Why I am Thankful for Silicon Valley

26 Nov 2022

Silicon Valley is a set of values and behaviors optimized around scaling new ideas via company creation. The name references its origin in the Bay Area, but Silicon Valley has now spread far beyond any one geography, becoming more of a culture than a physical location.

Silicon Valley places unusual weight on ideas, ambition, and unique insight, over traditional values like pedigree and money - to the point of eschewing Bachelor’s degrees and making fun of MBAs. Unlike traditional high status careers like consulting and investment banking, where you are all but required to go to a “target school” to even be considered, and where your path up the ladder is tightly controlled by those ahead of you - the Valley cares instead only about your ambition and the worthiness of your ideas.

Silicon Valley believes that, if you are sufficiently talented and driven, you can grow into nearly any opportunity, regardless of age or formal training. The best minds and leaders of the older generation spend their time shepherding the new generation, facilitating this accelerated growth rate. They see the new generation not as fledglings that owe them something or need to ‘pay their dues’, but as the expert on what’s next. Social capital is driven by having a great picker - the coolest thing you can do is be the first person to find the next Zuck or Jobs. Industries like academia reinforce exclusivity and gate keep with complex, technical jargon that is inaccessible to most. In contrast, the Valley’s most celebrated authors write with conciseness and clarity. The goal is efficient information transfer and the focus is on unique ideas made accessible to nearly anyone, not intellectual self-indulgence or gate keeping.

Most of the world clings to the past. Silicon Valley is predicated on change and makes its money on correctly predicting its evolution. Social status is driven by achievement, growth, and creating this future. In pursuit of the next, the Valley funds ideas the experts never would. I have raised nearly sixty million dollars to build dog aging drugs. Others have raised similar sums to build new types of homes, factories, cryopreservation and other ideas that, if successful, will materially impact our world. While any and perhaps all of these ideas may fail, they are undoubtedly worthy problems that are unlikely to have gotten a shot anywhere else.

And if you tackle a worthy problem and fail (as you are likely to when doing something hard), the Valley doesn’t hold it against you. The economic incentives are insulated to default failure and driven by outlier success. Failure breeds respect, as failure means you are more likely to produce an outlier success the next time around. In other industries, you are incentivized to move forward conservatively to ensure you always stay in the green. In the Valley, you are pushed - perhaps, if anything, too hard - to go for the outlier outcomes and outlier impact.

There is a lot of - rightful - frustration over the Valley’s biases. The white, Stanford educated male has many wheels greased. My primary frustration for these biases is their inefficiency - unnecessary boulders and trap doors on an already challenging journey towards an undoubtedly worthy endpoint. I want a Valley where I’m not almost always pitching a room of men, where perfection isn’t expected of female founders while less competent men handshake their way into capital and connections. I want a Valley where the default is to lean into gnarly technical problems and where vision outpaces fear.

Just as when scaling an organization, it is important to recognize and react to the bad. But it is just as important to recognize that the Valley is already so much more open minded than many other industries. While the unorthodox founder is undoubtedly forced down a harder path - something I can unfortunately speak to first hand - the path exists. And as more people traverse it, the path becomes more accessible for the next.

The Valley as it is today is flawed, yet wholly magical. It has given me and so many more opportunities improbable anywhere else. I am thankful for the people before me who built this culture, and hope to help it continue to grow and improve for the next 100 years.