Silicon Valley renegade

Victory for Trump voter

GSV Capital Chief Executive Michael Moe (pictured) is having the last laugh as a Silicon Valley insider who dared not vote for Hillary Clinton.

Call it a real belly laugh for this influential tech investor, who has emerged unbowed — and predicts President-elect Donald Trump may very well pull this economy out of the doldrums with opportunities galore for investors. But it was an awful price Moe paid, people say.

Moe along with billionaire Peter Thiel were two of the most politically isolated chief executives in the Valley this election season, since many of their peers, in typical groupthink fashion — and at odds with Trump on issues ranging from immigration to big government — savaged anyone who didn’t support Clinton.

“If you didn’t vote for Hillary,” Moe told The Post, “you were looked on here as having two heads. Silicon Valley was heavily keen on Team Hillary and it voted overwhelmingly for Hillary.”

Moe, 54, says he sees Silicon Valley coming around to Trump once his policies become clearer.

“The fact of the matter is that the Trump presidency is probably good for Silicon Valley,” said the well-connected Moe. Here’s why:

Confidence: Moe see signs already of more confidence in the economy. With the Trump manifesto calling for a sharp reduction in the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and a deal that would permit corporations to repatriate profits back to the US from overseas, this confidence could be bolstered by real money for more US spending and growth.

IPOs: With Trump vowing to scale back regulation, Moe thinks this will foster a better climate for IPOs. “I don’t know a single CEO in Silicon Valley from a private company who is dying to go pub- lic right now,” he said. “[The] Sarbanes-Oxley [Act], for one thing, has made it prohibitively expensive.”

Market gains: From a high of 500 IPOs a year through the 1990s to about 110 each year in the past 15, there has been about an 80 percent reduction in the number of US IPOs from peak to trough, Moe says. More IPOs should mean more after-market activity, and that could juice up the stock market like gangbusters, he adds. Moe expects all the major indexes to surge in the coming year.

“My views are pretty libertarian, but I won’t go any further,” said Moe, 54, who has savored much success in his professional life, including his early international bestseller, “Finding the Next Starbucks” (Penguin Books, 2006).

Moe recalls the upset at Trump’s victory.

“There was complete shock and then dismay when Hillary lost,” Moe said.

Trump got few handouts from the Valley, receiving less than $2 for every $100 donated to Hillary, by one calculation.

Moe parts company with Trump on immigration policy, however. “About 50 percent of the founders of companies in Silicon Valley are from overseas. I hope his talk on immigration was just campaign rhetoric,” he said.

But with a new administration in DC, Moe said, “I could finally see corporate earnings grow and accelerate, and that would be positive for the stocks.”