked by a reporter to describe California Forever's opposition, Sramek lashed out at Solano voters:
"The people who have been opposed to it —" Sramek pauses, trying to choose his words carefully. "When you look at them," he says, "they all look the same."
So who's that? Your basic white boomer NIMBY?
"Yeah, I mean, you said it," Sramek says. "I'll just say it's not a particularly diverse coalition in any measure. It's generally a 70-year-old Sierra Club type. The only thing they care about is the open space behind their house."
And just like that, Sramek committed several grave political errors in the span of four sentences.
- Insulting the voters. Sramek drips with disdain for the project's opponents. After "carefully" choosing his words, he came out swinging with a bizarre insult: "They all look the same." But since 70% of Solano County voters oppose California Forever, his statement is untrue. Plus, opposition spans all demographic groups. So Sramek is insulting the majority of voters while also lying about them.
- Taking the bait. The reporter baited Sramek. As the CEO struggled to find the right words, the reporter suggested that California Forever's typical opponent is a "basic white boomer NIMBY." Sramek took the bait and proceeded to make even more damning comments.
- Attacking Elderly Homeowners. Sramek blew himself up by attacking elderly Solano residents. He described California Forever's typical opponent as a "70-year-old Sierra Club type" who only cares about the "open space behind their house." Oops! Older voters, especially those who own homes, are the most dependable voters on Earth. As such, they are among the most sought-after voting blocs. Beside, polling shows that 70-year-old Republicans also oppose California Forever. They surely won't be amused to find themselves accused of being liberal environmentalists.
Sramek's opponents immediately pounced on his errors, lighting up Facebook with graphics to raise awareness of his insulting comments. The CEO's quotes were enough to ruin the piece, but they weren't the only problem with the profile.
Peter Thiel worship?
The Business Insider story also emphasized Sramek's origins as a worshipper of Peter Thiel. In fact, it depicts Sramek's professional life as a quest to follow in Thiel's footsteps.
From the story:
Such unwavering confidence helped forge Sramek's reputation as a financial wunderkind, someone who set out at an early age to be the European equivalent of Peter Thiel.
and:
In a 2008 blog interview for a series titled "Tycoons of Tomorrow," Sramek said he slept only five hours a night. His role model, he said, was Thiel, the PayPal cofounder and early investor in Facebook.
Sramek's longtime fascination with Thiel is interesting because Thiel is a major figure in the Network State movement.
Thiel – along with California Forever investor Marc Andreessen – is an investor in Pronomos Capital, a company funding the construction of new tech-themed cities worldwide. Balaji Srinivasan, a man with very bizarre ideas who is the main evangelist of the Network State, advises Pronomos Capital.
A Thiel-Solano connection
Thiel also funded the Seasteading Institute, which was an early version of the Network State idea. It sought to create sovereign territories that would float out in the ocean.
The Seasteading Institute has a direct connection to Solano County. In 2009, it funded the beginning of Ephemerisle, a weeklong floating art party/group living/Burning Man-style experiment in the Sacramento Delta.
California Forever denies any connection to the Network State. So I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Sramek sees Thiel as his main hero and, like Thiel, Sramek is also trying to create new tech-governed cities.
And it's another coincidence that Andreessen and Thiel are funding a company to invest in these cities around the world.
And it's yet another coincidence that Srinivasan – the main Network State guy – is advising Andreessen and Thiel. (And Srinivasan has claimed California is a Network State project...)
Surely these cascading coincidences don't mean anything. Or, perhaps, as Ian Fleming put it:
"Once is coincidence. Twice is happenstance. Three times is enemy action."
Sramek's messianic zeal
Another unflattering aspect of Sramek's personality shines through in the Business Insider piece: His savior complex.
Sramek, a relative newcomer to California – and a total outsider in Solano County – appears to think it's his duty to save everyone ... with his massive billionaire-funded real estate scheme.
No one has elected him to anything, yet he acts as if he has a mandate to radically transform California to suit his own interests. Even when someone is a leader elected by the people, it's tough to get things done. So the job requires a level of humility (at least in public). It's generally understood that you won't get very far on sheer ego.
But Silicon Valley types take a different approach. It has become hip to exude messianic arrogance and swagger. This might convince billionaire investors to throw their money around, but it's hardly a way to persuade skeptical voters.
Talking down to voters
Analysis: It's hard to think of a worse spokesperson for this project than Sramek.
He has no deep roots in the state or the county, and he does not share the Solano community's values. Instead, he's parachuting in with an army of lawyers and a massive war chest to impose his own values and vision on the community.
He sneaked around for years, secretly buying up land. Then he sued a group of farmers who refused to sell, depicting them as greedy and corrupt. When criticized for any of this, he tends to talk down to voters by telling them that he's doing this for their own good.
After the influential Solano Land Trust announced its opposition to California Forever last week, Sramek's company responded with the usual insults, depicting opponents as "the wealthy few who inherited millions of dollars of land from prior generations and are now trying to pull up the ladder behind them."
This was an official campaign statement, not an off-the-cuff remark. So it's clear that Sramek's disdainful attitude is deliberate rather than accidental. In a perverse twist, the European visionary backed by tech billionaire money accuses the locals of being out-of-touch rich people!
Disney World diatribe
Sramek has a tendency to lose his cool.
During a Bloomberg interview last month, an irritated Sramek launched into a bizarre diatribe about Walt Disney World. When asked whether his secret acquisitions of land had stoked distrust in Solano, he delivered this disjointed rant:
"I think that whole thing has been used as an excuse by people who've hated any kind of economic development or growth for the last thirty years ... as a kind of smokescreen," said Sramek. "Because it's the same people who take their kids to Disney World every year and they love Disney World. How did Disney World get built? The Disney company came out, set up a few shell companies, the acquired the land and then they announced it. And it was controversial for a year, and today it's the happiest place in America."
"So I think it's dishonest for anyone who anyone who takes their kids to Disney World and has happy family pictures of grandpa with their kids to then be in the press criticizing secret acquisitions."
Um, what?
It's clear that Sramek has been using this Disney analogy to reassure his investors. But it doesn't quite translate to the general public. How many Solano families actually go to Disney World, which is in Florida, every year? It's a non-sequitur straw man argument that reveals Sramek's flailing desperation.
He's a man in dire straits, having become a figure of villainy in the Solano community. And he's taking the criticism personally. But emotional and illogical attacks like the demented Disney diatribe won't persuade any voters.
'Who is going to stop me?'
Of course, Sramek believes he can simply buy his way to victory.
"We’re going to spend as much as we need to win,” Sramek said in January.
“I’m going to make this happen no matter what,” he told reporters in his conspicuously anti-humble way.
After all, he's a man on a mission. Everyone else is just in the way.
In March, an unflattering Vanity Fair article described Sramek as an avowed "enthusiast" of Ayn Rand, the libertarian writer whose most famous novel features a secretive town called Galt's Gulch, where all the greatest minds of the world hide out as they prepare for the government to collapse.
The Vanity Fair story quoted a "Randian aphorism" that it identified as one of Sramek's favorite quotes in his younger years: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
If I had to bet, I'd say the voters of Solano County will be the ones to stop Sramek – with plenty of help from Sramek himself.
Final Thought:
"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
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