Silicon Valley

“I think there is some chance that this whole remote work thing could break Silicon Valley's network effect, and that would be really bad for places like San Francisco, which, you know, otherwise might not be the greatest places to live.”

“The truth of the matter is there was no major Silicon Valley VC firm. In fact, not even a minor one that invested in Theranos.”

“This problem is only going to get worse. And so I think we as an industry just have to realize that there's going to be an incentive to lie.”

“I have with at least two companies in the last year. And, you know, I've kept my mouth shut because And by the way, I don't think that there's necessarily harm going on, but I know of misrepresentation, but the investors are like, look, we'd love to see these …”

“I'm convinced that there's two ways to raise your next fund in Silicon Valley. One, have one of the top 50 podcasts in the world, or two, have a strong meme game, and I'm going for both.”

“There's not a single person in Silicon Valley, I think, who put in a single shekel into this thing who actually does this as a real job.”

“The substance of what Brian Armstrong did was incredibly profound, one of the most important things that actually happened in the last few years in Silicon Valley culture.”

“Something like 40% of startups have an immigrant co-founder.”

“We haven't had proper governance for a long time in Silicon Valley.”

“I see that lacking heavily in Silicon Valley, because the VCs are more incentivized to raise more money, to make more investments and then pay less attention and just go raise the next fund.”

“Most people in Silicon Valley don't believe in building weapons systems, but I kind of am with you on this.”

“If you track all of the increased frequency in fundraising, you can also probably follow those dollars and they generally will be the most poorly run. They'll be held the least accountable. And I think those will have the largest negative outcomes.”

“One thing that people in Silicon Valley get right for all their faults and self-servingness in some ways, right, They kind of get the orders of magnitudes, right? They understand scale and social media and the daily news cycle really collapses that, right? So …”

“And in Silicon Valley at the time, you know, it really, there is a very monocultural aspect of, you know, folks from a few schools, you know, folks having worked at a few companies and I had neither, you know, I worked, I went to Waterloo, which is in Canada, …”

“We've gone through an entire decade of under training an entire generation of people in Silicon Valley. You know, we have under under trained and under mentored the product managers, the engineers, the senior executive management, the CEOs, many of these peopl…”

“Probably nothing. It's not going to change anything.”

“This is what I think the Elon action this week really sets a standard. He shows the entirety of Silicon Valley that you can cut deep and you can turn a profit and you can do it fast. And it could set a new standard for how folks are managing this.”

“I think we're going to have a cultural divide here. There are going to be a series of companies that say, this is classic Silicon Valley. We're going to crush it. We're going to work aggressively. We're going to put in. 50, 60, 70 hours a week, and we're all g…”

“My guess is the next hype cycle, the next bubble cycle in Silicon Valley will absolutely be this generative AI business.”

“One of the things that I think you may see in Silicon Valley over the next couple of years is a rationalization away from funding feature companies and thinking much more carefully about what can be true standalone product companies.”

“The age of excess is over. If you're not working, 50, 60, 70 hours a week, you're not gonna cut it in Silicon Valley.”

“100%. This has been the greatest grift in the history of Silicon Valley for sure.”

“It's every single major VC in Silicon Valley.”

“This is basically a Lehman sized event for Silicon Valley.”

“You know, listen, in venture, you got to find three things. You got to find, you know, you don't want to invest all your money at the top. So you got to get the bottom, you know, bottom third. None of us can call the bottom, but you know, last year at the end …”

“It's something like 40 to 50% of unicorn companies in Silicon Valley have at least one co-founder who's first generation American or an immigrant.”

“We're seeing four or five, six hundred million dollar deals get done on zero revenue, two, three million dollars in revenue”

“The reason Silicon Valley's been so successful is because it's so fucking far away from Washington, D.C.”

“I think that what was discussed at that hearing that Sam Altman testified at, I think it's an existential threat to Silicon Valley, because You know, what Sam proposed was, well, we're gonna, we should have a new regulatory agency, kind of like the Atomic Ener…”

“I think that the challenge with Difficult technology being developed in Silicon Valley is less about a dearth of capital or a dearth of ideas or a dearth of opportunities. It's more about a dearth of talent that finding the right folks who have the capabilitie…”

“Why take on 15 year illiquidity for oftentimes funds that return less than the S and P, which is the dirty little secret of Silicon Valley.”

“But the fact of the matter is that Silicon Valley had a share of the wealth mentality where the rank and file employees did participate in the ownership of the company and they got equity. And it was highly motivating or it is highly motivating. For not just l…”

“There's a reason why almost no one does these types of exercise loans anymore. I mean, whoever the VC was who pushed back was right. I mean, these things were common. 20 something years ago, people stopped doing it.”

“It seems like a lot of people are less worried about cancel culture as they were three years ago. So I don't know if it's just in Silicon Valley broadly in media and broadly culturally, there seems to be a move away from cancel culture mentality and people are…”

“The reason Silicon Valley has been so successful is because it's so fucking far away from Washington, D.C.”

“They need electricity at levels that nobody's ever experienced before to have, to be successful, to be a leader in AI. The amount of electricity they need is like double what we have right now and even triple what we have right now.”

“She wants, and her campaign has confirmed, she wants a 44% capital gains tax. She wants a 25% unrealized gains tax. These are things that I think the vast majority of Silicon Valley considers to be disastrous for the startup ecosystem.”

“And you get to back a founder like Jensen at NVIDIA, who many people don't know, but is the longest tenured founder CEO in Silicon Valley.”

“I have not in my time in Silicon Valley ever seen a company that's supposedly on such a straight line to a rocket ship have so much high level churn.”

“There was a group of very powerful staffers in the Biden administration, about half a dozen people who kind of controlled AI policy. And the interesting thing is none of them have ever worked in Silicon Valley.”

“Well, I would just say they correlate with what the information is reported as leaked, you know, data from both companies, and that makes them both the fastest growing companies in the history of Silicon Valley.”

“Their economy is essentially fiercely capitalist. I mean, you have the One of my friends has gladiatorial conflict that makes the competition in Silicon Valley look, look tame as the, you know, as the parties fight each other.”

“Over the last 20 years, this incredible economy here, Engine of innovation for our country and really the world has created about eight jobs for every one new home we've built.”

“A lot of the signatures that they had on these, you know, protests were not coming from US citizens.”

“Lockheed was the largest employer in, in Silicon Valley in the 19 fifties.”

“I think it's certainly a lot less controversial work on these topics than it was in 2017, 20 18.”

“I've never seen venture debt work well to improve the quality of a business. Never. Never. It doesn't work. Only, only, only ever seen venture debt... That damaged companies And if you get the venture debt, you can never actually use it. So the venture debt in…”

“If the billionaire tax proposal goes through, I mean, that absolutely puts You know, I think that's just a complete disaster for the tech ecosystem and what we've built in Silicon Valley over the years and all the job creation and wealth creation that comes wi…”

“I've never seen it in my 25 years in Silicon Valley where a sector of the economy can absorb hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars And then you think that there's going to be economic pricing power many decades into the future, and it effectively evapor…”