Jeff Giesea
Jeff Giesea is an American entrepreneur who is a business affiliate of several of Peter Thiel's companies and venture capital groups.
Education and business
Giesea attended Stanford University, where he edited Thiel's libertarian student paper The Stanford Review. Giesea worked for Thiel's first hedge fund, Thiel Capital Management, and Thiel later provided the seed money for Giesea's startup.[1][2] Between Thiel Capital management and his startup, Giesea worked for Koch Industries' public affairs office.[3]
Giesea founded FierceMarkets, an online B2B media company. He sold the company to Questex Media in 2008 and left the company in 2009.[4] AdAge named him a top innovator the small business category for its 2008 Top Innovators list.[5]
He co-founded BestVendor, a free recommendation site for business apps, in January 2011. It entered open beta in November 2011 and by December had over 4800 users. The business received $600,000 in seed money from Peter Thiel, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, and Softbank Capital. By December 2011, it had received $3.6 million from seed rounds and Series A funding.[6][7] In 2013, BestVendor was acquired by Docstoc.[8]
Trump affiliations
He has collaborated with Trump-affiliated propagandist Mike Cernovich, self-described neo-Nazi[9] hacker Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, Pax Dickinson, and fellow Thiel associate and former Breitbart writer Charles Johnson.[2]
Giesea organized a dinner prior to the 2016 RNC. Attendees reportedly included Clearview AI's founder Hoan Ton-That, white supremacist Richard Spencer, Cernovich, Johnson, and VDARE founder Peter Brimelow.[2][10]
Giesea funded the "Gays for Trump" party at the 2016 RNC, which was hosted by Milo Yiannopoulos and attended by anti-Islamic commentator Pamela Geller and far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. In October 2016, Giesea again funded an event hosted by Milo, this time one in which the provocateur bathed himself in pig's blood as a pro-Trump performance art piece commemorating victims of undocumented immigrants and Islamic terrorists. Martin Shkreli also presented an art piece at the event, a framed red-and-blue pill. Gavin McInnes presented an image of himself as an antebellum slave.[3][11]
Reflecting on his past work for Trump, Giesea wrote in a 2022 blog post that, "By the 2020 election, I had lost passion for Trump and didn’t participate".[12]
#Rev18
Giesea formed a Super PAC called #Rev18 alongside Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec in October 2017 to support Josh Mandel, then Ohio Treasurer in his campaign for a seat in the United States Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, opposing incumbent senator Sherrod Brown. Giesea described the PAC's goal as to promote anti-establishment candidates "who support American sovereignty and prosperity and who put the American citizen first".[13] All three were on the board, while Giesea handled filing with the Federal Election Commission. Giesea said he was the first donor to the PAC, pledging $50,000. Giesea expressed hope that Peter Thiel and the Mercers would pitch in, among others.[1] Mandel expressed appreciation for members of the Super PAC.[13][14] The three announced the closing of #Rev18 in late November, explaining that they did not have enough time to devote to it.[15] The Atlantic noted that this Super PAC was among the first examples of Trump supporters—a mostly online, Trump-centric group—venturing into electoral politics outside of support for Trump himself.[1] Right Wing Watch described the effort as among the first to institutionalize Trump's movement.[16]
Personal life
Family
Giesea's mother is Mexican-American. He was having a child by surrogate as of January 2017.[17]
Views
Giesea says that he used to be libertarian-leaning, but that he has shifted to other concerns. In particular, he notes that his experience as a homosexual travelling in Europe led him to concern regarding what he sees as Islamic incursions in the west. As of 2017, he saw himself as a mentor and moderator within the Trumpist movement.[3]
References
- ^ a b c Gray, Rosie (2 October 2017). "A New Pro-Trump Super PAC Takes Aim at the Republican Establishment". The Atlantic.
- ^ a b c O'Brien, Luke (7 April 2020). "Far-Right Extremists Helped Create The World's Most Powerful Facial Recognition Technology". HuffPost.
- ^ a b c Schreckinger, Ben (January–February 2017). "The Alt-Right Comes to Washington". Politico Magazine.
- ^ "Questex Media Group acquires FierceMarkets". Ad Age. 2008-01-22. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- ^ "'Media Business' names Top Innovators". Ad Age. 2008-05-05. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- ^ Van Grove, Jennifer (20 December 2011). "BestVendor grabs $3M to help professionals find great apps". Reuters.
- ^ Chikodi (8 December 2011). "BestVendor is the utility belt for small business apps". VentureBeat.
- ^ Pozin, Ilya (26 April 2013). "Docstoc Acquires BestVendor: A Yelp For Business Tools And Vendors". Forbes.
- ^ Wall, Jacob T. (2018–2019). "Where to Prosecute Cybercrimes". Duke Law & Technology Review. 17: 146–161.
Following his release from prison, Auernheimer publicly declared himself a neo-Nazi...
- ^ McKay, Tom (4 August 2020). "Creepy Face Recognition Firm Clearview AI Sure Has a Lot of Ties to the Far Right". Gizmodo.
- ^ "LGBTrump rally at #RNCinCLE". The Clarion-Ledger. Retrieved 2022-04-29.
- ^ Giesea, Jeff (2022-04-28). "Why the American Right Should Break from Trump and Trumpism". Medium. Retrieved 2022-04-29.
- ^ a b Carroll, Ed (5 October 2017). "Super PAC formed by 'Alt Lite'-labeled bloggers backs Mandel". Cleveland Jewish News.
- ^ Montage, Forward (15 October 2017). "Why Is This Jewish Politician First In Line For Money From 'Alt-Right' Conspiracy Theorists?". The Forward.
- ^ CARROLL, ED (14 November 2017). "Mandel-supporting Super PAC formed by 'alt lite' bloggers shuts down". Cleveland Jewish News.
- ^ Holt, Jared (16 October 2017). "'New Right' Activists Are Seeking To Institutionalize Their Digital Movement". Right Wing Watch.
- ^ O'Connor, Maureen (20 January 2017). "'Smells Like Boys': A Night at the DeploraBall". The Cut.