The Bain Capital Files

Re:The Bain Capital Files by smacktoward on Tuesday August 28, 2012 @10:54PM (#4446874)

There's a lesson this for me and my partners. Everything we publish to our investors should be written as if it will someday be published in Gawker. And every action we take in structuring our business, our relationships with our investors, and our relationships with the entrepreneurs we back should be conducted as if it will someday be published in Gawker.

This is nothing new. When I was studying political science in the early '90s it was called "the Washington Post Rule": a canny politician should never put anything in writing unless he would be comfortable seeing it on the front page of the Washington Post.

(Why the Post? Woodward and Bernstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President%27s_Men I have to believe the rule goes back even further than that, but presumably before their time it was called something else.)

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Re:The Bain Capital Files by MikeCapone on Tuesday August 28, 2012 @11:22PM (#4446924)

Warren Buffett's been telling all his managers for decades that they shouldn't base their decisions on what is "this side of the line of legality" but rather on what they wouldn't mind "seeing printed on the front page of the New York Times".

I'm sure the idea's been around for even longer than that, though. I bet Benjamin Franklin (a publisher, among other things) must've had a choice quote about that...

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Re:The Bain Capital Files by expralitemonk on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @07:33AM (#4448012)

"Abstain from all appearance of evil."

1 Thessalonians 5:22 King James Bible

I'm sure if you dug around in Buddhist or Confucianist writings you'd find something similar. Being mindful of how your actions look is very useful in avoiding trouble.

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Re:The Bain Capital Files by jahmed on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @04:08AM (#4447525)

Living in a world where so much more takes place online and data being relatively permanent if one was determined how do we extend that rule. At this point a whole generation is already out of politics from scandalous Facebook photos and suggestive texts.

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Re:The Bain Capital Files by smacktoward on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @09:21AM (#4448356)

My guess is that as those people come of age we'll gradually see a sort of silent consensus to ignore that stuff within certain parameters -- if they were a certain age or younger, say, or as long as no serious laws were broken.

It's happened before. Look at how society has evolved on questions of politicians' drug use, for instance. In 1970 admitting to have ever used marijuana would have been an instant career killer for a politician. By 1992 Bill Clinton could admit having used it, as long as he hedged the admission with a bunch of caveats -- he didn't inhale, etc. And by 2008 Barack Obama could openly admit having smoked pot regularly without any negative repercussions, as long as it was only in his wayward youth.

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