Shaun Maguire and Augustus Doricko faced very different PR crises — and took opposite approaches
Jul 11, 2025
Key Points
- Doricko's Rain Maker faced existential threats from conspiracy theories about cloud seeding causing Texas floods, forcing aggressive omnichannel defense across fringe and mainstream media to protect regulatory approval and farm contracts.
- Maguire, a Sequoia partner, drew backlash from tech peers for unprompted criticism of New York's incoming mayor, responding with video explainers and surrogate defense rather than direct media appearances.
- The two crises reveal a strategic trade-off: Doricko maximized reach to specific decision-makers who control his business survival, while Maguire pursued broader cultural persuasion despite greater industry blowback.
Summary
Augustus Doricko and Shaun Maguire each faced a PR crisis this week and chose opposite communication strategies, illustrating how the nature of the attack determines the appropriate response.
Doricko's company, Rain Maker, faced accusations that its cloud-seeding operations caused the Texas floods that killed multiple people. The charges came from conspiracy theorists and the far right, who conflated his legitimate business activity with a catastrophic natural disaster. Doricko responded directly and aggressively. He posted relentlessly on X, quote-tweeting his attackers with humor and data. He then systematized his defense by appearing everywhere his critics congregate: this show, a Twitter Space, CNN, Fox News, Pirate Wires, Infowars, Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, and Tim Pool, while also working with legacy outlets like the Washington Post.
Maguire, a Sequoia Capital partner, waded into New York City politics unprompted. He criticized the incoming mayor for extremism, citing old posts celebrating Antifa and calling for defunding police. The attack on Maguire came from the left and from Maguire's own industry peers, who found his position offensive or ill-timed. Maguire did not do interviews. He engaged on X repeatedly, posted a 30-minute video unpacking his original tweet and the backlash, and let surrogates like Joe Lonsdale and Pat Grady defend him publicly. Grady's post isolated the actual claim: extremism is the enemy, not Muslims or Jews, signaling that Maguire's partners at Sequoia understood the distinction.
The strategic difference stems from what each crisis actually threatened. Doricko's crisis threatened Rain Maker's existence. Regulators could ban cloud seeding, farmers could pull contracts, local opposition could kill operations. He was defending his business and an entire industry. Maguire's crisis threatened his reputation as a person in tech, not his firm's core operations. Maguire's viral posts likely generated 50 million views this week. Doricko's TV appearances probably reached far fewer people, with a single Fox News segment hitting roughly 100,000 viewers. But that gap reflects different targets. Maguire needed to move the broad tech and cultural audience that now sees him as a bad actor. Doricko needed to persuade regulators, politicians, local councils, and farmers—the specific people who can actually kill or save his business.
Both crises raise a question that splits founders and investors: should you stay in your lane? Coinbase's Brian Armstrong made the narrow case: focus on what directly affects your mission. Maguire chose the wider case: engage on principle, signal your values as a person, and let people decide if they want to work with you. Neither approach backfired spectacularly. Maguire's supporters argue that his core position, don't let extremists win, is defensible and that his industry peers understand the nuance. Skeptics note he ventured furthest from his core competency and absorbed the most blowback, even if his reach was wider. Doricko stayed closest to his business and avoided the broadest attacks, though the specific technical rebuttals he deployed are only as effective as audiences trust his data.