Author: openjargon

• Sen. JD Vance has a controversial venture capital background.
• Some of Vance's former colleagues previously told BI the senator wasn't very good at his job.
• Donald Trump announced Vance as his vice presidential pick on Monday.

Donald Trump's vice presidential pick, JD Vance, has a background in venture capital.

But his former colleagues previously told Business Insider in a 2021 report that his business expertise wasn't that noteworthy.

In making his running mate announcement, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Vance "has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance." But as Business Insider previously reported, it's unclear what impact Vance had in the VC world.

Vance, the Ohio first-time Senator perhaps most famous for his hit 2016 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," got his start in venture capital just two months before his book came out, moving to San Francisco to join Peter Thiel-backed VC firm Mithril Capital.

Vance's former coworkers previously told BI that Vance was away from his new job much at the time to promote his book.

"It never seemed like he was even working," one former coworker told BI. "It felt like his full-time job was the book."

Vance himself acknowledged his lackluster contribution, saying in an interview at the time, "How useful I've been on that front is probably debatable." And by the time Vance left the firm, less a year after he started, coworkers said that he hadn't closed a single deal.

At the time, Vance's campaign didn't respond to questions about how Vance would manage his money while senator and didn't make Vance available for an interview.

After Vance was chosen, BI reached out again to Vance. Vance's senatorial office didn't respond, and emails to his campaign and his personal website weren't answered.

Trump's campaign also didn't respond to a request for comment about how Vance's old colleagues characterized his VC work.

Vance saw a bit more success working at Steven Case's VC firm, Revolution, where he focused on investing in tech startups through the Rise of the Rest fund.

There, Vance's networking skills helped him secure a number of deals in fields like military tech and artificial intelligence. But one investor who met with Vance said he was skeptical of what Vance brought to the table, telling BI, "I don't recall anyone at Rise of the Rest bragging about something JD Vance brought to the fund."

Vance's time at Revolution did provide him the connections needed to go off and start his own VC firm, Narya Capital, in 2019. But what exactly that firm has achieved is open to interpretation.

In 2021, BI reported that Narya only had five investments, just one of which was in Ohio, the state Vance had pledged to help. And more than a year later, Politico reported that Narya had four employees, including Vance. The 750 jobs that Narya claimed to have created in Ohio that year were in fact established by a group of 46 firms together, not just Narya alone, Politico reported.

When Vance first started running for Senate in Ohio, one VC expert cast doubt on Vance's self-proclaimed business acumen.

"There are a thousand red flags," Jeff Sohl, director of the University of New Hampshire's Center for Venture Research, previously told BI. "You're either going to be a really great VC and a bad senator or a bad VC and a great senator. Or what will likely happen is you're worse at both because you can't do both jobs."

Vance's VC dreams may need to take a back seat to a new aspiration: reaching the White House with Donald Trump.

In 2019, when President Donald Trump still served as commander in chief, Business Insider's chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan spent three days inside the James J. Rowley Training Center in Laurel, Maryland, where future United States Secret Service agents are trained.

After the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday, for which the Secret Service has come under scrutiny, BI is sharing this extended, never-before-seen version of the speech a group of new Secret Service recruits received on day one of their training in June 2019. Following is the original video published by BI.

NOTE: Lt. Christopher Fagan, seen speaking to new recruits in the video, died in 2023.

• Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and David Sacks pushed JD Vance as GOP VP nominee, according to Axios.
• Vance, a 39-year-old Ohio senator, was named Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee on Monday.
• Musk and Sacks were among those who praised Vance after Trump's announcement.

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and venture capitalist David Sacks personally lobbied Donald Trump to select JD Vance as his running mate, according to Axios.

The 39-year-old Ohio senator was named the GOP nominee for Vice President of the United States on Monday.

Trump told friends that Vance was his top choice several days before the announcement was made, Axios cofounder Mike Allen wrote in the publication's newsletter on Tuesday.

However, Vance only found out he would be Trump's running mate moments before the former president shared the news on Truth Social, according to multiple people familiar with the call speaking to CNN,

The two runners-up — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Marco Rubio— are believed to have been informed at around midday on Monday.

Axios said that a secret lobbying campaign continued into Monday morning, led by key figures such as Musk, Carlson, and Sacks.

The publication didn't elaborate on their involvement in Trump's selection. Business Insider could not verify the report.

According to CNN, Vance had the backing of Carlson who thought he would appeal to working-class voters. Meanwhile, Carlson's former Fox News boss, Rupert Murdoch, lobbied Trump to choose Burgum.

Sacks also influenced Trump's decision after being introduced to the former president by Vance, who is himself a former venture capitalist, the publication said.

Speaking to Axios, Carlson said Vance was the clear choice because "he doesn't secretly hate Trump, as all the rest of them do."

"He fundamentally agrees with Trump. That's precisely why neocon donors [who want more aid for Ukraine] fear him," he said.

Vance was one of 18 senators who attempted to block a $95 billion aid package to Ukraine and Israel earlier this year.

Though the package was ultimately approved, Vance told reporters that his actions made "it pretty clear to Europe and the rest of the world that America can't write blank checks indefinitely," according to Politico.

As BI previously reported, Vance was also a vocal proponent of the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust enforcement of Big Tech companies.

Musk publicly congratulated Vance on Monday, writing on X that it was an "excellent decision" by Trump.

Sacks reposted Musk's comments and wrote in a follow-up post that Vance was an "American patriot."

"When the Twin Towers came down, JD Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps, gung-ho to exact justice on America's enemies," Sacks wrote on X.

"Subsequently he came to believe the Forever Wars were a mistake. This is who I want by Trump's side: an American patriot, with the courage to fight America's wars but the wisdom to know when to avoid them. God bless JD, God bless Trump, and God bless the USA."

Vance went from being a Trump critic who once called him "America's Hitler," to a loyal supporter of the former president.

"I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016, but President Trump was a great president and he changed my mind," Vance said in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Monday.

"I bought into the media's lies and distortions," he added.

Representatives for Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and David Sacks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• Donald Trump's pick for Vice President may be good news for Peter Thiel.
• Thiel has played an outsize role in helping JD Vance's career rocket.
• The former PayPal CEO has a long history of putting figures of his choosing on a path to glory.

The first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee was not just a monumental moment for former venture capitalist JD Vance but a defining moment in the career of another venture capitalist: Peter Thiel.

For 39-year-old Vance, the now-Ohio senator picked by Donald Trump on Monday to be his running mate in the Republican Party's battle for the White House, a career in politics — let alone a position as the right-hand man of the former President — may never have happened without an early bet from Silicon Valley's top kingmaker.

While Vance made his push in politics apparent with his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" in 2016, it was Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and defense contractor Palantir, with deep ties to fellow Trump supporter Elon Musk, who would go on to play an outsize role in helping Vance's career rocket.

Of course, this is not the first time Thiel's had a hand in propelling those he favors into the spotlight. The 56-year-old who's worth just over $11 billion, according to Bloomberg, has a long history of putting figures of his choosing onto a path of glory.

The Thiel effect

For Vance, Thiel's influence first left its mark when he was still a student. In 2020, he recalled his first encounter with the investor in 2011, after Thiel turned up at his law school at Yale to give students a run-through of classic Thiel-isms.

Corporate ladder-climbing could subject a person to a life of meaninglessness, Thiel said. The "technological stagnation" gripping a society that could tweet but didn't have a solution to problems such as dementia and energy use that "increasingly dirtied the planet" needed a rethink, he added.

Vance, who admitted he "had no idea what to expect at the time," said the talk was "the significant moment" of his time at Yale Law School. This helped explain a consequential move he made in the mid-2010s: joining Thiel's J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired investment firm, Mithril Capital, as a junior investor.

Following a two-year stint at Mithril, Vance joined Revolution, a firm co-founded by former AOL chairman Steve Case. Thiel later invested heavily in Vance's venture capital firm, Narya Capital.

Record donation

Vance's relatively short history in the VC world, then, had clearly given him and Thiel clear exposure to each other, allowing a relationship to foster that would turn the billionaire into the senator's biggest backer. Thiel also got a shoutout on the acknowledgments page of Vance's 2016 book, "Hillbilly Elegy."

The former PayPal CEO has given $15 million to Vance's campaign, Politico reported — the largest donation ever given to one Senate candidate.

Thiel also reportedly accompanied Vance to Mar-a-Lago to seek Trump's council prior to announcing his Senate run in 2016. The backing ultimately led to Vance being elected senator for the first time in 2022 and appears now to have been capped off with the former "never Trumper" earning his spot next to the GOP's leader.

It's not Thiel's first attempt to play kingmaker. The entrepreneur has always stood out as a conservative figure in the relatively left-leaning Silicon Valley, but in recent years has become an increasingly dominant figure in the Republican Party.

One of Trump's biggest donors in the 2016 presidential campaign, Thiel has re-emerged as a key player in the MAGA movement after largely sitting out the 2020 election.

In November 2023, he gave an interview to The Atlantic about his disappointment with Trump and announced he planned to cut off Republican politicians in 2024.

However, he reportedly donated more than $20 million to support 16 Republican candidates in the midterm elections.

Thiel also appears to have pulled some of his Silicon Valley strings to advance Vance's campaign. He introduced Vance to David Sacks, a fellow PayPal Mafia colleague, who hosted a fundraiser for him and personally donated $1 million to a pro-Vance Super PAC.

Secret lobbying

Others in the tech world have been eagerly campaigning for Vance behind the scenes.

According to an Axios report, Musk, Sacks, and former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson have been running a secret lobbying campaign for Vance, calling up Trump even after Saturday's assassination attempt to advocate for him.

Thiel's formidable track record has extended beyond the political arena, too.

The first outside investor in Facebook, Thiel bet on the company when no one else would — and is credited with transforming an up-and-coming Mark Zuckerberg into the slick CEO he now is.

Thiel was also a cofounder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies and made early investments in Airbnb and Spotify. His other success stories include a well-timed SpaceX investment, and an early bet on bitcoin that reportedly netted him more than $1.8 billion.

These investments now form a successful track record that's hard to argue against. With Vance now at Trump's side, Thiel won't have long to wait to find out if his punt on an Ohio "hillbilly" will go all the way to the White House.

• I've been on 110 cruises. I don't like onboard flexible dining, when you can eat whenever you want.
• Traditional dining is a great way to make new friends and have reliability at sea.
• Flexible dining is nice for some, but it's not foolproof. I hope it doesn't become the only option.

I took my first cruise in 1977 and have since been on more than 110 ships. I'm in my 90s, and I still love traveling this way.

It's great that more young people are getting on board with cruises, which are surging in popularity. But some newer trends puzzle me.

Above all, I can't get behind flexible dining, which also goes by names like "my time dining," "freestyle dining," and "anytime dining." They're all just a way of saying passengers can eat whenever they want and sit in a new spot with different servers every night.

It's a move away from traditional dining on cruises, where travelers select in advance the daily dinner time they'll have for the duration of their cruise. They're assigned the same table and waitstaff for the whole trip.

Flexible dining sounds ideal for anyone who prefers to set their own pace. But I think that it's better in theory than in practice and that it kills some of the magic of old-school cruises.

Eating dinner on a ship whenever you want isn't foolproof

Norweigan Cruise Line is credited with creating this category of onboard eating, which it calls freestyle dining.

With it, passengers show up to one of its restaurants during operating hours and wait for their party to be led to a table. But though people can eat whenever that doesn't mean they do.

Passengers have routines that carry over onto a ship, and restaurants can get crowded between 6 and 7:30 p.m.

Years ago, my wife and I experienced it firsthand while dining on the Norwegian Wind. After two nights of standing in long lines to try for a 6 p.m. dinner, we started showing up later to try to dodge crowds. I wished we could've just had our desired mealtime locked in, but NCL doesn't do traditional dining.

A few weeks ago, I tried flexible dining again on a different cruise line while sailing with my free-spirited son, who I thought might appreciate the lack of a schedule.

On the first night, at 7 p.m., we found several lines leading into the main dining room. We were asked if we had a reservation. Puzzled, we explained that we didn't need one because we were doing flexible dining.

We were directed to a different line for people without reservations. On the way, we passed the noticeably shorter line for passengers with assigned dining times.

We waited about 20 minutes to be seated. After our meal, we made dinner reservations for the rest of the trip.

Flexible dining can make it difficult to build new connections

While partaking in freestyle dining on the Norwegian Wind, my late wife and I asked to be seated with other people every night so we could see some fresh faces. But that never ended up happening: In our eight days, we ate only with each other.

Though I loved having dinner with my wife, we did so every night at home. At sea, we wanted to expand our world.

I missed sharing tables with strangers, the standard with traditional dining (unless you have a large group). We'd share meaningful conversations with strangers who had become friends.

Flexible dining takes away the chance to build connections like this. You can request to sit with strangers as we did, but it doesn't always happen — and it's unlikely you'd connect with the same people twice.

Without repeat seats and mealtimes, it's also hard to build any real relationship or personal connection with the dining-room staff.

In the older days of traditional dining, servers who'd been paired with our table for the whole trip would tell us stories of living abroad and remember our order preferences and names.

When it was time to tip at the end of the cruise, we parted willingly with the suggested gratuities, often more.

I hope the traditions of more formality in the dining rooms aren't lost for future cruisers

A lot of people love flexible dining for the freedom it can provide on a cruise — but I think that's best saved for breakfast and lunch.

When it comes to dinner, I enjoy the old-school traditions that have made cruises so popular.

Fortunately, major lines like Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and Princess Cruises that offer some version of flexible dinners still have options for traditional ones.

If given the option on your next cruise, consider keeping your dinners old school with a set time and table. You might just make a new friend, avoid a long wait, and enjoy the reliability of it all.

• Denver Airport is riddled with creepy conspiracy theories that have gone viral on social media.
• The airport's diverse artwork and underground tunnels fuel myths of secret societies and aliens.
• I visited the airport to check out the bizarre claims, but the theories were easily debunkable.

I was doom-scrolling TikTok a few months ago when a video of someone walking around empty terminals at Denver International Airport popped up. The video, posted at the end of May, had about 25 million views and 3.7 million likes as of this month.

Any other US airport probably wouldn't garner the same attention, but Denver Airport is riddled with conspiracy theories and ghost stories that date back decades.

The most famous myth is that a giant horse statue sitting outside the terminal killed its creator in the early 2000s. There's also the theory that the airport hides aliens and lizard people in secret underground tunnels, while some believe demon gargoyles haunt the halls.

I've always known about Denver's urban legends but never really believed in them, mostly because the stories are pretty outlandish and easily debunkable.

The runways being a Swastika, for example, is a nasty conspiracy, considering the shape simply compensates for wind and optimizes traffic, as planes can land and take off in several different directions.

But a trip down the TikTok and Reddit rabbit holes tells me there are plenty of people who think the airport is hiding something sinister — so I decided to fly out and see for myself.

The airport's marketing and communications team — which has leaned into the lore in its alien-themed gate events and talking gargoyle — gave me full access, including an up-close encounter with the "haunted" horse, a look at those empty hallways from TikTok, and a ride around its "secret" bunkers.

Secret societies aren't infiltrating Denver airport

Much of Denver airport's lore started in March 1994, when a capstone was placed ahead of the airport's 1995 opening to house a time capsule dedicated to the people of Colorado.

The capstone features the Freemasons' Square and Compass symbol and mentions a group called the "New World Airport Commission."

This snowballed into the idea that secret societies like the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the New World Order were operating from within the newly built airport with the goal of world domination.

Other artwork around the airport supposedly supports the theory. One mural, for example, has a man in a gas mask with a sword, who people say represents the New World Order's plan for genocide and destruction.

Another, no longer there after remodeling, was a floor inscription of a mining cart with the atomic symbols "Au" and "Ag" for gold and silver, respectively. Theorists said they stood for "Australian antigen" and exposed how the Illuminati planned to take out humanity.

While some of the airport's diverse collection of artwork is big and bold, Stacey Stegman, the airport's SVP of communications, marketing, and customer service, who has worked there for almost 13 years, told Business Insider that people are reading too much into it.

After seeing the "cryptic" works in person, I can confirm it really is just art. Stegman said the "commission" inscribed on the capstone didn't exist and was temporarily created for the airport's grand opening. Further, the masonry symbols are a nod to the stonemasons who, by trade, crafted the airport's capstone.

Meanwhile, I see the mural as a representation of how war decimates society, not a warning about how secret societies plan to kill children. Yes, people think that.

And the mining cart? It symbolized Colorado's history of mining both gold and silver, nothing more.

The giant horse is not a cursed killer

Although the towering 32-foot-tall cast-fiberglass horse standing outside Denver Airport is officially recognized as "Mustang," theorists nicknamed it "Blucifer" for its blue color and devilish-looking red eyes.

Mythmakers suggest the rearing horse is cursed after killing its creator, Luis Jiménez, in 2006. Jiménez was a famed artist who did, in fact, die building the statue — but not in the way conspiracists think.

Stegman said Jiménez was killed in his New Mexico studio after a piece of the sculpture fell on his leg and severed a vital artery and noted the glowing eyes didn't come about because of it.

"The artist's father was a neon sign maker, so the red eyes were a tribute to his father," she said. "It's really a beautiful story, not something demonic."

Jiménez's family and friends completed the statue and unveiled it in 2008, and I was lucky to see Mustang up close. It's truly a beautiful and fierce sculpture, but I had to be escorted by airport officials — police don't like random people parking nearby to see it, so stick to a drive-by.

The gargoyles aren't demonic creatures cursing passengers

To embrace its conspiracy theories, Denver Airport once hosted an animatronic talking gargoyle, voiced live by a comedian, to entertain travelers.

The temporary gimmick complemented two grinning gargoyles situated on the walls of baggage claim.

Theorists say the gargoyles — named "Notre Denver" after Notre Dame in Paris — are demons haunting the halls. However, Stegman said people are missing the point: gargoyles are there to protect a place from evil spirits, not harm it.

Stegman said that although the airport leaned into the fun with the animatronic gargoyle, some people on social media were unhappy.

"Some people thought we were intentionally doing something evil, which concerned me," she said. "We didn't do it to antagonize anyone; we did it to embrace the airport's personality, but I underestimated how strongly people believe in all of it."

The tunnels aren't secret and have nothing to do with the supernatural

My Denver airport tour was sparked by the viral TikTok. It turned out to be just Frontier Airlines' ground-loading gates, where people walk out to the plane via the tarmac, not jetbridges. Stegman said they simply weren't operating at the time of the video.

But it's not the only "hidden" place in Denver Airport where theorists believe something nefarious is going on.

When the airport was constructed, few aerial photos of the project existed, and the ones that did exist showed a labyrinth of underground tunnels being built.

Stegman said this caused people to think they were secret chambers to host things like the Illuminati's headquarters, a lair for lizard people, laboratories for alien experiments, and bunkers for the rich.

The fact that construction was years behind schedule and millions over budget further fueled the conspiracy theories because people assumed it was due to some sinister plot, she said.

"People have picked out this theme of death and destruction and think Denver Airport is the place where the world's elite will come for protection when the government or an apocalypse wipes out society," Stegman said.

The truth is the airport property is more than twice the size of Manhattan (yes, it's that big) and requires miles and miles of underground infrastructure to protect its baggage system from Denver's snowy winters.

The terminal train also runs through its own underground corridor.

I took a golf cart ride all around the tunnels, which you need special access to, and it's set up like a proper road system with stop and yield signs and lanes. There are random doors, but they're for things like storage or emergency exits — there were no little green people casually walking around.

"We served almost 78 million passengers last year, do people think we can hide secret bunkers and alien testing from them, as well as the 40,000 people who work here?" she said. "That's pretty brilliant if we could."

• A British Airways A380 diverted due to a strong smell of laundry detergent.
• The flight from Washington, DC, to London Heathrow made an emergency landing in Boston.
• The scent was later found to have come from five pallets of laundry beads in the cargo hold.

A British Airways Airbus A380 had to turn around after an "overpowering scent" of laundry detergent filled the plane, making people feel sick and dizzy, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said.

Data from Flightradar24 shows the superjumbo jet was flying from Washington, DC, to London Heathrow on July 7 when it U-turned over Newfoundland before landing at Boston.

According to the TSB's summary of the incident, which Business Insider has seen, the cabin and flight crew reported "dizziness, nausea, and headaches." It added that the pilots then conducted a fumes checklist and declared the urgency signal PAN-PAN.

The Canadian TSB said the plane landed without further incident while the fire service stood by.

"Upon inspection, it was discovered that the smell came from five pallets of fresh-scented laundry beads in the cargo hold," it added.

The aircraft, with the registration G-XLEC, flew back to London two days later, per Flightradar24.

British Airways did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

It is unknown how many people were on the plane, but British Airways A380s carry a maximum of 469 passengers.

Since the A380 is so large, only some airports have the facilities for it, which likely played a role in the decision to land in Boston. British Airways uses the double-decker jet on its Boston to London route, so it wouldn't disrupt service as much as landing at a remote airport.

In May, an Air France Boeing 787 was diverted to the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut after a burning smell was detected. The airline had to cancel another flight to reroute a 777 to retrieve the passengers.

• Former president Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally on Saturday. 
• The next day, Tenacious D's Kyle Gass wished "don't miss Trump next time" on a birthday cake at a show.
• Elon Musk is among those to criticize Gass for his comments. 

Elon Musk is the latest person to call out Tenacious D band member Kyle Gass after he joked about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on the weekend.

Here's a timeline of the controversy.

July 13: Trump is shot during a campaign rally.

On Saturday, a gunman, later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, tried to assassinate Trump as he gave a speech at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Crooks wounded Trump's ear before the Secret Service shielded him. Crooks killed a rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, and critically injured two others. The Secret Service fired back at Crooks, killing him.

The attack was met with criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

Addressing on Saturday the nation after the shooting, President Joe Biden said "There's no place in America for this kind of violence."

July 14: Kyle Gass says, "Don't miss Trump next time."

On Sunday, Tenacious D's bandmate Jack Black paused their Sydney show so the crowd could sing happy birthday to Gass, who turned 64.

A person in a robot costume presented Gass with a cake, and Black told his bandmate to make a wish.

Gass said, "Don't miss Trump next time," before blowing out the candles.

It is unclear from videos of the concert whether Black was in on the joke, but the actor moves on with the birthday celebration without responding to Gass.

Black is the more successful one of the pair, having spent decades cultivating his goofy image in films including "Kung Fu Panda" and "Rock School." He may fear that being associated with this controversy could dampen his star power.

July 15: Elon Musk and others criticize Tenacious D on social media.

While some fans laughed at Gass' comment, others said it was too soon to joke about the attack and accused Tenacious D of inciting violence against Trump.

One critic, who works for the conservative organization State Freedom Caucus Network, linked Gass' comment to Black endorsing Biden for president at a fundraiser in Los Angeles in June.

Musk responded to this comment with "contemptible."

Contemptible

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Black has repeatedly criticized Trump, including calling him a "piece of shit" when receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018.

July 15: Australian politician calls for Tenacious D to be deported.

Later that day, Australian senator Ralph Babet of the right-wing populist United Australia Party shared a press release calling for Tenacious D to be deported. Their show on Sunday was the first of the Australia and New Zealand leg of their "Spicy Meatball" tour.

"To advocate and or wish for the assassination of a President is egregious, disgusting, filthy, evil, and not acceptable in any way, shape or form," Babet said. "This was not a joke, he was deadly serious when he wished for the death of the President."

There is no place in Australia for those who wish for the assassination of others. pic.twitter.com/wuvgQxeeDS

— Senator Babet (@senatorbabet) July 16, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Babet called on Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and immigration minister Andrew Giles to denounce the band and revoke their visas. Tenacious D has four more concerts scheduled in Australia.

"Anything less than a deportation is an endorsement of the shooting and the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump, the 45th and soon-to-be 47th President of the United States," Babbet added.

July 16: Tenacious D's next concert is postponed hours before it was scheduled to begin.

Frontier Touring, Tenacious D's promoters, announced on Tuesday that the band's next Australian show was postponed.

"Ticket holders are asked to hold onto their tickets until further information is available," Frontier Touring wrote on Facebook.

News.com.au reported that Frontier Touring made the announcement at 3:30 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time. The show was supposed to begin at 7 p.m. AEST.

There was no indication that the postponement was linked to the Trump controversy.

A representative for Frontier Touring, Trump, and Tenacious D did not immediately respond to a comment request from Business Insider.

• Eric Zhu raised $1 million for Aviato from his high school bathroom aged 15 for his startup Aviato.
• Aviato is a data analysis platform for private markets and has raised $2.3 million to date.
• Zhu leveraged social media popularity and booked cold meetings with potential investors. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Eric Zhu, now 17 years old. He cofounded the startup Aviato and raised $1 million while still at high school aged 15. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his identity and the funds raised.

I started raising money from my high school bathroom for a startup I cofounded at the age of 14 called Aviato, a data analysis platform for private markets, and launched an investment fund.

My journey as an entrepreneur started during the pandemic after I joined a community on Discord called "Gen Z Mafia."

I was lucky to meet some really smart people at the right time and thought "How can I be like them?" I started networking and worked with a few startups in 2021 to help build landing pages for their websites.

I then joined Stanford's Online High School community and met some impressive people. At the age of 14, I cofounded a nonprofit that taught kids to code for free, and I also learned to code myself in the process.

In 2021, I started raising money from my high school bathroom in Carmel, Indiana for a startup I cofounded called Aviato, and I also launched an investment fund called Bachmanity Capital.

Aviato is like a Bloomberg terminal for private markets, and we provide insights such as the name of a top engineer at an organization, and how many shares an employee has.

Bathroom meetings

When it came to raising money, I didn't know many people in San Francisco. But I realized that the investors I saw on X had usernames that correlated to their Calendly links, a platform that helps schedule meetings. So I wrote a scraper tool that would pull their usernames and find their Calendly link, and I'd use that to book meetings with many different people.

I would attend those cold Zoom meetings from my high school bathroom and pitch to investors. I even bought a green screen and ring light for serious meetings. A lot of people were like "fuck you," but some ended up working out.

I got my first check of $50,000 from Tom Preston-Werner, a cofounder of GitHub. When I got that check, I was like, "holy shit, they're actually giving me money."

I would buy hall passes from other students to get out of class. At one point, I was spending about five hours a day in the bathroom taking meetings. But I ended up getting banned from going to the bathroom without an escort.

Trial and error

But it was worth it, as I raised $1 million in 2022. We've raised a total of $2.3 million and we're about to launch Aviato. Now, we're a team of nine people.

I learned to navigate meetings with potential investors through trial and error. The first few calls were absolutely horrible, but they improved over time. I figured a lot of it out along the way.

My age could be seen as both a negative and a positive factor. Some of the negative feedback was that I was still in school and not working on the startup full-time, so I'd often get asked why they should bet on me.

On the flip side, my willingness to take a risk and hold meetings in my high school bathroom showed that I'm willing to go out of my way to build a company, so I think that was a big factor in winning over some investors.

Going viral

I took a photo of myself taking a meeting in the bathroom and posted it on X, which ended up blowing up and going viral. I learned there are three things that go viral: controversial, funny, and out-of-context.

So we built our startup story around that and shared it through meme accounts, which can be a powerful form way to reach a wide audience. Going viral also helped me to meet new people.

I haven't graduated from high school yet and I started taking online classes instead a few months ago after I got suspended for taking meetings in the bathroom.

I then moved to San Francisco to work on building the company full-time. My parents are pretty chill about it, but for the first two months, they thought it was a little surprising for me to take a risk like this.

I've learned a ton and experienced some highs and lows. It's opened up my world, but it hasn't come without difficulty.

There are a lot of times when it's like, "I don't know what to do," but I've figured it out along the way. Surrounding myself with experienced people like my cofounders and investors has been really helpful.

Got a tech career story to share? Contact this reporter at jmann@businessinsider.com

• I'm proud of my name, but hate the way Americans pronounce it.
• The mispronunciation is subtle, so people usually don't get it right, even when I correct them.
• My name has taught me to advocate for myself from a young age. 

My mom told me that when her sister heard my name for the first time, she thought she'd never be able to get it right. But her husband promptly came up with a helpful metaphor — "Amita is a little bit more than a yard."

My mother is British, and my father is Indian, and their name criteria for my sisters and I included a pleasant meaning and Indian roots to match our last name.

Amita is a Sanskrit name that means "immeasurable" or "boundless." My British family pronounces it "ah-mee-tah," and my Indian family pronounces it "ah-mee-tha." I'm comfortable with either of those pronunciations, but many Americans pronounce it as "uh-mee-duh," which I really dislike.

I wish more people could use my uncle's meter expression to help them, but Americans pronounce their T's differently. Saying my name with the "duh" sound may not sound wrong to some, but I feel that it makes my name sound clunky and old-school.

There are names in many languages that sound similar to or are spelled the same as my name, which often trips people up. One is "Anita," which peaked in its U.S. popularity during the 50's and 60's. I've often wondered if people assume my name is a quirkier version of that, rather than a different name entirely, and therefore pronounce it similarly.

As a kid, my name made me feel defeated

One year in middle school, I was up for a soloist award at a choir competition. It was very low stakes, but the awards ceremony took place in a large arena, and I was so excited about the prospect of having my name called there.

When they announced the award, it went to an "Anita Chattergee," who I assumed was me, but the butchering of my name put a damper on my big moment.

People don't usually botch my name completely, so I often felt it was easier to let people say it incorrectly.

In elementary school, I remember noticing that my teachers and classmates said my name differently than my family. One day after school, I went home and sulked because I didn't understand why everyone kept calling me "uh-mee-duh," and my mom encouraged me to correct people.

But I'd been letting it slide for so long that the whole school was saying it wrong, so as a kid, it felt like a lost cause.

Now that I'm older, I make a stronger effort to correct others from the jump

At one job, my manager constantly called me "Amina," no matter how many times I corrected her. Eventually, all my coworkers started calling me the wrong name, too, so I had to do some damage control. I got through to most of them, but my manager never got it right, so I had to just start responding to "Amina."

When I complained to my parents about this, my dad scolded me for conceding and reminded me that he'd never let anyone say his name incorrectly. But in this case, correcting her was pointless.

Anyone with a unique name knows to be prepared for clarifying questions when making introductions. When I meet people, I introduce myself as "ah-mee-tah," and when they usually respond with "uh-mee-duh?" I've started saying, "no, ah-mee-tah, with a 'T.'"

Sometimes, people don't hear the difference, or even if they do, their accents just take over. But I'm at least making an effort.

It can be frustrating, but I'm grateful for my name. It's helped me learn to advocate for myself and be aware of whether I'm saying other's names correctly. I deeply love the sound, uniqueness, and meaning of my name, and I know my parents put a lot of time and energy into choosing it.

It's taught me that the people in my life who take the time to pronounce it right — and correct others — are the ones who matter most.