Let’s talk about Succession

Hey, it’s Mark in New York. HBO’s Succession got me thinking about family businesses. But first…Today’s must-reads:• TikTok is set to fight [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey, it’s Mark in New York. HBO’s Succession got me thinking about family businesses. But first… Today’s must-reads: • TikTok is set to [fight it out in US courts]( • LG will [spend $5.5 billion]( on US battery plants • Retail traders [ditched Tesla]( Waystar Jobsco The final season of Succession premiered on Sunday. I won’t spoil anything about that. But the return of HBO’s acerbic comedy got me thinking about one aspect of the series: Why aren’t there any family dynasties in tech? The tribe at the center of Succession is loosely based on the Murdochs, and there’s a storyline midway through the series that involves a family inspired by the Sulzberger clan, which owns the New York Times, and the Bancrofts, which sold the Wall Street Journal to News Corp. There’s a fictional tech company in the mix, too, run by a sort of Swedish Elon Musk character. None of his siblings or children appear to play a role in his business. The portrayals in Succession are caricatures, but this part of it is true to life. There’s a long list of family dramas in the media industry: the Chandlers, formerly of the Los Angeles Times; the Cox family; the Grahams, formerly of the Washington Post; the Hearsts; the Redstones of Paramount Global. Powerful dynasties like these are rarer in other industries, but they do exist — the [Kochs](bbg://news/stories/RQYAR7DWX2PS), Johnson & Johnson, the Mars candy empire, the Waltons at Walmart Inc. But there’s nothing of the sort in Silicon Valley (unless you count venture capital). Tech is comparatively new as an industry, but it’s not that new. IBM has been around longer than most of these companies. There’s a few factors that explain why this is practically unheard of in tech. Founders’ careers often peak early in life. The offspring of Bill Gates, the Google founders or Jeff Bezos were all too young to be expected to take over leadership of their fathers’ companies when they elected to step back. Mark Zuckerberg just had his [third kid]( on Friday. Another factor is burnout. Running a tech company is extraordinarily taxing. That reduces the chances a young founder will stick around long enough to hand over the reins to their family or even want to inflict such a demanding job on their kids. Burnout appeared to play a role in Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s decision to step down, said [Ken Auletta](bbg://people/profile/1955092), who spent time with the founders for his book about Google. “Larry and Sergey were always on edge,” he said. The last factor is a philosophical one. The tech industry was built on a belief in meritocracy. It’s perhaps the most common doctrine in Silicon Valley — that a great company can be started by a college dropout and that the best product should always win. There are certainly holes in the tech ideal. In practice, the system tends to favor dropouts who are White, male and went to Harvard or Stanford University. But to its credit, tech is largely averse to nepotism ([Adam Neumann notwithstanding](). Steve Jobs never would have considered appointing his wife [Laurene]( as his successor at Apple Inc., said Auletta. “It would be totally antithetical to who he was to put his wife in charge,” he said. “He created what he thought was a masterpiece, and he didn’t want to risk turning it over to someone who was untrained, untried.” Auletta has chronicled the media industry, and its collision with tech, for three decades at the New Yorker (also owned by a dynasty, by the way). He has special insight into the mind of a media mogul. As he notes, Laurene Powell Jobs went on to create an important media company after her husband’s death. The [Emerson Collective]( owns the Atlantic. It also employs Laurene and Steve’s son. Salesforce Inc. founder Marc Benioff now owns Time magazine — with his wife Lynne. Succession at Bezos’s Washington Post is unclear. Perhaps the tech dynasties will manifest at media companies. They’re probably more fun as a family business anyway. “It’s very enticing for people — the media,” Auletta said. “It is power.” —[Mark Milian](mailto:mailto:mmilian@bloomberg.net) The big story Mass layoffs in the tech industry claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the most recent downturn. But those who know the industry best — the tech recruiters who hire for jobs across the sector — [say the industry isn’t showing signs of going under](. Get fully charged TikTok is banned in some form in 11 countries as [concerns grow over security threats]( posed by the Chinese-owned social media platform. China’s sudden Covid reopening led to a windfall for online shopping platform Meituan, but new entrants like ByteDance’s Douyin [pose threatening competition](. Watch: Silicon Valley Bank’s meltdown will [leave a lasting impact on the Bay area]( and the financial sector at large, said Kat Taylor, chair of Beneficial State Bank, in a TV interview on Bloomberg Technology. Thai crypto exchange Zipmex is facing complications in its $100 miilion bailout after the company [failed to receive the most recent payment](. A Pakistani logistics startup is raising funding at a time when the country’s startup economy [is beginning to show signs of life](. More from Bloomberg Listen: [Foundering: The John McAfee Story]( is a new six-part podcast series retracing the life, the myths and the self-destruction of a Silicon Valley icon. Subscribe for free on [Apple](, [Spotify]( or wherever you get your podcasts. 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