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The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust against various forms of damage to the network. I see Silicon Valley as a similar type of system. It is
by 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust against various forms of damage to the network. I see Silicon Valley as a similar type of system. It is not difficult to look back 40 years and see how at each inflection point, The Valley's constituent technologies, and the companies they spawned, led the rest of the world and scaled The Valley up.
- In the 1980s, Silicon Valley's Intel lost it's dominance in DRAM production to Japan. The economic impact was dire, and yet
- In the early 1990s, networking and workstations emerged from the likes of SUN and Cisco. They carried through until global competition stole their wind, and it was on to
- The late 90s and the .COM boom. And what a boom it was, Amazon, Google, followed by another death knell for myriad .COM corpses. Promptly engendering
- The 2000s birth of social media. MySpace faltered, then LinkedIn, then Facebook, then Twitter, came up and are still going strong on the foundation of
- 2010s open source platforms. Still mind-blowing: At one point WhatsApp had 40 software engineers and 400,000,000 users. At 3 years old.
I've heard about the exodus from California, usually citing so many thousands or 10s of thousands of people leaving. But looking a the net population changes, Santa Clara County is down 5,000 from 2018-2019. Alameda, San Mateo, San Francisco are all up.
Silicon Valley is a system that regenerates from one generation to the next, and so far, always bigger and more influential than the last.
- bitwize 6y agoSilicon Valley survives because VCs with more money than they know what to do with like the local weather. It's like Hollywood, which has had many boom and bust cycles of its own, yet it's always there because the people with the money decide to stay, so that's where you go if you want your film project financed.
- jbay808 6y agoDo the VCs tend to insist that the projects they fund are also located in the Valley? If so, why?
- tolbish 6y agoIt's not so much insisting as it is the path of least resistance.
- bitwize 6y agoIt's just that things tend to happen much more quickly, easily, and serendipitously if you live in the VCs' neighborhood. It's the same thing as why people advocate for being physically in the office, for face-to-face meetings and "passing in the hall" moments.
- tick_tock_tick 6y agoLots of them do or at-least require the project to move here. It's not for a nefarious reason but rather to help them. If they need advice, more engineers, a CTO, some PR people, etc the VC has all their connections here so bringing the project here is more feasible.
- stainforth 6y agoVCs have some set percentage invested in commercial and residential real estate there as well as a hedge
- cvhashim 6y agoHollywood is an artificial monopoly. I just hope with the recent surge of more "indiehackers" and bootstrapped businesses, it means VCs arent held up as arbitrary gatekeepers to capital and starting a startup.
- gamblor956 6y agoHollywood is not a monopoly. There are thriving movie industries in other countries and even with the US (see NY and Georgia, for example). Hollywood is simply the biggest and most successful of the movie industry centers. There is also an entire system of independent film studios and theaters in the US.
- ryandrake 6y agoI think I read on HN a while back that Silicon Valley is mostly a gigantic wealth transfer from investors to landlords by way of tech workers.
- dcolkitt 6y agoThe difference between all those eras and today is the bandwidth of a home Internet connection. Virtually everywhere in America, and much of the world, now has cheap access to 100+ mbps connections. Even during the 2008 recession, ultra-clear high-definition video conferencing wasn't possible. Add on top that the Covid quarantine has completely removed all social stigma or weirdness around remote work. You have a never before seen threat to high-cost/high-productivity powerhouse metros like SF, NYC and DC.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dan-robertson 6y agoI’m curious to know whether it is your definition of “virtually everywhere” or “cheap” that is very broad?
- filoleg 6y agoYeah, I definitely disagree that it is "virtually everywhere" or "cheap", but I definitely agree with the parent's overall point that it is way more ubiquitous these days by orders of magnitude. To the point where it enables a lot of things that were pretty much impossible back then, both in technical aspects and societal/job market aspects.
- inglor_cz 6y agoMaybe he is writing from the near future where Starlink is fully operational :-) Joking aside, globally available broadband from space would be a huge game changer.
- dcolkitt 6y ago85% of Americans have access to 250 mbps broadband in their local market.[1] Prices for Internet only packages are typically cheap in the US. For example I pay $40 a month for 100 mbps (and usually get 125+ mbps). This price is about typical for the major providers.[2] [1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-50A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-50A1.pdf [2] https://www.allconnect.com/blog/cost-of-high-speed-internet https://www.allconnect.com/blog/cost-of-high-speed-internet
- nostromo 6y agoIt’s hard to look at your list and be impressed with Silicon Valley since around 2010. The 2010s seem to be a decade where existing giants scaled, without any fundamentally new technological developments.
- Gibbon1 6y agoWhat makes me despondent is back in the 1970's 1980's much of the commercial work in the valley was about creating new technologies to empower people. Since 2010 it seems it's now mostly about exploiting people. 1975: National Semi, our new audio amp allows people to buy cheap high quality stereo's. 2010: Ubber, our app that ratfucks the taxi industry.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoOr Uber: the business that allows me to drastically reduce the probability of me being scammed by a taxi driver, as well as increase the quality of the cars themselves Source: my numerous experiences with taxis in multiple cities in the US and around the world before and after Uber
- arcticbull 6y agoOr Uber: A failed Randian play to use VC money to squelch out every independent taxi company in the United States and the world by subsidizing rides to well below their cost. To the tune of $1B per quarter. I suspect they thought they could drive them all out of business and then take over and raise prices. Unlike their patchwork of independent competitors, Uber didn't have to cover the cost of a ride from fares. I guess now they deliver lunch so that's pretty cool. I for one look forward to the movie.
- Gibbon1 6y agoIf it was a physical product it would be considered dumping and be illegal. Not to mention Uber and Lift don't pay for the roads their businesses depend on. And then Uber and Lift have dramatically increased congestion in a lot of cities. Which negatively impacts people that live in those cities. Finally both Uber and Lift are applying political pressure to eliminate mass transit.
- Turing_Machine 6y agoDetroit was the Silicon Valley of its day (roughly from 1900 to 1960 or 1970). Center of the tech universe. Cranking out modern wonders on a seemingly weekly basis. Awash in cash. Look at it now. Things go on as before, until suddenly they can't.
- mr_overalls 6y agoCertainly no city is recession-proof, but Detroit _was_ almost totally invested in a single economic industry: car manufacturing. Silicon Valley's emphasis - digital computing devices and software - fuels multiple economic sectors. It seems far more diversified than the auto industry.
- _sillymarketing 6y agoBut tech can also pick up and leave much faster and required less reason to stay clustered (factories, transporting materials, supply chain etc). Add in the fact the world in general turns faster, I don't think SV can keep the tech industry for how long Auto Manufacturing remained in the Mid-West.
- Apocryphon 6y agoDoesn't SV also have a significant chunk of the biotech industry? Even if software departs doesn't mean other forms of high-tech, with talent and research funneled in by Stanford, Berkeley, etc. will follow suit.
- inglor_cz 6y ago"the exodus from California" AFAIK California tends to bleed wealthy taxpayers, not population as a whole.
- dweekly 6y agoData indicate the opposite, that is the wealthy who can afford to stay and the poor who cannot afford to live here: https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2020/01/not-the-golden-state-anymore-middle-and-low-income-people-leaving-california/ https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2020/01/not-the-gol...
- inglor_cz 6y agoI wonder how the tax burden is distributed. I know next to nothing about California system, but here in Europe it is typical that financial investment gains etc. fall into a low bracket (usually 10-20 pct), while highly paid professional employees pay through the nose, easily more than 50 pct of their gross wages.
- burlesona 6y agoTaxes are not the problem, the astronomical cost of housing is. The problem is arguably that property taxes are comically low, and thus there is no penalty for the older anti-growth population that has worked so hard to pull the ladder up behind them, and instead they become rich by destroying the poor and leeching off the tech industry via its workers rents.
- kaikai 6y agoIt's the same in the US.
- mrep 6y agoI did the math on my taxes somewhat recently and between federal income taxes, social security, and medicare mine was about 27% on 221k income as a single person with no kids in washington state and I'm including the employer payroll costs and taxes as part of that because it's basically the same thing as income taxes. Long term cap gains is 15-23%. For California, you'd probably add like 10% to both income tax and cap gains as it is a high income tax state whereas washington has no income tax.
- 908B64B197 6y agoSV is also great for the non-compete (it's a California thing but shines especially bright in the Valley), formal mentoring with a strong presence from Stanford and incubators like YC and informal mentoring where the younger generations are inspired by what was built by the previous ones. And the lack of stigma for failing plus having a world class city right at the door. Very few places can replicate that.
- cblconfederate 6y agowasnt whatsapp built on 2000s technology (in fact much older, Erlang)? The 2010s were a net negative to technology, it's big corps sucking up everything to their "cloud" monopolies, and the deterioration is very visible in lots of older products (whatsapp would now need 4000 growth hackers and a gazillion dollars in AWS credits to boot). AI is keeping the hopes up though