Over the weekend, legendary Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins caused a firestorm in a letter to the editor to The Wall Street Journal in which he said people who criticized the rich were like Nazis who persecuted the Jews in the 1930s.
The comments caused an outcry in the Valley, with most people condemning them, although one other prominent VC, Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, defended Perkins.
This is far for the first time that the 82-year-old Perkins, often called the "Father of Silicon Valley," has caused controversy.
His life story is a continuous string of over-the-top-ness, filled with luxury excess, boardroom drama, even a conviction of manslaughter in a French court.
Yes, he's rich
Tom Perkins is rich, though it's not clear exactly how rich.
The Celebrity Net Worth blog estimates that he's worth $8 billion today. He's not currently on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, nor on Bloomberg's Billionaire index.
But he's been rich for decades, and there's no reason to believe that he's in danger of falling from the 1% anytime soon, or ever.
His famous mega-yacht: The Maltese Falcon
Perkins is known for building the mega-yacht, The Maltese Falcon, the subject of a "60 Minutes profile" in 2007.
The Falcon was the world's largest privately owned sailboat of the day, and full of technological breakthroughs.
Someone once called it a "big boatload of ego," and when "60 Minutes'" Lesley Stahl asked him about that, he laughed and said, "Somebody has to have it, right? Why not me?"
The boat cost $130 million to build, had 11,000 square feet of living space, and a crew of 20, including a gourmet chef. He sold it in 2009.
He was once convicted of manslaughter in France
In 1996, Perkins was racing his yacht in France when he collided with a smaller boat, killing a French doctor on board, he wrote in his 2008 memoir, "Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins."
Perkins was found guilty by a French court. Jail sentences were suspended, and he was ordered to pay a fine of $10,000.
Perkins described it like this:"Arrested and tried in a foreign court in a language you don't understand, by judges indifferent — or worse — to justice, represented by an inappropriate lawyer with the negative outcome preordained."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider