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How to Be Silicon Valley
20 hours ago
- The key to creating a Silicon Valley is attracting the right mix of rich investors and nerdy founders, not buildings or government programs.
- Government bureaucrats make poor startup investors because they lack the experience, motivation, and personal stake of private venture capitalists.
- Universities are essential as magnets for smart people, but they must be located in a city with personality—intact centers, youthfulness, tolerance for odd ideas—that nerds enjoy.
- Startups grow organically: successful ones spawn new founders and investors, and this chain reaction takes time, typically years, and cannot be forced.
- A new technology hub can compete with Silicon Valley by offering a better quality of life, avoiding suburban sprawl and preserving charm.
Why to Move to a Startup Hub
20 hours ago
- The speaker's advice to move startups to Silicon Valley is based on urban advantages, not nationalism.
- Startup hubs like Silicon Valley offer better infrastructure, knowledge, and a concentrated market for startups.
- Silicon Valley investors are more aggressive and knowledgeable, leading to greater success compared to other regions.
- Other factors like family commitments, immigration issues, industry specificity, or investor commitments may outweigh the benefits of moving.
- Face-to-face interactions in centralized hubs remain crucial for deals, despite technological advances.
- The success of startups in hubs is due to a deep, specialized understanding of the business.
Five Founders
20 hours ago
- Steve Jobs introduced a design-centric culture to startups, influencing Apple's products and the broader tech industry with his relentless pursuit of 'insanely great' quality.
- TJ Rodgers exemplifies candid, pragmatic thinking in Silicon Valley, with writing that challenges outdated ideas and emphasizes free markets over government subsidies.
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin collaborated to create Google, proving that hiring the best engineers and focusing on measurable success can outperform traditional business models.
- Paul Buchheit contributed to Gmail, AdSense, and Google's 'Don't be evil' mantra, and advocates for making a small number of users love you rather than many just liking you.
- Sam Altman stands out for his force of will and strategic ambition, often referenced by Paul Graham for advice on strategy and ambition in startups.
A Local Revolution?
20 hours ago
- Startups may represent a new economic phase similar to the Industrial Revolution, significantly boosting productivity.
- Startups, like the movie business, flourish only in specialized centers such as Silicon Valley, not spreading widely.
- The spread of startups is slower than the Industrial Revolution, partly because they are a social phenomenon tied to communities of expertise.
- Unlike railroads or power grids, there is no market need driving startups to spread to every region.
- Existing startup hubs like Silicon Valley attract startups, making it harder to establish new hubs deliberately.
- Government policies are unlikely to successfully create a startup hub; random factors and existing hubs' pull dominate.
- A potential shortcut for creating a startup hub is paying startups to relocate, but governments lack the will or skill.
Why Startup Hubs Work
20 hours ago
- Startups naturally fail; the key question is what saves them in places like Silicon Valley, which acts as an antidote to the default failure.
- The antidote has two components: an environment where startups are the norm and chance meetings with helpful people, both driven by the density of startup people.
- A startup-friendly environment makes starting a company feel normal and encourages ambition, even for those who might not succeed.
- Chance meetings, like Sean Parker meeting Facebook founders, provide unexpected critical help that can compensate for typical startup disasters.
- Density of startup people enables chance meetings, diverse expertise matching, and the formation of social norms that promote optimism and ambition.
- Optimism is a distinctive trait of Silicon Valley, contrasting with other prosperous regions.
Premium: The Silicon Valley Bubble (Part 2)
20 hours ago
- OpenAI lost $21 billion in 2025, spending $34 billion to generate only $13.07 billion in revenue.
- SoftBank contributed $867 million (6.6%) of OpenAI's revenue, likely inflating figures without proportional costs.
- The author argues Silicon Valley is a bubble, with no rational justification for such extreme burn rates.
- Silicon Valley has been captured by people who haven't built real things, relying on hype and fear-mongering rather than meritocracy.
- AI companies should treat their products like any other consumer goods, taking responsibility for harms instead of claiming inevitability.
- Engaging with AI hype forces ignoring present reality and accepting vague promises, making critics into supplicants.
- The AI bubble promises infinite growth to everyone but deforms industry incentives and erodes guardrails against reckless exuberance.
Cargo Culture
20 hours ago
- The tech industry, especially AI, operates as a cargo cult, mimicking past successes without understanding why they worked.
- AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic burn massive amounts of money with no clear path to profitability, relying on hype and investor faith.
- Venture capital has shifted from funding innovation to funding hype, with most money going to late-stage deals and AI companies that simply funnel cash to hyperscalers.
- The AI bubble is sustained by symbolic thinking—comparing losses to past bubbles or using annualized revenue to obscure true financial health.
- Silicon Valley executives, lacking real technical expertise, adopt 'founder mode' and other rituals without substance, leading to a stagnation of innovation.
- The Rot-Com Bubble describes how big tech has run out of ideas, leading to hyper-monetization and a decline in user experience.
- AI's popularity is driven by discounted access and social pressure, not actual value, and charging real costs causes customer backlash.
- The media and business journalism often amplify AI hype without scrutiny, acting as part of the cargo cult.
Never Enough
7 days ago
- Silicon Valley has shifted from celebrating rebels to a culture driven by fear of falling behind.
- A couple earning $550,000 annually feels inadequate, with one partner sacrificing parenting to become the top AI user at work.
- A founder uses AI to analyze her first dates for engagement and empathy, avoiding personal reflection.
- Technology is consuming life rather than enhancing it, as people give machines more judgment and time.
- The article suggests that slowing down and finding peace, not just getting ahead, may be the true need.

Hasty Briefsbeta

silicon valley

How to Be Silicon Valley

Why to Move to a Startup Hub

Five Founders

A Local Revolution?

Why Startup Hubs Work

Premium: The Silicon Valley Bubble (Part 2)

Cargo Culture

Never Enough