Quorum at the Leopards Eating Faces Party. We’re a little over a month into an industry-wide conversation about the future of tech in California, which is largely taking place off social media. At this point, most people know the conversation was triggered by a ballot proposition floated by the state’s largest healthcare union which seeks to legalize a first-of-its-kind asset seizure targeting (for now) billionaires. But while there’s been a bit of tabloid reporting on the existence of private group chats, where the question of whether it’s safe for founders to remain in the state is once again being litigated by industry leaders, it seems mainstream reporters have thus far failed to speak with any actual billionaires impacted by the chaos. So, in my capacity as the most well-sourced journalist in the history of technology writing (I think actually?), I decided to fill that gap.

Over the last week, I spoke with 21 billionaires about the looming prospect of a wealth tax. We discussed whether they left or are planning to leave California (most of them are), what a wealth tax means for the technology industry, and finally how, if at all, they plan to fight back. The men I spoke with include founders of companies working on a diverse range of technologies including artificial intelligence, defense, cryptography, security, biotechnology, finance, and general software development, as well as prominent venture capitalists at several of the most famous firms in the world. In total, these men are responsible for something like 50,000 employees, running companies in California worth a combined ~ $1.3 trillion.

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Among the men I interviewed impacted by the ballot proposition, none were willing to speak on the record.

“I think there’s definitely a sense that you’ll be attacked and singled out and the average nerd is conflict avoidant,” one man said.

The ballot proposition was constructed in such a way as it can technically not solve any of the stated problems it was ostensibly written to address — chief among them, filling a massive budget hole in Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program) following California legislation that guaranteed permanent funding for illegal immigrant healthcare. That promise was never tenable, but following federal Medicaid cuts it has dragged California into crisis. The futility of the ballot proposition has left most men impacted with a sense that the ballot proposition’s true purpose is to humiliate them, disrupt their personal lives, and hurt their companies. Given especially the proposition’s dangerous language surrounding control, which I detailed extensively last week, founders of private companies in particular, with their armies of lawyers investigating this thing, believe the proposition, as written, could actually bankrupt them. Obviously, there is now real danger in appearing successful in the state of California, as the far left, imbued with a great deal of power, and benefiting now from several years of wealth scapegoating throughout the mainstream press, attempts to liquidate its perceived enemies in business.

But first, are these guys staying and fighting, or are they leaving? And how many have already left? While there’s been a great deal of reporting on the matter, nobody seems to agree on the number.

Three men I spoke with in the largest billionaire Signal chat said they ran an informal poll, and seventy percent of the chat (around sixty people, not all of whom were billionaires) indicated they would leave the state if the ballot proposition passes. According to that same poll, around 15% have already left the state.

I’ve spoken with around ten percent of billionaires in the state myself. Of the 21 men I interviewed, 20 would have been impacted by the ballot measure. All 20 of them, including the Democrats, as well as several of the most committed diehard proponents of revitalizing San Francisco, are now developing an exit plan. (Three have already left.) Almost all of them have either purchased property out of state or are in the process of buying property out of state now; almost all of them have engaged lawyers to help them navigate what they see as a potentially years-long legal battle; and, among the men I spoke with who are presently running companies, almost all have deployed business ops leaders to focus on opening offices out of California.

While, without exception, every founder of a private company I interviewed mentioned the ballot proposition’s confusing and confounding “control” language, their focus is generally directed to the overall uncertainty surrounding legislation in the state. Concern has much less to do with this single ballot proposition than the question of how companies will be targeted in the future, and everyone believes they will be targeted again. There is also nobody who believes the introduction of architecture for a legalized asset seizure, something we’ve never before seen in this country, will conclude with an exclusive targeting of billionaires over the years to come. Once the concept is normalized, everyone assumes wealth taxes of this kind will ultimately target every “wealthy” person in the state, with the term “wealthy” redefined in whatever manner leftists find useful from election cycle to election cycle.

“I think 100 percent of people who are looking at this understand it is being marketed as a one-time thing, but it will not be one time, and it will not only target billionaires. Once the structure is put in place, it is going to expand,” one impacted businessman explained.

He also felt the number of targets is higher than generally reported, as is the number of founders worried about their companies.

“The headlines are ‘200 billionaires in the state,’ but on top of that list, how many new AI paper billionaires are there who aren’t included in those numbers? Then, how many paper 100 millionaires who think their companies will grow 10x? How many founders who are just starting? The set of people who think they are going to be impacted by this is much larger than the 200.”

I expected people to be upset. I expected maybe half of the men I spoke with to be working on a plan to leave the state. I did not expect every man I spoke with to be considering an exit, and I was actually shocked to find this applied even to the men most historically outspoken about the unique importance of California.

“The crazy thing,” one of the California maximalists said, “is that I’m thinking about leaving, because I am one of the happiest to pay taxes people I know.”

This is not a man who is allergic to what I would personally term draconian forms of taxation, or even to a “properly done wealth tax” in general, he explained (though he was the only person I spoke with who was open to one). He believes this form of taxation is inevitable, as artificial intelligence will ultimately replace all human labor, at which point an income tax will not be practical. In this, he most preferred some kind of national land tax.

In other words, the terrain in California is still: wealthy thoughtful business leaders trying to understand the world in one corner, and union thugs who actually understand power in the other. But targeting the engine of the tech industry, with language that seemed to disproportionately threaten founders of earlier-stage private companies, was much too far — even for the “happiest to pay taxes” guy in tech.

This is where virulently left-wing policy wonks seem to not understand the technology industry. While the academics responsible for this ballot proposition seem to believe they’re over the target, so to speak, and billionaires crying about the destruction of tech are just attempting to scare them from securing their fair share of someone else’s money, even the most thoughtful entrepreneur is simply looking at the letter of the proposal and concluding it may be literally impossible for them to stay in California.

“If this tax actually passes,” said one prominent venture capitalist, “I think the technology industry kind of has to leave the state. Because every person running a company will have to look at the math, and they will think, ‘Well obviously that cannot happen because it will literally destroy the company.’

“The cap table will transfer to state coffers or, I don’t know, weird secondary sales.

“The whole basic fundamental model of building a company that does something important and compounds over 5, 10 years just doesn’t work anymore. And that’s the thing that could really kill the network effect.”

One executive working with hundreds of new companies a year, who is now actively working on launching a new office in either Austin or Cambridge, speculated that startups might continue to be founded in California for the time being, “but the second it actually works the CEO will move and open other offices elsewhere, and most of your workers will be someplace else.”

To the question of whether the asset seizure would ultimately pass, opinions were diverse, but nobody seemed to care. That wasn’t what mattered. That this could happen at all is what mattered.

“It’s an awakening for a lot of people,” said one of the most impacted, well-known, and beloved founders I spoke with.

And it seems to be an awakening for Democrats specifically.

“If it does or doesn’t pass, this is the single most radicalizing red pilling thing to ever happen to push them into the arms of the Republican Party, and I think it makes clear, more than anything else that happens, that it’s not about helping the poor but impoverishing the rich, and the pain is part of the point. That’s a new realization for a lot of people.”

Another billionaire said it seemed, from conversations he’d been having with other men impacted by the ballot proposition, that it would harm the Democratic party:

“The vast majority of people affected by this are Democrats, including many of the biggest donors to the party,” he said.

He characterized this as a catalyzing event among Democratic donors, many of whom he was now privately engaging with, “unlike any other issue I’ve seen.” Yes, he said, there was a big “leopards eating faces element to this.” But actual asset seizure was truly not something any of them expected.

Probably the main guy getting his face eaten by leopards here, who around half of the men I interviewed mentioned, is the major DNC funder Ron Conway, who is apparently close to Governor Newsom. I reached out to Mr. Conway for an interview, and he declined to participate.

When pushed on where they would go, most men I spoke with mentioned Florida or Austin, but were open to anything.

“There isn’t one concentrated place,” one man told me. “In order, probably Florida, Austin, and then some mountain place — Wyoming, or Tahoe.”

But another zeroed in on specific law in each state that will almost certainly determine where people move.

In Texas, voters passed a constitutional amendment banning tax on unrealized gains. Florida’s constitution seems to make a tax like this more difficult than most, as does Washington’s. But Washington has a very wild anti-business culture separate from asset seizure, which is why nobody I spoke with considers a move to Washington feasible. Then, Nevada law currently prevents the taxation of intangible personal property, which could theoretically be changed by the legislature, though this would be especially difficult in that state, while South Dakota would require a supermajority of voters to greenlight any future taxes — though this is not much of a consolation to people presently fleeing a state where voters are leading this charge. Still, requiring a supermajority of voters to be sufficiently stupid to actually pass a policy so self-destructive would, I guess, be something.

This brings us to the question of what our boys are actually doing about the ballot proposition.