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Silicon Valley's Loony Cheerleading Culture Is Out of Control
Nerval's Lobster writes "Kernel editor-in-chief and noted firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos swings away at Silicon Valley's current startup culture, noting that it's resulted in herds of wannabe founders and startup groupies who don't exactly have a track record of starting successful companies or even producing solid code. 'Though they produce little of value, they are the naive soft power behind aggressive capitalist machines in Silicon Valley: the trend-setting vanguard of the global Web and mobile industries,' he writes. 'We should be very wary indeed of these vacuous cheerleaders whose vague waffle about the transformational potential of photo-sharing apps is more sinister and Orwellian than anything dreamt up by a dictator.' How long can such a culture continue before it dries up, and the whole tech-investment cycle begins anew?"
The place is a shit hole. Literally. There are holes full of shit. Between the leather crowd and the homeless, the stench is unbearable.
What makes a startup in Silicon Valley better than one in Iowa?
The logistics of getting acquired or partnering with the large companies in the valley. Acquihiring only works if the new employees are close to the mother ship.
Also, proximity matters for other reasons. One of the startups I worked for was acquired as a direct result of an overheard conversation at Starbucks. Without that conversation, the purchasing company would have never known we existed.