Jeff Bezos, by the word of nearly everyone who has anything to say about him, is a mean person.

Steve Jobs was often described as mean.

I've never heard anyone describe Mark Zuckerberg as nice, and Sean Parker bought Warner Music Group just for the schadenfreude. That's only if we go with recent examples.

J Paul Getty was a rank asshole. Cornelius Vanderbilt actually fomented revolution in Panama to increase his margins. Andrew Carnegie gave up his fortune, sure - but only once it was becoming clear he'd lose most of it to taxes. You don't get the sobriquet "robber baron" from being nice.

I'm sure we can gerrymander a definition of "mean" that somehow excludes all these people, but it becomes a meaningless definition. The fact of the matter is history is made by assholes, corporations are run by assholes, treasury boards are run by assholes and government is made by assholes and just because an asshole stands up and says "we're not assholes" doesn't mean they aren't all assholes.

I'm currently cranking through a book on Google, having done a book on Amazon. Google is made up of mean people. They got ahead by doing illegal things. To have a startup venture capitalist somehow argue that "mean people fail" is disingenuous at best.