5 ms·

Silicon Valley is Hollywood for Startups

25 points by g0atbutt 16y ago

rheide 16y ago
Indeed, things that are not possible anywhere else seem to be possible in Silicon Valley. Having visited there myself I also found it a unique and interesting place. Having said that, the real world is not Silicon Valley. And even in Hollywood there's a lot of famous actors who only gained fame for one role and then disappeared, never to be seen again. I wonder if IT is similar in that way as well.
zeemonkee 16y ago
- crushing conformity ? check. - love of me-too and sequels ? check. - living off the glory days of the past ? check. - patronage and network trump talent and originality ? check. - overwhelming sense of self-importance ? check. - lack of common sense economics ? check. Maybe Silicon Valley is Hollywood for startups after all.
- j_baker 16y ago
  - Lots of creativity? Check. - A ton of talent available to those that know how to find it and care for it? Check. - A vibrant hacker community like nowhere else? Check. - A vibrant entrepreneurial community like nowhere else? Check. Seriously, did Silicon Valley step on your mother's grave or something? You sound like Oscar Wilde's definition of "cynic": someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
  - zeemonkee 16y ago
    > Seriously, did Silicon Valley step on your mother's grave or something? You sound like Oscar Wilde's definition of "cynic": someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Not bad going, two ad-hominems and not a single rebuttal of my arguments. Oh, and my mother is alive and well, thank you.
    - j_baker 16y ago
      You're right, I'm not saying that these don't happen. I'm saying that you're focusing on all the things that are wrong with the valley and ignoring all the good things about it. That's no better than being one of the people who pick out all the good and ignore the bad. Silicon Valley is a good place to live and work. Is it overhyped? Sure. But that by itself doesn't make it a bad place.
- edw519 16y ago
  Nice post, zeemonkey. A few more for your list: - substance trumped by image ? check. - 99% of players only one level deep ? check. - disdain for any other industry ? check. - being notorious better than being unknown ? check. - "where" more important than "what" ? check. - lack of understanding of the real world ? check. - religious worship of youth ? check.
- iamelgringo 16y ago
  - crushing conformity ? check. Really? Conformity is the last thing I think of in this town. Have you been to San Francisco? - love of me-too and sequels ? check. Google, Facebook, sequels. LinkedIn, sequel. Check. Zynga, Netflix, Pandora, Yelp, YouTube, PayPal... not so much. Iteration and competition on business plan and product is good business. How many people are there making scads of money off of selling cereal? How many types of cars are there? How many banks? How many types of shoes? Are these "me too" businesses? Sure. But, the "me too" of Silicon Valley doesn't succeed unless the follow on company creates significant value over and above what the previous company did. (Google created a ton more value than Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, etc..) - living off the glory days of the past ? check. Really? I have 2,500 members at Hackers & Founders that are focused on being the next thing, and are quite bored with the "glory days" of Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc... There's tons of innovation happening. You just don't read about it all. - patronage and network trump talent and originality ? check. False. You don't make it in this town unless you can produce. No one cares where you went to school or who your daddy is. I have an Associates Degree in Nursing from a community college in the suburbs of Minneapolis, and I run the largest network of startup geeks in the Valley. - overwhelming sense of self-importance ? check. The market capitalization of all the companies within 1 mile of highway 101 between San Francisco and San Jose is $500 Billon. The San Francisco Bay area is one of the 20 largest economies in the world. So, yeah. It's kind of important. Self-important? Maybe. - lack of common sense economics ? check. Last I checked, Hollywood and Silicon Valley weren't hurting in the money making department. How is that a lack of common sense economics? Now, I will grant you that both economies operate on economies of scale. And, that many company's business models only work at massive scale. But, there's sufficient risk capital to support that in both towns. Maybe Silicon Valley is Hollywood for startups after all.
g0atbutt 16y ago
I think Robbie does a great job acknowledging that you can make it in other cities, while pointing out that there is something special about the valley.
Synthetase 16y ago
The author's premise is flawed. I would argue that New York and DC are extremely important as well. Centers of finance and government? Beijing and Shanghai may soon become quite influential so I would hold off on making judgments. They come off as self-congratulatory and insular.
j_baker 16y ago
On the plus side, I now have one incentive to become a manager: the ability to say "You'll never work in this town again!" when I fire someone. Oh well, I'll just have to bide my time until then demanding a bigger trailer.
- ardit33 16y ago
  Oh, it works both ways. I have seen more managers not getting hired, because they ex-employees would not recommend them. Bad managers usually leave a trail of bad rep, and at some points it catches up with them (usually when employers move on and spread out to other companies).
rflrob 16y ago
> What other place can you get a more dramatic scene when you finally tell your parents: “Mom, Dad: I’ve decided to quit school & work, and move to hollywood to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming an actor”. Change Hollywood with “Chicago, New York, London, Tokyo, Paris” and it just doesn’t have the same effect. I would argue that New York does have nearly the same cachet for actors as Hollywood. Just because you're going to become an actor doesn't mean you're going to do film or TV. Chicago's Second City has also helped develop the careers of lots of famous comedians. (I know London has a thriving theater scene as well, but can any Brits comment on whether going to London to become an actor is a "thing" in the UK?) What this metaphor might mean for startups is that there may be room for another startup hub or two, although with a different focus from Silicon Valley (perhaps non-web?), but probably not more than one or two.
- barry-cotter 16y ago
  but can any Brits comment on whether going to London to become an actor is a "thing" in the UK? I'm Irish, not a Brit, but if you want to do more or less anything seriously, at a top level, you head to London. This sucking vortex of a Queen City was attracting about 10% of every generation to it in the 1850s. Every other city in the British Isles is an also ran, whether you are looking at culture, politics, finance... the list goes on.
  - zeemonkee 16y ago
    I agree, it's one of those things that really hurts the UK as a whole - and it's much worse than the 1850s, when you had much stronger regional economies (think Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow....) It hurts the South-East because it puts the infrastructure under enormous strain and property prices beyond the reach of mere mortals, while draining the rest of the UK of its talented young. This is one thing I think the Germans do right - a much more culturally, economically and politically balanced nation (even taking the East-West divide into account).
    - barry-cotter 16y ago
      I agree, it's one of those things that really hurts the UK as a whole I dunno, the agglomeration/network effects could easily enough make up for that, and people can leave London once it's obvious they're not going to make it, having built up their human capital faster than they could have anywhere else, and being able to command London salaries on provincial living costs. It hurts the South-East because it puts the infrastructure under enormous strain and property prices beyond the reach of mere mortals, while draining the rest of the UK of its talented young. If they wanted to make housing affordable, whether rented or to own they could get rid of the green belt, or encourage much denser housing. The infrastructure problems could be solved by application of sufficient money and compulsory purchase, though one would need to massively streamline the current procedures on that, and on planning. If China can build subways with stations that open in fields, so could London. As to the talented young, they speak English, if they weren't going to London it's very likely they'd be going to the States. This is one thing I think the Germans do right - a much more culturally, economically and politically balanced nation Never a matter of policy. Germany was the belated nation and it's multiple centres are a consequence of late unification and being split in half and made more federal in power structure by the conquerors. (I exaggerate the German lack of agency in the choice of West German state structure)
waterlesscloud 16y ago
So what's the silicon valley equivalent of American Film Market? AFM is where all the lesser films get sold to distributors around the world, in a process that's very focused on commercial value. In the boom times, producers could famously sell rights to a film that existed as nothing more than a mocked-up poster. Wait...maybe y-combinator is afm?
alexophile 16y ago
>I watched Social Network for the second time today, and it got me thinking. Entrepreneurs are no different than struggling actors. Didn't we already collectively agree that the events depicted in the Social Network were more Hollywood than Silicon Valley? Not that I totally disagree with the comparison, I've made it myself as recently as yesterday, but it's not exactly a bad thing. There was a time when Hollywood was making a lot of good films. But those films brought in money, and money brought in vanity and all that other nastiness. There's certainly plenty of money bouncing around SV, but the fame is a bit more self-contained. If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to tell all her friends about it. If the worst thing you can say about the valley is that everybody there wants to build something great and is willing to risk a lot to make an effort at it, that sounds like a fantastic environment.
- alexophile 16y ago
  Update: I asked some people in my office if they've heard of Mark Zuckerberg - 100% had and could identify him as 'the facebook guy.' Same question with Sergey Brin and Larry Page - crickets.
- muhfuhkuh 16y ago
  "If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to tell all her friends about it." Yeah, but Fred Wilson is the Silicon Valley equivalent of a Harvey Weinstein. And, while I'm sure some people know who the Weinsteins are, they're not as famous as, say, Tom Hanks. Ask your random sample who Steve Jobs is. Then, you'll get some traction. He would be the SV equivalent of Stephen Spielberg. Or, perhaps Bill Gates or Michael Dell, the respective George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis equivalents the tech world.
  - alexophile 16y ago
    Tom Hanks is a talented actor that went on to produce/direct - I think a very fair comparison would be someone like Paul Buchheit. I'm not going to go around asking, but I think it's safe to assume my sample would have no idea who he is. That being said, the point I was trying to make is that you can become very successful in SV and have nobody outside of the tech community know your name - your product is your product. In Hollywood, your product is you, success is, by definition, corellated with fame.
ziadbc 16y ago
Hollywood controls the movie and TV distribution, so if you don't play their game, good luck getting on TV or in the theaters. In Silicon Valley however, you can still win without playing the insular game, and paradoxically it might end up making you more successful. I was always interested in startups because it seemed a path to 'doing your own thing' and not being beholden to 'the man.' It's funny that people have now come to think of it in the complete opposite way.
orky56 16y ago
I think the comparison can go much further. If you want to bootstrap, then the high rent and other issues make the valley less attractive. If you want to make a low-budget indie flick, you are better off with no-name actors and emphasize the artistic qualities. So essentially, this comparison is not as patronizing as the article suggests. Rather it exposes some of the flaws. Let's just hope the valley doesn't get as full of themselves as Hollywood does and misses the warning signs when things start to change.
rokhayakebe 16y ago
Actually it is different. Using your analogy the actor is the programmer. Most of the time in Hollywood the actor matters more than the product. Also as an actor you are trying to get a part in someone else's product. So you need to be where the product owner is. As a programmer, you own the product. Noone needs to know you, and you product could be very famous without anyone knowing you. As an example take the movie SALT. It is quite famous. I know the actors. I do not know the name of the producer or writer. That would be the programmer. My point is, programmers do not need SV as much as actors need HW. Programmers are writers, and producers. You can produce a movie in your basement, and distribute it on Youtube for free. If enough people like it, you can get funding to do a more polished, cinematic version of it.
- chipsy 16y ago
  The actors of SV are entrepreneurs and VCs. Think of all the "color" you get from TC and Gawker - it's basically identical to Hollywood paparazzi.
ChuckMcM 16y ago
Sorry but this was an old joke in 1995, the joke went: In Hollywood you can walk up to anyone and ask "How's your screenplay coming?" and they will look at you shocked and ask "How did you know I was working on a screenplay?" In Silicon Valley you can walk up to anyone and say "How's your business plan coming?" and they will look at you shocked and ask "How did you know I was working on a business plan?"

25 points by g0atbutt 16y ago

Indeed, things that are not possible anywhere else seem to be possible in Silicon Valley. Having visited there myself I also found it a unique and interesting place. Having said that, the real world is not Silicon Valley. And even in Hollywood there's a lot of famous actors who only gained fame for one role and then disappeared, never to be seen again. I wonder if IT is similar in that way as well.

zeemonkee 16y ago

- crushing conformity ? check. - love of me-too and sequels ? check. - living off the glory days of the past ? check. - patronage and network trump talent and originality ? check. - overwhelming sense of self-importance ? check. - lack of common sense economics ? check. Maybe Silicon Valley is Hollywood for startups after all.

j_baker 16y ago
- Lots of creativity? Check. - A ton of talent available to those that know how to find it and care for it? Check. - A vibrant hacker community like nowhere else? Check. - A vibrant entrepreneurial community like nowhere else? Check. Seriously, did Silicon Valley step on your mother's grave or something? You sound like Oscar Wilde's definition of "cynic": someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  > Seriously, did Silicon Valley step on your mother's grave or something? You sound like Oscar Wilde's definition of "cynic": someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Not bad going, two ad-hominems and not a single rebuttal of my arguments. Oh, and my mother is alive and well, thank you.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    You're right, I'm not saying that these don't happen. I'm saying that you're focusing on all the things that are wrong with the valley and ignoring all the good things about it. That's no better than being one of the people who pick out all the good and ignore the bad. Silicon Valley is a good place to live and work. Is it overhyped? Sure. But that by itself doesn't make it a bad place.
edw519 16y ago
Nice post, zeemonkey. A few more for your list: - substance trumped by image ? check. - 99% of players only one level deep ? check. - disdain for any other industry ? check. - being notorious better than being unknown ? check. - "where" more important than "what" ? check. - lack of understanding of the real world ? check. - religious worship of youth ? check.
iamelgringo 16y ago
- crushing conformity ? check. Really? Conformity is the last thing I think of in this town. Have you been to San Francisco? - love of me-too and sequels ? check. Google, Facebook, sequels. LinkedIn, sequel. Check. Zynga, Netflix, Pandora, Yelp, YouTube, PayPal... not so much. Iteration and competition on business plan and product is good business. How many people are there making scads of money off of selling cereal? How many types of cars are there? How many banks? How many types of shoes? Are these "me too" businesses? Sure. But, the "me too" of Silicon Valley doesn't succeed unless the follow on company creates significant value over and above what the previous company did. (Google created a ton more value than Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, etc..) - living off the glory days of the past ? check. Really? I have 2,500 members at Hackers & Founders that are focused on being the next thing, and are quite bored with the "glory days" of Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc... There's tons of innovation happening. You just don't read about it all. - patronage and network trump talent and originality ? check. False. You don't make it in this town unless you can produce. No one cares where you went to school or who your daddy is. I have an Associates Degree in Nursing from a community college in the suburbs of Minneapolis, and I run the largest network of startup geeks in the Valley. - overwhelming sense of self-importance ? check. The market capitalization of all the companies within 1 mile of highway 101 between San Francisco and San Jose is $500 Billon. The San Francisco Bay area is one of the 20 largest economies in the world. So, yeah. It's kind of important. Self-important? Maybe. - lack of common sense economics ? check. Last I checked, Hollywood and Silicon Valley weren't hurting in the money making department. How is that a lack of common sense economics? Now, I will grant you that both economies operate on economies of scale. And, that many company's business models only work at massive scale. But, there's sufficient risk capital to support that in both towns. Maybe Silicon Valley is Hollywood for startups after all.

g0atbutt 16y ago

I think Robbie does a great job acknowledging that you can make it in other cities, while pointing out that there is something special about the valley.

Synthetase 16y ago

The author's premise is flawed. I would argue that New York and DC are extremely important as well. Centers of finance and government? Beijing and Shanghai may soon become quite influential so I would hold off on making judgments. They come off as self-congratulatory and insular.

j_baker 16y ago

On the plus side, I now have one incentive to become a manager: the ability to say "You'll never work in this town again!" when I fire someone. Oh well, I'll just have to bide my time until then demanding a bigger trailer.

ardit33 16y ago
Oh, it works both ways. I have seen more managers not getting hired, because they ex-employees would not recommend them. Bad managers usually leave a trail of bad rep, and at some points it catches up with them (usually when employers move on and spread out to other companies).

rflrob 16y ago

> What other place can you get a more dramatic scene when you finally tell your parents: “Mom, Dad: I’ve decided to quit school & work, and move to hollywood to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming an actor”. Change Hollywood with “Chicago, New York, London, Tokyo, Paris” and it just doesn’t have the same effect. I would argue that New York does have nearly the same cachet for actors as Hollywood. Just because you're going to become an actor doesn't mean you're going to do film or TV. Chicago's Second City has also helped develop the careers of lots of famous comedians. (I know London has a thriving theater scene as well, but can any Brits comment on whether going to London to become an actor is a "thing" in the UK?) What this metaphor might mean for startups is that there may be room for another startup hub or two, although with a different focus from Silicon Valley (perhaps non-web?), but probably not more than one or two.

barry-cotter 16y ago
but can any Brits comment on whether going to London to become an actor is a "thing" in the UK? I'm Irish, not a Brit, but if you want to do more or less anything seriously, at a top level, you head to London. This sucking vortex of a Queen City was attracting about 10% of every generation to it in the 1850s. Every other city in the British Isles is an also ran, whether you are looking at culture, politics, finance... the list goes on.
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  I agree, it's one of those things that really hurts the UK as a whole - and it's much worse than the 1850s, when you had much stronger regional economies (think Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow....) It hurts the South-East because it puts the infrastructure under enormous strain and property prices beyond the reach of mere mortals, while draining the rest of the UK of its talented young. This is one thing I think the Germans do right - a much more culturally, economically and politically balanced nation (even taking the East-West divide into account).
  - barry-cotter 16y ago
    I agree, it's one of those things that really hurts the UK as a whole I dunno, the agglomeration/network effects could easily enough make up for that, and people can leave London once it's obvious they're not going to make it, having built up their human capital faster than they could have anywhere else, and being able to command London salaries on provincial living costs. It hurts the South-East because it puts the infrastructure under enormous strain and property prices beyond the reach of mere mortals, while draining the rest of the UK of its talented young. If they wanted to make housing affordable, whether rented or to own they could get rid of the green belt, or encourage much denser housing. The infrastructure problems could be solved by application of sufficient money and compulsory purchase, though one would need to massively streamline the current procedures on that, and on planning. If China can build subways with stations that open in fields, so could London. As to the talented young, they speak English, if they weren't going to London it's very likely they'd be going to the States. This is one thing I think the Germans do right - a much more culturally, economically and politically balanced nation Never a matter of policy. Germany was the belated nation and it's multiple centres are a consequence of late unification and being split in half and made more federal in power structure by the conquerors. (I exaggerate the German lack of agency in the choice of West German state structure)

waterlesscloud 16y ago

So what's the silicon valley equivalent of American Film Market? AFM is where all the lesser films get sold to distributors around the world, in a process that's very focused on commercial value. In the boom times, producers could famously sell rights to a film that existed as nothing more than a mocked-up poster. Wait...maybe y-combinator is afm?

alexophile 16y ago

>I watched Social Network for the second time today, and it got me thinking. Entrepreneurs are no different than struggling actors. Didn't we already collectively agree that the events depicted in the Social Network were more Hollywood than Silicon Valley? Not that I totally disagree with the comparison, I've made it myself as recently as yesterday, but it's not exactly a bad thing. There was a time when Hollywood was making a lot of good films. But those films brought in money, and money brought in vanity and all that other nastiness. There's certainly plenty of money bouncing around SV, but the fame is a bit more self-contained. If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to tell all her friends about it. If the worst thing you can say about the valley is that everybody there wants to build something great and is willing to risk a lot to make an effort at it, that sounds like a fantastic environment.

alexophile 16y ago
Update: I asked some people in my office if they've heard of Mark Zuckerberg - 100% had and could identify him as 'the facebook guy.' Same question with Sergey Brin and Larry Page - crickets.
muhfuhkuh 16y ago
"If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to tell all her friends about it." Yeah, but Fred Wilson is the Silicon Valley equivalent of a Harvey Weinstein. And, while I'm sure some people know who the Weinsteins are, they're not as famous as, say, Tom Hanks. Ask your random sample who Steve Jobs is. Then, you'll get some traction. He would be the SV equivalent of Stephen Spielberg. Or, perhaps Bill Gates or Michael Dell, the respective George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis equivalents the tech world.
- alexophile 16y ago
  Tom Hanks is a talented actor that went on to produce/direct - I think a very fair comparison would be someone like Paul Buchheit. I'm not going to go around asking, but I think it's safe to assume my sample would have no idea who he is. That being said, the point I was trying to make is that you can become very successful in SV and have nobody outside of the tech community know your name - your product is your product. In Hollywood, your product is you, success is, by definition, corellated with fame.

ziadbc 16y ago

Hollywood controls the movie and TV distribution, so if you don't play their game, good luck getting on TV or in the theaters. In Silicon Valley however, you can still win without playing the insular game, and paradoxically it might end up making you more successful. I was always interested in startups because it seemed a path to 'doing your own thing' and not being beholden to 'the man.' It's funny that people have now come to think of it in the complete opposite way.

orky56 16y ago

I think the comparison can go much further. If you want to bootstrap, then the high rent and other issues make the valley less attractive. If you want to make a low-budget indie flick, you are better off with no-name actors and emphasize the artistic qualities. So essentially, this comparison is not as patronizing as the article suggests. Rather it exposes some of the flaws. Let's just hope the valley doesn't get as full of themselves as Hollywood does and misses the warning signs when things start to change.

rokhayakebe 16y ago

Actually it is different. Using your analogy the actor is the programmer. Most of the time in Hollywood the actor matters more than the product. Also as an actor you are trying to get a part in someone else's product. So you need to be where the product owner is. As a programmer, you own the product. Noone needs to know you, and you product could be very famous without anyone knowing you. As an example take the movie SALT. It is quite famous. I know the actors. I do not know the name of the producer or writer. That would be the programmer. My point is, programmers do not need SV as much as actors need HW. Programmers are writers, and producers. You can produce a movie in your basement, and distribute it on Youtube for free. If enough people like it, you can get funding to do a more polished, cinematic version of it.

chipsy 16y ago
The actors of SV are entrepreneurs and VCs. Think of all the "color" you get from TC and Gawker - it's basically identical to Hollywood paparazzi.

ChuckMcM 16y ago

Sorry but this was an old joke in 1995, the joke went: In Hollywood you can walk up to anyone and ask "How's your screenplay coming?" and they will look at you shocked and ask "How did you know I was working on a screenplay?" In Silicon Valley you can walk up to anyone and say "How's your business plan coming?" and they will look at you shocked and ask "How did you know I was working on a business plan?"