9 ms·

Ben Horowitz Explained

129 points by bhaumik 13y ago

ironchef 13y ago
"Ben is using his power and time (and trust me he is the only one doing this) to build and advocating and acting on the design and construction of an authentic network that facilitates participation and adoption of the culture." - I would suggest others are doing this; however, I think none are doing it AS WELL as Ben is these days. It's funny because people think Ben's cultural/rap thing is a shtick. I've worked around Ben a long time. It most definitely is not a shtick. It's like his love of bbq and the raiders....just part of who he is.
lhnz 13y ago
This is a beautiful post. I don't know these people personally but I've deep respect for those that understand inequality, and wish to pay it more than just lip service. They are completely correct. You can't just create separate clubs for new cultures entering the system, you have to help them to connect into the dominant networks and that means legitimising their own culture in the dominant one. This is one of the reasons I've found it so disgusting how the tech community reacts around the site RapGenius: there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture which seems to aggravate every single PR problem they have. I remember a couple of weeks ago seeing a few people turn their noses up at poetry.rapgenius.com (and other networks on the same platform) but I can't think of a better way to let both cultures cross-pollinate. >> Networks equal access to jobs, funds, and deal flow, and the networks that run silicon valley are Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Google, HP, Ebay, Facebook, Apple, and PayPal. Is anybody else genuinely annoyed that sites such as angel.co use these as legitimising signals of worthiness?
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture which seems to aggravate every single PR problem they have. Douchebag culture and black culture are radically different. First, there are several different black cultures: everything from upper-middle-class to working-class to poor African-American, plus several Afro-Caribbean cultures, plus a huge number of distinct African cultures. Douchebag culture (which is in vogue among the VC darlings, especially in the elite networks OP described) is a historically white phenomenon: popped collars, brogramming, saying shit like YOLO and WHPH ("work hard play hard"). Douchebag culture is a dominant culture in the Valley (not the only one) and we need outlets like Valleywag to remind everyone how ridiculous it is.
  - lhnz 13y ago
    >> Douchebag culture and black culture are radically different. You're talking about a bunch of white guys creating a rap site and telling me that they're not trying to channel black culture. If the stylings and bravado at RapGenius weren't related to culture from rap/hip-hop I'd be very surprised. In the past in the UK we used to have "Wigger" culture [0] and it actually was fairly similar... I don't think this anger has anything to do with being a douchebag. I've met people that dressed and spoke weirdly that have been perfectly nice people. I think that people recognise the style as douchebag because it's uncomfortable for them to see white people "acting black". [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigger
    - Ryanmf 13y ago
      Stop. >> You're talking about a bunch of white guys creating a rap site and telling me that they're not trying to channel black culture. Oh, they're trying alright. Said douchebags are roughly as representative of black culture as Ali G was. Though it would seem they're not in on the joke. There is no "channelling" going on. You can be a person of any color who appreciates and celebrates hip hop culture without reducing its participants to cardboard cut-outs.
      - lhnz 13y ago
        There's no joke here. And little harm being done. RapGenius is a well loved by its market. If you believe that how people dress and speak defines their worthiness as a human being (and it seems you do) then go along your own way. I do not.
        Ryanmf 13y ago
        This isn't complicated. There's a difference between identity and affectation. When your affectation conflates "acting black" (as if that's even a thing one can do) with "acting moronic", your affectation is intrinsically racist. And when you willfully adopt a racist affectation because despite being a Yale/Stanford Law grad you're apparently incapable of understanding how fucking offensive that is, I am not obligated to show you one single iota of respect. These guys don't represent anyone but themselves, and—of late—they're doing a poor job of it. (btw — I think Rap Genius is a great product. I hope its founders don't ruin it.)
- joncooper 13y ago
  I enjoyed the post. My take on the this is that tremendous amount of access politics in the Bay Area seem to revolve around where you went to school and what your pedigree is, and that since those are very highly correlated with the class you were born into, it ends up being emergently classist. Poor people mostly don't go to the schools that matriculate the players who participate in the traditional valley power scene. I don't buy that this scene is any more racist than the rest of the US, and probably would argue that it is less so. But in terms of class bias, I think considerably greater. And the low incidence of black and latino folks can be attributed significantly to their statistically-lower class distribution. As an anecdotal data point, I haven't met a lot of white people from lower-class backgrounds who are players in the Bay Area technology scene. Actually haven't met a lot of technology workers that are. This is in contrast to the environment when I worked in finance in NYC and London. I found that scene to be transparently racist and sexist, but there are very many powerful white dudes who started off poor and lower-class.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    "As an anecdotal data point, I haven't met a lot of white people from lower-class backgrounds who are players in the Bay Area technology scene." Hi!
    - look_lookatme 13y ago
      I think it's safe to say the conditions and environment that enabled your rise in SV were much different than what exists now.
      - argonaut 13y ago
        Yes. It's easier for people from lower class backgrounds to break into SV than it was 1-2 decades ago. College admissions' focus on social justice has only increased over the past few decades (% of low-income students at the very top universities has only gone up). The proliferation of angel money means that it is actually easier for you to get the connections necessary for VC. In the past, VC was an even tighter and more exclusive circle than it is today.
- dylandrop 13y ago
  >> there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture Sorry, but the hatred for RapGenius doesn't come from programmers hating black culture. It's from the founders being fake, and as you said, douchebags. They're three white Yale graduates trying way too hard and ultimately being inauthentic. That's what's off-putting -- saying things like "baller-sourced" [1] just is an obvious ploy, appropriating words to give themselves fake credentials and personalities as rap aficionados. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo (~1:30)
  - barry-cotter 13y ago
    If you have any evidence that their love of rap/hiphop is a front please share. I don't see how anybody who wasn't saturated in that culture would have even thought of rapgenius. If you dislike hiphop and its message, say so. If you have something stronger than a disapproval of white guys imbibing black culture, say so. Hiphop is art but the culture it promotes is far from healthy. Kids who can get into Yale are unlikely to be harmed by it but for the working class it's a negative; People would do better with boring bourgeois values.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  > I don't know these people personally but I've deep respect for those that understand inequality, and wish to pay it more than just lip service. That is how I found it. I started reading it because of a catchy title, then go into it and learned a bit more about the Valley culture. Personally I don't know much and am not usually interested in start-ups, but after being here for years, feels like I should know more so once in a while I would read stuff about it. Also this kind of reminded me of an older satirical post about the Valley and start-up culture -- "We'll Be Circling Back" by Harj Taggar http://paulgraham.com/circling.html http://paulgraham.com/circling.html
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  > there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture I love rap. Heck, I even do it myself (badly and in German though, so no links). I still can't stand baller "culture", and before you think that's just a while middle-class dude not checking his privilege, read this: > What really hurts me sometimes is that there’s not a lot of consciousness in their music. There could be a whole lot more. Rapping is communicating-it should be an instrument for our liberation. We don’t have time to talk about being players and hustlers and gangsters. We didn’t come off of the slave ships that way. We need to become proud Africans again and stop running around in Shirley Temple curls talkin’ ‘bout how we’re pimps and players. A lot of the symbols that are in rap records and videos are indications of decadent consumerism and in a very real sense, those gold chains, hundred-dollar sneakers and T-shirts with a designer’s name on it underline how much they’ve become enslaved by the consumer mentality in the United States-consumer slaves. -- Assata Shakur It's not respectful to support self-harm because "that's just how the culture is", it's simply not knowing any decent rap and having no comparison. Rap is infected with bullshit, IMHO exactly because it could and should be such a powerful thing. Conscious rap is potentially dangerous; talking about bling and bitches is not. As for rapgenius, compare the obsession with it on HN with the "who? stop spamming us with ads" reactions on slashdot: http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=rapgenius http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=rapgenius - Hilarious.
- hbags 13y ago
  "Is anybody else genuinely annoyed that sites such as angel.co use these as legitimising signals of worthiness?" Absolutely. AngelList is all about institutional brands, and that's kind of sad. Teams are summarized by where they studied and worked, not what they accomplished, or what people think of them. It always struck me as a lazy 'old boys club' method of filtering people and ideas.
heydenberk 13y ago
>> For so long hip hop culture has been the culture of poor people. The art of beta culture. An oddity that voices the raw emotion of the poor, and that glorifies the suboptimal traits that keeps poor people from mobilizing up the ladder in society. To outsiders, that’s all it is. But by using his voice and stage to elevate rap as a useful medium for informing business, it is creating a legitimacy in the business world for this culture and those that come from it. This is problematic and untrue. There is a great deal of sophistication and cultural consciousness in hip hop and it certainly has its share of successful businesspeople. Sean Combs (formerly Puff Daddy), Jay-Z and Dr. Dre come to mind immediately.
- jmduke 13y ago
  There is a great deal of sophistication and cultural consciousness in hip hop and it certainly has its share of successful businesspeople. This is not in contradiction with your quote. Sean Combs (formerly Puff Daddy), Jay-Z and Dr. Dre come to mind immediately. I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your point, but all three artists reached business success through hiphop. Jay-Z was selling mixtapes out of his car to get enough recognition to release Reasonable Doubt.
  - charlus 13y ago
    http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-somewhereinamerica-lyrics#note-1942304 http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-somewhereinamerica-lyrics#note-19... Jay-Z is fairly well known to have reached considerable wealth prior to Reasonable Doubt. The 'Classic Albums: Reasonable Doubt' doc covers this quite well. The route of selling 'In My Lifetime' out of his car was one in turn that he escaped.
- zmitri 13y ago
  That's only 3 people and they have all come up as entertainers first. Why entertainers first? I agree that hip hop is packed with sophistication and cultural consciousness, but hordes of young wealthy teens listen to rap music almost exclusively as entertainment. They often don't parse the emotional and powerful context of the lyrics - as they are often tied to racial, social, and financial issues they have never had to deal with. They often listen to it as outsiders in that regard. By prefacing his posts with lyrics, Ben is focusing on the good parts of rap music - hustle and determination - as opposed traditional media which very rarely does that. In that regard he is "legitimizing" rap in the eyes of many people, or at least opening up their eyes and mind in a positive manner. Excluding entertainers - if you look at CEOs, executives, tech startups - I think what he's saying is extremely evident. It's also especially strange how few there are considering how influential hip hop culture is in current youth culture, and how influential African American culture has been in the history of America. Are investors rational decision makers? or gate keepers? It's hard to say in a system he so eloquently and accurately described in the first few paragraphs, and where so few companies actually get funded.
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jmduke 13y ago
To contribute a little to an excellent post: The best class I ever took was Race, Rhetoric, and Poetry, which stitched together early African-American poetry and hiphop. The central thesis of the class was that self-expression is proof of humanity, especially for African-Americans: one of the most iconic parts of being a slave (and thus being subhuman) was illiteracy; just as Wheatley, Hammond, et al argued their humanity through their works (explicitly and implicitly), generations of hip hop artists escaped their fates by recording their life and finding success in the written and spoken word. There's a lot of depth and lineage in hiphop, lurking barely under the surface: whether it's Drake sampling Gil Scott-Heron who references Nat Turner, or Kanye cribbing Nina Simone's cover of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit (which of course was written by Abel Meeropol). There's a reason that self-glorification and bildungsromans are such pervasive motifs; it's not just self-aggrandizement, its self-affirmation. If hip-hop was a codebase, it would be a massive lump of spaghetti, spiraling into itself with migraine-inducing dependencies. It would be impossible to refactor or decouple, and I mean this in an incredibly positive way.
- zmitri 13y ago
  Perhaps Dawkins' "meme" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) is a simpler - and not negatively associated like spaghetti code - way to describe it's evolution?
  - jfb 13y ago
    All the great human artifacts are messy; because humans are messy. I appreciate the bracing asceticism of Scheme, but I love the impossibly complicated English language.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Literature, and other cultural artifacts, aren't much different. There's a reason why many people talk about remix culture when arguing against copyright law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_culture
ghshephard 13y ago
All I can say is when I started working for Ben back in 1999, he was relentless in his passion for HipHop and Rap, and spent some time trying to educate us in the difference between the two genres. His love for that broad category of music goes way back. Also possibly related - the Oakland Raiders were his favorite team at the time...
- tptacek 13y ago
  What's the distinction? I listen to a bit (mostly backpack rap stuff like De La and Tribe, plus ultra-mainstream stuff like Jay-Z and Kanye before he started sucking) and before reading this comment I would have assumed the two were synonyms.
  - HillRat 13y ago
    Mostly in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. One way to look at it is that rap is something you do, hip-hop is a way you live. More specifically, hip hop is a cultural phenomenon that developed as an interplay between Jamaican immigrants and the Bronx of the 1970s and 1980s, and includes MCs, DJs, B-Boys and graffiti artists as primary drivers. Rap is a specific element of hip hop, practiced by MCs, in the same way that turntablism (e.g., scratching, mixing, cutting and juggling) is an element practiced by DJs.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Ok, but, as musical genres (however seriously you want to take that concept), this isn't a distinction I need to care much about?
      - pdeuchler 13y ago
        Rap is the story telling medium of Hip Hop. Hip Hop is a style of music that can encompass everything from RnB to Soul to even some Electronic Music. Rap is Hip Hop that has a specific emphasis on lyricism, meaning, and narrative. All Rap has elements of Hip Hop, but all Hip Hop does not have elements of Rap. Obviously this is all subjective to a certain degree. To answer your question, Jay-Z's MCHG is probably more Hip Hop than Rap, while old school Kanye is mos(t) def(initely) Rap. However, unless you plan on getting into conversations like this in the future I really wouldn't worry about the difference.
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andykmaguire 13y ago
"Ben is using his power and time (and trust me he is the only one doing this) to build and advocating and acting on the design and construction of an authentic network that facilitates participation and adoption of the culture." The above statement is completely false. Two examples of many - Dave McClure at 500 Startups and Mitch Kapor at Kapor Capital, among others, are deeply dedicated to building highly diverse networks of talent and capital that encompass diversity in every respect you mentioned and more.
newnewnew 13y ago
"Let’s deconstruct the common misuse of the word “diversity” as thrown around. In Silicon Valley the word means “non whites”." "The fact is that we don’t have enough black and latino founders" I'm not sure why, but South and East Asians are often ignored in discussions of Silicon Valley's diversity. If you expect that Silicon Valley's "lack of diversity" means that tech workers are immersed in white American culture all day, you are greatly mistaken. It's the kind of place where it is easy to hear 5 languages sitting at a coffee shop.
- obblekk 13y ago
  Do you think that Asians are discriminated against, perhaps in different ways? I've never been to the Valley and have been curious about its dynamics for some time.
  - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
    Asians and Indians are certainly discriminated against in the dating marketplace. This is often trivialized but it is a powerful force.
    - obblekk 13y ago
      Are there differences between Asians from abroad and American Asians/Indians? I guess is this a culture/accent thing or is it just subconscious racism?
  - newnewnew 13y ago
    On the one hand, Asians don't count as "minorities" because there are too many successful Asians. Your startup isn't "diverse" because you have 30% Chinese engineers. On the other hand, their success isn't dismissed as the fruits of unfair privilege like white people (this accusation comes mostly from other white people). Part of the reason that writers ignore Asians is that they upset social justice narratives. On the ground, there are few social barriers between whites and Asians. The exception is that I seldom saw an Asian man dating a white woman, as a commenter mentions below. In the tech blogs, the large contributions of Asian people and culture to the Valley are just ignored. It is easier to find a noodle shop than a breakfast place. I think Cupertino had the first majority-Asian city council in the US.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Networks equal access to jobs, funds, and deal flow, and the networks that run silicon valley are Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Google, HP, Ebay, Facebook, Apple, and PayPal. This is precisely why Silicon Valley is past peak. When it was becoming great, Silicon Valley technologists were the network. You like computers and technology? So do I, let's see what we can do for each other. Or just hang out. Often the best "networking" isn't called that; it's just people with shared interests getting together. The fact that there's such a thing as a "Paypal Mafia" is a fucking disgrace. Same with the influence of Stanford or MIT connections; nothing against these schools, but after 5 years the signal is gone and it shouldn't matter. What made Silicon Valley great is that there was an era when common interests were enough to get you in. That's what gave it its initial power: a lot of smart people who wanted each other to succeed. Now it's dominated by a bunch of horrid little good-ole-boy clubs that don't even respect technology.
- newnewnew 13y ago
  When successful hackers from the last generation stick around, that probably helps the culture more than if they disappeared, even if the hierarchical structure thereby created is less aesthetically pleasing to some.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    You seem to have missed what I am saying completely.
throwaway45543 13y ago
Here's what I think: "I'll shut the fuck up because he's Ben Fucken Horowitz". Oh yeah, and rap genius; that's how to bring diversity to the valley - never mind the misogynist b.s. they bring to the table. I'm sure he'll be all up in that too? In startup school wearing what exactly?
swombat 13y ago
So what attack is this responding to? I'm a bit lost here, it looks like someone is stepping in to defend Ben from something, but what? Is it related to http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/12/addressing-silicon-valleys-race-problem.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/12/addre... ?
- IsaacL 13y ago
  Sam Biddle of Valleywag, of course. Who else? http://valleywag.gawker.com/prominent-venture-capitalist-discovers-black-people-1486759377 http://valleywag.gawker.com/prominent-venture-capitalist-dis...
  - swombat 13y ago
    People read Valleywag??
morgante 13y ago
Am I the only one who feels that rap/hiphop has become the dominant culture in tech (see VC darlings Rap Genius)? These days, having a traditional professional demeanor and not knowing a thing about Drake seems far more likely to get you ostracized.

129 points by bhaumik 13y ago

"Ben is using his power and time (and trust me he is the only one doing this) to build and advocating and acting on the design and construction of an authentic network that facilitates participation and adoption of the culture." - I would suggest others are doing this; however, I think none are doing it AS WELL as Ben is these days. It's funny because people think Ben's cultural/rap thing is a shtick. I've worked around Ben a long time. It most definitely is not a shtick. It's like his love of bbq and the raiders....just part of who he is.

lhnz 13y ago

This is a beautiful post. I don't know these people personally but I've deep respect for those that understand inequality, and wish to pay it more than just lip service. They are completely correct. You can't just create separate clubs for new cultures entering the system, you have to help them to connect into the dominant networks and that means legitimising their own culture in the dominant one. This is one of the reasons I've found it so disgusting how the tech community reacts around the site RapGenius: there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture which seems to aggravate every single PR problem they have. I remember a couple of weeks ago seeing a few people turn their noses up at poetry.rapgenius.com (and other networks on the same platform) but I can't think of a better way to let both cultures cross-pollinate. >> Networks equal access to jobs, funds, and deal flow, and the networks that run silicon valley are Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Google, HP, Ebay, Facebook, Apple, and PayPal. Is anybody else genuinely annoyed that sites such as angel.co use these as legitimising signals of worthiness?

michaelochurch 13y ago
there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture which seems to aggravate every single PR problem they have. Douchebag culture and black culture are radically different. First, there are several different black cultures: everything from upper-middle-class to working-class to poor African-American, plus several Afro-Caribbean cultures, plus a huge number of distinct African cultures. Douchebag culture (which is in vogue among the VC darlings, especially in the elite networks OP described) is a historically white phenomenon: popped collars, brogramming, saying shit like YOLO and WHPH ("work hard play hard"). Douchebag culture is a dominant culture in the Valley (not the only one) and we need outlets like Valleywag to remind everyone how ridiculous it is.
- lhnz 13y ago
  >> Douchebag culture and black culture are radically different. You're talking about a bunch of white guys creating a rap site and telling me that they're not trying to channel black culture. If the stylings and bravado at RapGenius weren't related to culture from rap/hip-hop I'd be very surprised. In the past in the UK we used to have "Wigger" culture [0] and it actually was fairly similar... I don't think this anger has anything to do with being a douchebag. I've met people that dressed and spoke weirdly that have been perfectly nice people. I think that people recognise the style as douchebag because it's uncomfortable for them to see white people "acting black". [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigger
  - Ryanmf 13y ago
    Stop. >> You're talking about a bunch of white guys creating a rap site and telling me that they're not trying to channel black culture. Oh, they're trying alright. Said douchebags are roughly as representative of black culture as Ali G was. Though it would seem they're not in on the joke. There is no "channelling" going on. You can be a person of any color who appreciates and celebrates hip hop culture without reducing its participants to cardboard cut-outs.
    - lhnz 13y ago
      There's no joke here. And little harm being done. RapGenius is a well loved by its market. If you believe that how people dress and speak defines their worthiness as a human being (and it seems you do) then go along your own way. I do not.
      - Ryanmf 13y ago
        This isn't complicated. There's a difference between identity and affectation. When your affectation conflates "acting black" (as if that's even a thing one can do) with "acting moronic", your affectation is intrinsically racist. And when you willfully adopt a racist affectation because despite being a Yale/Stanford Law grad you're apparently incapable of understanding how fucking offensive that is, I am not obligated to show you one single iota of respect. These guys don't represent anyone but themselves, and—of late—they're doing a poor job of it. (btw — I think Rap Genius is a great product. I hope its founders don't ruin it.)
joncooper 13y ago
I enjoyed the post. My take on the this is that tremendous amount of access politics in the Bay Area seem to revolve around where you went to school and what your pedigree is, and that since those are very highly correlated with the class you were born into, it ends up being emergently classist. Poor people mostly don't go to the schools that matriculate the players who participate in the traditional valley power scene. I don't buy that this scene is any more racist than the rest of the US, and probably would argue that it is less so. But in terms of class bias, I think considerably greater. And the low incidence of black and latino folks can be attributed significantly to their statistically-lower class distribution. As an anecdotal data point, I haven't met a lot of white people from lower-class backgrounds who are players in the Bay Area technology scene. Actually haven't met a lot of technology workers that are. This is in contrast to the environment when I worked in finance in NYC and London. I found that scene to be transparently racist and sexist, but there are very many powerful white dudes who started off poor and lower-class.
- pmarca 13y ago
  "As an anecdotal data point, I haven't met a lot of white people from lower-class backgrounds who are players in the Bay Area technology scene." Hi!
  - look_lookatme 13y ago
    I think it's safe to say the conditions and environment that enabled your rise in SV were much different than what exists now.
    - argonaut 13y ago
      Yes. It's easier for people from lower class backgrounds to break into SV than it was 1-2 decades ago. College admissions' focus on social justice has only increased over the past few decades (% of low-income students at the very top universities has only gone up). The proliferation of angel money means that it is actually easier for you to get the connections necessary for VC. In the past, VC was an even tighter and more exclusive circle than it is today.
dylandrop 13y ago
>> there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture Sorry, but the hatred for RapGenius doesn't come from programmers hating black culture. It's from the founders being fake, and as you said, douchebags. They're three white Yale graduates trying way too hard and ultimately being inauthentic. That's what's off-putting -- saying things like "baller-sourced" [1] just is an obvious ploy, appropriating words to give themselves fake credentials and personalities as rap aficionados. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo (~1:30)
- barry-cotter 13y ago
  If you have any evidence that their love of rap/hiphop is a front please share. I don't see how anybody who wasn't saturated in that culture would have even thought of rapgenius. If you dislike hiphop and its message, say so. If you have something stronger than a disapproval of white guys imbibing black culture, say so. Hiphop is art but the culture it promotes is far from healthy. Kids who can get into Yale are unlikely to be harmed by it but for the working class it's a negative; People would do better with boring bourgeois values.
rdtsc 13y ago
> I don't know these people personally but I've deep respect for those that understand inequality, and wish to pay it more than just lip service. That is how I found it. I started reading it because of a catchy title, then go into it and learned a bit more about the Valley culture. Personally I don't know much and am not usually interested in start-ups, but after being here for years, feels like I should know more so once in a while I would read stuff about it. Also this kind of reminded me of an older satirical post about the Valley and start-up culture -- "We'll Be Circling Back" by Harj Taggar http://paulgraham.com/circling.html http://paulgraham.com/circling.html
PavlovsCat 13y ago
> there's this undercurrent of hatred for baller/rap/black (so-called "douchebag") culture I love rap. Heck, I even do it myself (badly and in German though, so no links). I still can't stand baller "culture", and before you think that's just a while middle-class dude not checking his privilege, read this: > What really hurts me sometimes is that there’s not a lot of consciousness in their music. There could be a whole lot more. Rapping is communicating-it should be an instrument for our liberation. We don’t have time to talk about being players and hustlers and gangsters. We didn’t come off of the slave ships that way. We need to become proud Africans again and stop running around in Shirley Temple curls talkin’ ‘bout how we’re pimps and players. A lot of the symbols that are in rap records and videos are indications of decadent consumerism and in a very real sense, those gold chains, hundred-dollar sneakers and T-shirts with a designer’s name on it underline how much they’ve become enslaved by the consumer mentality in the United States-consumer slaves. -- Assata Shakur It's not respectful to support self-harm because "that's just how the culture is", it's simply not knowing any decent rap and having no comparison. Rap is infected with bullshit, IMHO exactly because it could and should be such a powerful thing. Conscious rap is potentially dangerous; talking about bling and bitches is not. As for rapgenius, compare the obsession with it on HN with the "who? stop spamming us with ads" reactions on slashdot: http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=rapgenius http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=rapgenius - Hilarious.
hbags 13y ago
"Is anybody else genuinely annoyed that sites such as angel.co use these as legitimising signals of worthiness?" Absolutely. AngelList is all about institutional brands, and that's kind of sad. Teams are summarized by where they studied and worked, not what they accomplished, or what people think of them. It always struck me as a lazy 'old boys club' method of filtering people and ideas.

heydenberk 13y ago

>> For so long hip hop culture has been the culture of poor people. The art of beta culture. An oddity that voices the raw emotion of the poor, and that glorifies the suboptimal traits that keeps poor people from mobilizing up the ladder in society. To outsiders, that’s all it is. But by using his voice and stage to elevate rap as a useful medium for informing business, it is creating a legitimacy in the business world for this culture and those that come from it. This is problematic and untrue. There is a great deal of sophistication and cultural consciousness in hip hop and it certainly has its share of successful businesspeople. Sean Combs (formerly Puff Daddy), Jay-Z and Dr. Dre come to mind immediately.

jmduke 13y ago
There is a great deal of sophistication and cultural consciousness in hip hop and it certainly has its share of successful businesspeople. This is not in contradiction with your quote. Sean Combs (formerly Puff Daddy), Jay-Z and Dr. Dre come to mind immediately. I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your point, but all three artists reached business success through hiphop. Jay-Z was selling mixtapes out of his car to get enough recognition to release Reasonable Doubt.
- charlus 13y ago
  http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-somewhereinamerica-lyrics#note-1942304 http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-somewhereinamerica-lyrics#note-19... Jay-Z is fairly well known to have reached considerable wealth prior to Reasonable Doubt. The 'Classic Albums: Reasonable Doubt' doc covers this quite well. The route of selling 'In My Lifetime' out of his car was one in turn that he escaped.
zmitri 13y ago
That's only 3 people and they have all come up as entertainers first. Why entertainers first? I agree that hip hop is packed with sophistication and cultural consciousness, but hordes of young wealthy teens listen to rap music almost exclusively as entertainment. They often don't parse the emotional and powerful context of the lyrics - as they are often tied to racial, social, and financial issues they have never had to deal with. They often listen to it as outsiders in that regard. By prefacing his posts with lyrics, Ben is focusing on the good parts of rap music - hustle and determination - as opposed traditional media which very rarely does that. In that regard he is "legitimizing" rap in the eyes of many people, or at least opening up their eyes and mind in a positive manner. Excluding entertainers - if you look at CEOs, executives, tech startups - I think what he's saying is extremely evident. It's also especially strange how few there are considering how influential hip hop culture is in current youth culture, and how influential African American culture has been in the history of America. Are investors rational decision makers? or gate keepers? It's hard to say in a system he so eloquently and accurately described in the first few paragraphs, and where so few companies actually get funded.

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jmduke 13y ago

To contribute a little to an excellent post: The best class I ever took was Race, Rhetoric, and Poetry, which stitched together early African-American poetry and hiphop. The central thesis of the class was that self-expression is proof of humanity, especially for African-Americans: one of the most iconic parts of being a slave (and thus being subhuman) was illiteracy; just as Wheatley, Hammond, et al argued their humanity through their works (explicitly and implicitly), generations of hip hop artists escaped their fates by recording their life and finding success in the written and spoken word. There's a lot of depth and lineage in hiphop, lurking barely under the surface: whether it's Drake sampling Gil Scott-Heron who references Nat Turner, or Kanye cribbing Nina Simone's cover of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit (which of course was written by Abel Meeropol). There's a reason that self-glorification and bildungsromans are such pervasive motifs; it's not just self-aggrandizement, its self-affirmation. If hip-hop was a codebase, it would be a massive lump of spaghetti, spiraling into itself with migraine-inducing dependencies. It would be impossible to refactor or decouple, and I mean this in an incredibly positive way.

zmitri 13y ago
Perhaps Dawkins' "meme" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) is a simpler - and not negatively associated like spaghetti code - way to describe it's evolution?
- jfb 13y ago
  All the great human artifacts are messy; because humans are messy. I appreciate the bracing asceticism of Scheme, but I love the impossibly complicated English language.
saraid216 13y ago
Literature, and other cultural artifacts, aren't much different. There's a reason why many people talk about remix culture when arguing against copyright law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_culture

ghshephard 13y ago

All I can say is when I started working for Ben back in 1999, he was relentless in his passion for HipHop and Rap, and spent some time trying to educate us in the difference between the two genres. His love for that broad category of music goes way back. Also possibly related - the Oakland Raiders were his favorite team at the time...

tptacek 13y ago
What's the distinction? I listen to a bit (mostly backpack rap stuff like De La and Tribe, plus ultra-mainstream stuff like Jay-Z and Kanye before he started sucking) and before reading this comment I would have assumed the two were synonyms.
- HillRat 13y ago
  Mostly in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. One way to look at it is that rap is something you do, hip-hop is a way you live. More specifically, hip hop is a cultural phenomenon that developed as an interplay between Jamaican immigrants and the Bronx of the 1970s and 1980s, and includes MCs, DJs, B-Boys and graffiti artists as primary drivers. Rap is a specific element of hip hop, practiced by MCs, in the same way that turntablism (e.g., scratching, mixing, cutting and juggling) is an element practiced by DJs.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Ok, but, as musical genres (however seriously you want to take that concept), this isn't a distinction I need to care much about?
    - pdeuchler 13y ago
      Rap is the story telling medium of Hip Hop. Hip Hop is a style of music that can encompass everything from RnB to Soul to even some Electronic Music. Rap is Hip Hop that has a specific emphasis on lyricism, meaning, and narrative. All Rap has elements of Hip Hop, but all Hip Hop does not have elements of Rap. Obviously this is all subjective to a certain degree. To answer your question, Jay-Z's MCHG is probably more Hip Hop than Rap, while old school Kanye is mos(t) def(initely) Rap. However, unless you plan on getting into conversations like this in the future I really wouldn't worry about the difference.

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andykmaguire 13y ago

"Ben is using his power and time (and trust me he is the only one doing this) to build and advocating and acting on the design and construction of an authentic network that facilitates participation and adoption of the culture." The above statement is completely false. Two examples of many - Dave McClure at 500 Startups and Mitch Kapor at Kapor Capital, among others, are deeply dedicated to building highly diverse networks of talent and capital that encompass diversity in every respect you mentioned and more.

newnewnew 13y ago

"Let’s deconstruct the common misuse of the word “diversity” as thrown around. In Silicon Valley the word means “non whites”." "The fact is that we don’t have enough black and latino founders" I'm not sure why, but South and East Asians are often ignored in discussions of Silicon Valley's diversity. If you expect that Silicon Valley's "lack of diversity" means that tech workers are immersed in white American culture all day, you are greatly mistaken. It's the kind of place where it is easy to hear 5 languages sitting at a coffee shop.

obblekk 13y ago
Do you think that Asians are discriminated against, perhaps in different ways? I've never been to the Valley and have been curious about its dynamics for some time.
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  Asians and Indians are certainly discriminated against in the dating marketplace. This is often trivialized but it is a powerful force.
  - obblekk 13y ago
    Are there differences between Asians from abroad and American Asians/Indians? I guess is this a culture/accent thing or is it just subconscious racism?
- newnewnew 13y ago
  On the one hand, Asians don't count as "minorities" because there are too many successful Asians. Your startup isn't "diverse" because you have 30% Chinese engineers. On the other hand, their success isn't dismissed as the fruits of unfair privilege like white people (this accusation comes mostly from other white people). Part of the reason that writers ignore Asians is that they upset social justice narratives. On the ground, there are few social barriers between whites and Asians. The exception is that I seldom saw an Asian man dating a white woman, as a commenter mentions below. In the tech blogs, the large contributions of Asian people and culture to the Valley are just ignored. It is easier to find a noodle shop than a breakfast place. I think Cupertino had the first majority-Asian city council in the US.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Networks equal access to jobs, funds, and deal flow, and the networks that run silicon valley are Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Google, HP, Ebay, Facebook, Apple, and PayPal. This is precisely why Silicon Valley is past peak. When it was becoming great, Silicon Valley technologists were the network. You like computers and technology? So do I, let's see what we can do for each other. Or just hang out. Often the best "networking" isn't called that; it's just people with shared interests getting together. The fact that there's such a thing as a "Paypal Mafia" is a fucking disgrace. Same with the influence of Stanford or MIT connections; nothing against these schools, but after 5 years the signal is gone and it shouldn't matter. What made Silicon Valley great is that there was an era when common interests were enough to get you in. That's what gave it its initial power: a lot of smart people who wanted each other to succeed. Now it's dominated by a bunch of horrid little good-ole-boy clubs that don't even respect technology.

newnewnew 13y ago
When successful hackers from the last generation stick around, that probably helps the culture more than if they disappeared, even if the hierarchical structure thereby created is less aesthetically pleasing to some.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  You seem to have missed what I am saying completely.

throwaway45543 13y ago

Here's what I think: "I'll shut the fuck up because he's Ben Fucken Horowitz". Oh yeah, and rap genius; that's how to bring diversity to the valley - never mind the misogynist b.s. they bring to the table. I'm sure he'll be all up in that too? In startup school wearing what exactly?

swombat 13y ago

So what attack is this responding to? I'm a bit lost here, it looks like someone is stepping in to defend Ben from something, but what? Is it related to http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/12/addressing-silicon-valleys-race-problem.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/12/addre... ?

IsaacL 13y ago
Sam Biddle of Valleywag, of course. Who else? http://valleywag.gawker.com/prominent-venture-capitalist-discovers-black-people-1486759377 http://valleywag.gawker.com/prominent-venture-capitalist-dis...
- swombat 13y ago
  People read Valleywag??

morgante 13y ago

Am I the only one who feels that rap/hiphop has become the dominant culture in tech (see VC darlings Rap Genius)? These days, having a traditional professional demeanor and not knowing a thing about Drake seems far more likely to get you ostracized.