Here’s a more serious take on why Silicon Valley is the new Ivy League and an enemy to innovation and technology:
Startups used to be for losers, they were for nerds creating new things and breaking old things. Zuck wasn’t perceived as a cool billionaire and although people loved facebook, they didn’t think it was bad ass to be a sweaty nerd writing C++. Yet over the last decade starting a software company has progressively turned into its own rat race and prestige is the outcome driving new entrants.
The catalyst for this disastrous state of the ecosystem and shift in incentives are institutions. VCs like YC and A16Z are largely responsible for this. They hijacked the narrative and use propaganda to make technology, “hacking”, dropping out of school, and working 100 hour weeks co…
Here’s a more serious take on why Silicon Valley is the new Ivy League and an enemy to innovation and technology:
Startups used to be for losers, they were for nerds creating new things and breaking old things. Zuck wasn’t perceived as a cool billionaire and although people loved facebook, they didn’t think it was bad ass to be a sweaty nerd writing C++. Yet over the last decade starting a software company has progressively turned into its own rat race and prestige is the outcome driving new entrants.
The catalyst for this disastrous state of the ecosystem and shift in incentives are institutions. VCs like YC and A16Z are largely responsible for this. They hijacked the narrative and use propaganda to make technology, “hacking”, dropping out of school, and working 100 hour weeks cool. Most VCs don’t give a shit about any of these things, similar to how Harvard no longer gives a shit about education. Marc Andreesen’s biggest claim as a technologist is making hyperlinks blue. He flexes this as if its proof of some sort of technological prowess, hilarious. His true objective, hidden below the tech larping, is power and influence.
The proof is in fund performance. Multistage fund sizes are in a perpetual state of growth, yet funds that keep size static have been the highest performers (with 2 GPs who don’t use twitter). LPs know this and realize performance is not just a measurement of the multiple on invested capital, any discrepancy is covered via value captured in having relationships with these institutions. For the power hungry VCs, expansion of the supply side is fulfilled by manufacturing new narratives and farming young founders. All of this is enabled by their ever humming propaganda machine (which is why we now have things like TBPN and VC “media teams”).
That’s a lot of words just to say these people don’t actually care about innovation, they don’t even like or understand technology.
It should be abundantly clear these people are not stewards of progress and make for a really bad source of capital to those who want to change the world. This is why SF and twitter are horrible environments for founders that don’t want to engage with their game. You could be the least performative striver in SF but it will ruin you, your surroundings will drip feed bullshit narratives subliminally convincing you of metas that are entirely false. Then someone will suddenly offer you $20M and you’ll be hailed as king rat in the race. It’s the fucking truman show.
It may seem like a black pill, but it’s actually the opposite. New technology and a utopian future is still there for those who want to create, it never went away. At the same time you must internalize the fact that it never became easier to be a real technologist. Recognizing the mirage and understanding the reality of exiting the game should catalyze introspection. Many will have the realization that the narrative is what called them in the first place. Are you a YC backed, well funded, prestigious, and credentialed striver? Or are you a fucking loser technologist?
SF only has room for one.