Ever since tech startups turned their CEOs into titans, the rest of us have had to witness their bare feet..
In 1996, before Silicon Valley geeks became the poshest, Netscape co-founder and future venture capital king Marc Andreessen earned what was then the business world’s highest honor: the magazine cover Time.
The article described the Internet browser wizard as a new type of millionaire visionary. Yes, Netscape’s recent IPO made this 24-year-old fabulously rich overnight, but he said he didn’t care about money. After all, he still lived in a rented two-bedroom house and spent all his money on CDs and dog toys.
However, before even reading the article, Andreessen’s photo already conveyed everything you needed to know about his uniqueness: There, in all his disheveled splendor, was the young founder sitting on a plush and red velvet throne, with jeans, a wrinkled black sweater, and shoeless feet as pale and bare as the day he was born.
At the time, the spectacle of Andreessen’s feet provoked a wave of reproaches and red eyes from traditional businessmen.
Who was this baby-faced clown and why did he appear to have been stopped by a Time photographer outside a Phish concert?
But Andreessen was playing his own footwork, sending a shoeless signal to the world that he was a happy-go-lucky maverick, so busy thinking about deep digital issues that he didn’t have a moment to waste on petty concerns like, you know, shoes.
Twenty-five years later, Andreessen’s barefoot tactic – and don’t think for a second that it wasn’t a tactic – has become one of the strangest phenomena of the Internet age: the “candid” photo of the CEO with the bare feet
Nowadays, you can’t call yourself an off-the-charts tech titan without barefoot photographic proof for Wall Street Journal subscribers to ponder.
Here’s a rundown of some of the most prominent, post-Andreessen examples of this incredibly strange business trend:
Everyone knows that the founder of Facebook loves hoodies. It has been his signature image since the early days of the social media giant.
But at 37, with a net worth of $126 billion, Zuckerberg can’t pull off the shoeless enfant terrible act with the same street cred, even if his creepy wax image at San Francisco’s Madame Tussauds gives him the same amount of street cred. shown with bare feet.
When on Shark Tank, Cuban prefers suits and dress shirts. At Dallas Mavericks games, he usually wears a T-shirt and jeans.
But outside of those settings—say, relaxing in the Mavs locker room, studying the latest white paper, or generally taking a break to do light business—the founder of early tech companies likes to let his flag fly. It is not a pretty sight. Its unspoken message seems to be: “I’ll give you $100,000 for 51% of your company right now if you pretend you don’t smell anything.”
Before launching into space, the English tycoon with the leonine mane who breaks the rules always showed himself as one of the coolest and most carefree billionaires in the world. Not only does he have his own airline and space exploration company, but he also owns his own Caribbean island, Necker Island, where he no doubt takes long walks with the sand dancing between his toes.
Going barefoot is part of Branson’s La Dolce Vita. Still, unless we are their guests on Necker Island, no one is dying to see their helmets. Those kinds of things can float in space… but then again, in space, no one can hear you scream.
The CaptureRX co-founder has been called a “resurrected hippie” and “the barefoot CEO” in the press. He also claims to be very reserved. But, apparently, he is not so reserved that he does not pose for photographers with his natural feet on his desk, as if to say: “I may run a highly successful healthcare management company, but look how laid-back I am!”.
In case it wasn’t clear enough, Hotchkiss also made sure to roll up his shirt sleeves to reveal his impressive tattooed forearms. “Hello, Wall Street… Welcome to the arms show!”
Of course, Elon Musk can’t be bothered with humanoid concerns as earthly as shoes. Or maybe you’re taking the whole carbon footprint thing too literally.
Recently, Richard Branson (naturally!) posted a photo of himself with a Musk and his bare feet. (Branson, inexplicably, was wearing shoes.) Before long, the photo was uploaded to the foot fetish archives “wikiFeet,” where toe aficionados were unimpressed. Musk’s dogs received a rating of just 2.7 out of 5. Ouch!
Hours before he was forced to resign as CEO of WeWork, the furry Neumann was seen walking down a Manhattan street chatting on his cell phone in jeans, a gray T-shirt and dirty bare feet. This may be normal behavior on the West Coast, but in New York? Where every square foot of sidewalk is stained with dog poop, human waste, and old-fashioned toxic sauce? Hasn’t this guy heard of tetanus?
On the other hand, it seems that the goal was to appear free of feet and slippers. While the details of executive Neumann’s disappearance were being negotiated, the founder’s lack of footwear was desperately trying to signal the hackneyed mantra: What, me worrying? Maybe you wouldn’t sweat the small stuff too much either if you were on the receiving end of a $445 million exit package.
