Hi, it's tech editor Alexei Oreskovic, freshly returned from Park City, Utah, where Fortune hosted its annual Brainstorm Tech conference.
I started the event crammed into a bobsled with a startup founder, and a VC investor, barrelling down the 2002 Olympic bobsled track at 70 mph. We were advised to hit the restrooms before the descent, lest our innards succumb to the g-forces.
We made it down safely (and unsoiled), but the experience offered an apt metaphor for the state of the tech industry right now—a dizzying spectacle of speed, risk, and folly. The U.S. government's effort to temporarily stop Microsoft's $69 billion Activision acquisition from closing was rejected and then appealed in a matter of days, Meta's Twitter-rival Threads racked up 100 million users in five days, and Mark Zuckerberg posted a topless photo of himself while Elon Musk tweeted something about measurements.
The testosterone-fueled antics of the two feuding billionaire tech bros did not go unnoticed at Brainstorm. "Can you imagine the reaction if two women executives behaved this way in public?" said a female startup founder I spoke to.
The sad reality is that there aren't enough women tech CEOs to draw good comparisons. But a decade ago there was Carol Bartz, the Yahoo CEO whose habit of dropping the occasional public f-bomb reportedly drew admonitions from her fellow boardmembers. Bartz, who was hired to turn around the faltering internet pioneer, was famously fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman in 2011 with more than a year left on her contract.
Marissa Mayer, another former Yahoo CEO, was at Brainstorm Tech this week to discuss the future of the tech business. Back when Mayer was the Yahoo CEO she also caused a public outcry—not because of a Musk-style public display of crassness, but because of the length of the maternity leave that she took (less than one month).
I didn't get a chance to ask Mayer her thoughts about the Musk-Zuck shenanigans, but I enjoyed listening to her panel on A.I. and learning more about her startup Sunshine, which has raised $22 million in funding since it was founded five years ago.
Mayer spoke a few hours after Adam Neumann, the ousted WeWork founder known for walking around barefoot and hosting company meetings with tequila shots. Neumann reflected on his past, noting that one of the key lessons he has learned is to surround himself with people who will tell him the hard truths.
Like Mayer, Neumann has a new startup. It's called Flow, and according to Neumann, it might compete directly with WeWork when his noncompete expires in October. So far, investors have given him $350 million to make his dream of a second chance come true.
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Alexei Oreskovic
