4 ms·
Not every time, but much of the time, I try to talk about what I do with a New Yorker (most East Coasters, actually), they start by bringing a lot of stop energ
by wooster 16y ago
Not every time, but much of the time, I try to talk about what I do with a New Yorker (most East Coasters, actually), they start by bringing a lot of stop energy[0]. They'll say something like "Why are you doing that when there's already X?"[1], "That'll never work because of Y"[2], "Why did you quit your job at Z?", "Why don't you go work at ABC Investments, Hedge Funds, and Worldwide Arbitrage, Inc?"[3], etc.
It's frustrating and tiring to have to run through a huge body of what should be background knowledge just to have a conversation with someone about what I'm doing.
In the Bay Area, I generally don't have to deal with:
- Huge amounts of stop energy.
- Myopic views about which industries/products/companies/places[4] matter.
- Support of entrenched monopolies or ideas.
- Excessive amounts of negativism.
For example, when the iPhone came out, people in Silicon Valley were really excited. Meanwhile, talking to people in New York, it was almost a non-event; all I heard from them was why it would never matter because the Blackberry was so freaking awesome.
[0] http://www.userland.com/whatIsStopEnergy http://www.userland.com/whatIsStopEnergy
[1] Why are you going to work for Apple? Nobody uses Macs and Microsoft is a much bigger tech company.
[2] Nobody here uses iPhones, you'd better get yourself a Blackberry!
[3] The future is bundling mortgage securities!
[4] If you can't find it in Manhattan, it can't be found! Best city in the world!
- api 16y ago[0] is awesome, thanks. I encounter a lot of stop energy, and unfortunately sometimes it works on me. I need to just ignore it.
- haseman 16y agoI'm not sure a little stop energy is such a bad thing. I'd say take their views with some salt...but Silicon Valley tends to be an echo-chamber. What's important in the valley isn't always important everywhere else. Unless your business/venture/idea is only targeted at people in the Bay Area, it pays to keep a little attention elsewhere.
- sabat 16y agoI think the iPhone alone proves that wrong.
- sandipc 16y agoI really don't think the initial iPhone announcement was a "non-event" anywhere in the US, and especially in New York...
- wooster 16y agoSure, but I and most of my friends and colleagues spend all day every day thinking about and working on things which could be described as "the future". The things I think are important are often things I think are going to be important 3 or more years down the road, and that's why I'm working on them. That potential may not be realized, but I can derive absolutely no value from talking about them with someone who refuses to look beyond the here and now.
- haseman 16y agoAn imagined future with no grounding in the present is as useful as an oil rig on a hot air balloon. ;-) Keep inventing the future...but ignore the Luddites at your own peril.
- starkfist 16y agoFor example, when the iPhone came out, ... in New York, it was almost a non-event; Really? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iSE0bBgUsQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iSE0bBgUsQ
- wooster 16y agoYes, really. At that point the NY tech scene still considered iPhones to be toys.
- sandipc 16y agoI think a lot of people (and businesses) don't consider them to be toys anymore because, in recent iOS updates (2.0/3.0+) Apple has started to fully embrace some Blackberry/WinMo features -- remote wipe, exchange support, etc. Also, who really bought the first gen iPhone? The original iPhone did well, but the iPhone wasn't a blockbuster hit until the 3G/2.0 came out with the App Store and other features that had led a lot of critics to dismiss the original phone a year before that.
- jreposa 16y agoHaving lived in the north east my entire life, I completely agree. Although, I built up a resistance to it after a while. It has definitely hurt some relationships in the past. But, can this attitude be said for lots of cities?
- brown9-2 16y agoDo you really find that the types of responses you get can be stereotyped by the person's location? I just have a hard time believing that qualities like this can be chalked up to location and certain parts of the country, but perhaps I'm naive (and I have no experience living on the west coast).
- wooster 16y agoYes. It's a generalization, so there are always exceptions, but in general east coasters are much less accepting of things and ideas outside the norm than are west coasters.
- kwamenum86 16y agoYou should have good responses to questions loaded with "stop energy" anyways.
- wooster 16y agoIt makes for extremely tedious conversation. These aren't investors or customers I'm talking to.