President Obama Hints He May Head to Silicon Valley for His Next Job

As President Obama’s eight years in office comes to an unfortunate end, the soon-to-be former-Commander-in-Chief is considering what his next job could be, and it could be one that will shake up Silicon Valley.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Obama expressed his interest in the tech industry of Silicon Valley, hinting that his next job may be as a venture capitalist.

Obama’s presidency has long been friendly to the technology and startup culture of Silicon Valley. In 2014, the White House appointed former Google[x] VP Megan Smith as the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and former Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray as Deputy CTO. Obama has also attended Austin’s annual SXSW festival, launched Startup America and hosted the White House’s first-ever Hackathon.

When asked what industry he was thinking of going into, Obama told Bloomberg:

“Well, you know, it’s hard to say. But what I will say is that—just to bring things full circle about innovation—the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying. You know, you think about something like precision medicine: the work we’ve done to try to build off of breakthroughs in the human genome; the fact that now you can have your personal genome mapped for a thousand bucks instead of $100,000; and the potential for us to identify what your tendencies are, and to sculpt medicines that are uniquely effective for you. That’s just an example of something I can sit and listen and talk to folks for hours about.

Obama also added:

“You can become Bill Gates. Or, in some cases, you can electrify a village. You can save water in a desert.”

With his experience in running the most powerful country in the world, Obama is probably more than qualified to assess potentially risky investments but more importantly, invest in technology that can really benefit the world. Now we just sit back and watch hopeful entrepreneurs line up in the hopes of pitching one of the coolest presidents to have ever lived.

h/t: TechCrunch

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