The interesting part here is that it's actually a two-sided marketplace. Most investors aren't "impressive" either, and thus they'll often not be able to get into the best deals because they have no value add.
I recently read some reviews of investors in SV. Some name brand investors like Jason Calacanis, Pejman Nozad, and some YC alumnus, are all actually very clueless people, often with acerbic behaviors to boot. In that respect, at least the investor class of Wall Street seems to have a much higher degree of expertise and civility, compared to the buffoons of Silicon Valley.
There’s a lot of cargo-cult mimicry of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk that happens in terms of behavior.
But those guys were product people and to the extent that their low-empathy personalities were beneficial it’s in the fact that they cared about creating things far more than anything else, including other people or money. The phrase “artistic temperament” long predates them for a reason.
But it’s really absurd and counterproductive to try to mimic that personality if what you’re offering is anything other than being the corporate version of an auteur, and if that’s what you were you wouldn’t be mimicking anyone, and you better produce some stunningly consistent results. Lots of these guys think they’re being uncompromising about “their vision” when it’s really just “their vision” of their spot on the Forbes list.
New York is better in part, I would guess, because there’s no false premise that the investor is doing anything other than acting as a conduit for capital. There’s egos too but no one is trying to live up to the standard of “changing the world” or “innovating” or being “the next ___.”
It probably also helps that Warren Buffet is the most successful traditional investor of all time and a model of good behavior.
It reminds me of the saying: "The problem with the asshole-genius trope is it is much easier to emulate being an asshole then it is to emulate being a genius."