George Lucas, one of the most private of Bay Area residents, is not exactly a fixture on the Silicon Valley party circuit. Most top tech CEOs know him by reputation only.
But now the Star Wars filmmaker is battling for the chance to build his art museum in San Francisco and just won an outpouring of support from what you might call the tech world's Jedi Council.
See also: One Year of Disney Star Wars: What We've Learned
Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, put her name to a letter obtained by Mashable that urges the Presidio Trust to build Lucas' museum. Others who signed the letter included Jack Dorsey, Marissa Meyer, Biz Stone, YouTube founder Chad Hurley and the CEOs of Airbnb, Dropbox, eBay and Pinterest, as well as 23 other tech luminaries, like retired footballer and newbie tech world investor named Joe Montana.
Perhaps more impressive: They all signed up in less than four days.
"I had no idea when I started how revered George Lucas is," said Ron Conway, the well-connected angel investor who drafted the letter to the Trust. "These people were emailing me back with questions immediately" — including Dorsey and Stone, both in the midst of the hectic countdown to Twitter's IPO. Conway said that Dorsey, an artist by training, was particularly thrilled: "Jack really gets the importance of how this could shape lives and careers."
The George Lucas Cultural Arts Museum is one of three finalists vying for newly available space in San Francisco's largest national park, the Presidio. Though Lucas has resisted describing it as a Star Wars museum, it will focus on storytelling and digital art and will feature many of the props from the landmark space fantasy movies.
The museum would be "a beacon that says to the world that San Francisco is, and will remain, this country’s capital of innovation," according to the letter.
Could this sudden support have something to do with the fact that most of today's Silicon Valley CEOs were 10 years old (or younger) when Star Wars premiered? Conway won't go that far.
"It’s an unbiased group of people looking at it very objectively," he said. "When you look at the artwork and illustration and cinematic art being donated, it’s unparalleled."
Conway says many CEOs and founders were suspicious that they would be hit up for donations, but quickly signed up when they learned Lucas is giving a large enough portion of his billions to the endowment that it should never need to raise a dime.
Nothing fosters civic engagement faster, it seems, than a billionaire paying for a public building himself.
Image: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images News