[sequoia]

Would you characterize his success since starting Loopt as being primarily about "working on things that matter" or strong relationship management and "political" skills? He managed to exit a failing startup with 5mil then get several much richer people to give him seed capital to invest (which he did fantastically) if I understand correctly. The man is clearly successful, but this type of maneuvering is definitely what I'd call "being good at politics" if you want to use that term.

A heads down, passion-driven, "no politics" founder would likely have gone down with the Loopt ship; Sam adroitly found a way to turn a failure into a success. That's politics.