Nike Women’s (Half) Marathon

Yesterday I ran the half marathon in the Nike’s Women Marathon. Best idea I’ve ever had! I was completely surrounded by fit, beautiful women in every direction. I think the registration stats came out to 20,000 runners of which only 500 were men.

Some of my favorite moments were when the rising sun cast our 20-foot shadows on Crissy Field (a reward, I suppose for waking up at 5:30) and how the view from Seacliff opened up after climbing that cursed hill onto 5 miles of Ocean Beach. I wish I had a camera with me. It looked something like this, or this, or this, except more beautiful with a clear blue 8AM sky.

There were some funny moments too, like at around mile 6 when I passed by an oxygen bar, whatever those are for, or when at mile 12 I reached for water and they tried to give me Ghirardelli chocolate! ‘Twas definitely a WTF moment for me at a time when I only wanted to focus on my last mile. Nike and these other corporations have taken this marathon and made a total carnival for those who want that, though when I noticed that nobody running at my pace or faster were reaching for chocolate or stopping for the oxygen bar (including the two “Moms in Motion” with whom I was running the entire time!).

My friend made a good point: Why in the world did they set a cap on registration? Apparently, registration filled up on the very first day, so everyone knows that demand was much higher than the available supply. Since this raised money for charity (leukemia and lymphoma), the effect is that they have turned down donations for charity and reinforced the image that nonprofits are run like garbage. Considering that they raised $18.6M, couldn’t they have easily raised $37.2M if they accepted unlimited registrations?

Tax Fairness, and Who’s an Entrepreneur?

In past months, there has been a ridiculous congressional controversy brewing around the taxation of private equity salaries, particularly in how private equity managers are taxed capital gains for their take-home portion of the gains (instead of at the higher income tax rate that the rest of us pay). I have heard about hedge funds and buyout firms (what my friends usually refer to as “PE”) rising up in arms, and now venture capital are jumping into this circus too.

Throughout this all, I have frankly never heard any good reason why they deserve this advantageous tax rate. Among those reasons are:

1. Excuse: Because PE firms actually have negative years and that not every year is a profitable one, increasing the tax rate would make it harder for them to be profitable over business cycles. My rebuttal: that actually sounds like every other company in the world economy, which should not earn any special sympathy for one of the most lucrative industries in human history.
2. Excuse: PE/HF/VCs deserve special tax treatment because they provide amazing benefits to society, and that higher tax rates would discourage them from working so hard at what they do. Rebuttal: that’s explains why we tax teachers and law enforcement at normal income rates, right?
3. Excuse: Higher taxes would drive the PE industry would move overseas. Rebuttal: US-based VC and LBO will not move offshore, away from the companies they invest in, and as for US-based hedge funds… I somehow can’t imagine sophisticated hedge fund professionals moving from New York to some sparse island country.

One of the new tricks being used by the VC contingent is to call themselves entrepreneurs and to imply that taxing them would hamper the dynamism of the startup economy. One of the founding executives of my company has written a great response to a NYTimes piece that equated VCs with entrepreneurs. It’s a pretty thoughtful writeup and, actually, it also expresses how proud I am to have ended up doing what I’m currently doing.