In an encrypted group chat on Signal, a who’s who of tech titans met to commiserate and toss out solutions: Should they appeal to the governor? Run counter-initiatives? Put up candidates for office?

The members of the chat, some of whom are reported here for the first time, read like a Forbes list of Silicon Valley elite: Google cofounder Sergey Brin, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, former Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, former Sequoia Capital head and chairman of The Standard Michael Moritz, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, venture capitalist Ron Conway, Greenoaks Capital founder Neil Mehta, investor and “All-In” podcast cohost David Friedberg, Future Ventures founder Steve Jurvetson and his wife, Genevieve — dozens of tycoons, some of whom were hyper-active in the chat and others who engaged not at all.

“It’s kind of like, ‘Who wasn’t in it?’ to be honest,” said one of two people who saw the chat and described its contents to The Standard. “And it just kept getting added to.”

At some point, a chat participant proposed an action more audacious than lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom or funding an anti-tax measure: What if the group simply bought the signature-collecting company the union was using, then prohibited it from collecting more signatures?