There is a really tremendous streak of people helping people with no strings attached that I hadn’t found anywhere else I’ve lived. Especially but not exclusively on the engineering / product side - for a long time you could take a greyhound to Soma and have a couch to crash on and a job interview lined up without knowing anyone. Introductions are made without a second thought (extremely contrary to my east coast experience where to get an intro, it must be “worth” something to the third party), it is (was? I moved away a few years ago) an extremely special and collaborative place.
As a life-long east coaster, I am reluctant/unwilling to make an introduction of someone I don’t know at all. It’s not that I have to get something of worth to make an intro, but I think my intro carries an implied vouch (at least a tiny one) and I can’t do that if I don’t know you.
If I know you and can actually vouch for you, I’ll happily make any intro where I stand to gain nothing.
I somewhat frequently get a cold outreach asking me to recommend someone I’ve never met to something/someone I know and I can’t understand how that ever works.
Yep - a very common view/philosophy outside the Valley. For whatever reason, that's not the culture at all in SV. Actually "vouching" for someone is still gated by people's reputation, but introductions are understood to be less of a personal 'I think this person is worth hiring' and more of a 'You are both working on something interesting in a similar area, I think you should talk' or commonly, 'This person has some very weird but interesting ideas about something I know you're interested in'.
Random example but I was working with an algae biofuel company during the cleantech boom and we were having analysis problems as the equipment we were using kept fouling due to the harsh desert conditions where our ponds were. I was at a birthday party and obliquely mentioned that issue to a friend who had asked how it was all going and before I knew it, he'd called his former coworker who'd founded a company that successfully launched similar equipment to Mars which was obviously not user-serviceable so was built to be extremely robust. There was no 'ask' from anyone involved and nobody got richer from the exchange, but it was just a random occasion to connect people who might find each other interesting that was completely common in my SV experience.
I think the “Valley” is just sufficiently expensive and/or newly settled that the probability a person would be a net negative to introduce was low enough that there did not need to be as much gatekeeping as there is in the east.
If you were knowledgeable enough to move to the Valley, if you had the wealth and connections to move to the Valley, then you already passed some of the checks needed to be someone who would be a sufficiently good bet to introduce.
It might already be the case that the Valley has changed to be more similar to the East.
I had negative wealth and no meaningful connections when I moved to the SF Bay, so you’re wrong on that.
But I did know to move there, so you’re right on that.
And yes, while the pay-it-forward culture is still very much alive and you can find it if you look, I don’t think it has the ubiquity today that it did back then. You’re also right that the culture has shifted a bit.
In the context of my comment, wealth would include one’s potential, which if young and driven, could make one’s “wealth” positive, or at least useful to someone else.
For example, if you were 80 years old when you moved, would you have still received the same introductions?
I think you and I (also east coast) seem to have similar philosophies. I'm more retired than not these days. I'll certainly respond to a query by email or talk at a conference about my various former professions/experiences (which more often than not never get responded to). But I'm not going to refer someone just because we went to the same school but I've never met or because we had coffee for 30 minutes (unless they really impressed me in some way).
maybe that’s the point. in the SV mentality I wouldn’t refer someone solely based on their credentials or a superficial connection either. It would be because I had an engaging conversation that made me think of you, and then thinking that you would also find value in having conversation with that person.
Because I know you’re curious and want the latest new ideas, it’s perceived as a gift in SV-land. I wouldn’t offer an experience that wasn’t win-win.
EDIT: thinking further about this, it’s really a difference in sampling techniques to ascertain reality and strategy.
In SV, you want to gather as many wild and crazy ideas as possible. You’re not upset if you have the occasional low-value conversation, because you have so many conversations with so many people that you can synthesize a hi-res picture of what you’re looking at.
I feel maybe the East Coast mentality is the inverse: I want to sample from few sources, whose quality is guaranteed to be very high.
I think the strength of the "vouch" is understood to be much weaker in Silicon Valley - it's more like - I've talked to this guy for 30mins to an hour and I can vouch that he (or she) is not a waste of time for you to talk to them for a similar amount of time. It's not a vouch that they're the next Steve Jobs or you have diligenced their background.
It’s a fair point about the valley’s tremendous wealth and problems, but what would Om say? It’s a little off the topic of remembering his life and work?
> I hear that SF has one of the highest rates of homelessness...
My understanding is that homelessness in California is a business similar to dating apps (tinder etc).
If dating apps would actually find you a partner, they would all go out of business. So dating apps mainly keep you on the hook, fishing for subscriptions.
You may be right, but your angle of causation is wrong. California is not creating homelessness to milk money out of rich MSNBC shitlibs. They created homelessness as a side effect of them making housing very expensive... in order to placate those same rich MSNBC shitlibs who you think are being defrauded.
California's ruling class is a landed gentry of boomers that all bought into the housing market before Prop 13 froze their tax rates in place. They will weaponize anything to stop any construction which they think might lower their property values. Hell, Beverly Hills used their school district in order to launch a frivolous lawsuit against the LA Metro D line expansion, because Beverly Hills is full of rich idiots who think public transit ruins property values[0].
So California can't get rid of homelessness - not because it means the homeless shelters[1] will be out of a job, but because homeless people are the natural consequence of making housing unaffordably expensive. The only actual solution to homelessness is the one thing California will never do on pain of death. The homeless shelters are there to create moral cover for NIMBYs making the city too expensive to live in. So the homeless shelters aren't ripping off the shitlibs; the shitlibs are paying them to sweep the problem under the rug, and they are dutifully doing so.
[0] Cars ruin property values, because cars require lots of very expensive infrastructure like highways and stroads, and nobody wants to live or shop next to a giant pollution generator. In contrast, access to public transit increases land value! But the California gentry all drive so they don't care about this.
[1] Please interpret "homeless shelters" to mean "any government agency involved with homelessness management". Technically speaking SF has a lot of unsheltered homeless because, well, living unsheltered is just not as hellishly awful as it is in other cities.
Not even the richest person can simply cure thousands of people of addiction and set them on the right path in life. If you want to prove me wrong, surely even with non-millionaire resources, you could afford to just take in one into your home, feed them, and fix their problems. I’ll be genuinely glad to be proven wrong.
There's plenty of great examples of governments deciding to deal with drug abuse in a more humane way, resulting in much better outcomes, see Portugal or Switzerland etc
When I was first trying to start companies, I would ask everyone for advice. Some people are more engaging and helpful than others. Some people expect something in return.
In SV, in the 90s/00s, no one wanted anything in return. Everyone was there to help. We all understood that the entrepreneur’s path is a nearly impossible one, and if you have somehow followed it to success, you want to try to guide others to that successful place.
After ~20 years I’ve left SV but I retain the mentality :) AMA
There’s a large group of people who want to help and see you succeed- even if it won’t benefit them directly.
I stepped away nearly a decade ago so I don’t know how true that is for the tech “scene” today, but it was really great and inspiring for a very young transplant like me.
sad but that’s why I left. To use a tired DnD analogy, SV used to be kind of a chaotic/neutral place, I liked that. We all helped each other. Now it’s lawful/good but good implies moral choices, many of which I agree with but for some
disagreement means shunning. So I left.
In many other regions of the world if you ask someone to connect you with a potential investor they demand a success fee. In SV, they do not. Because they're playing a very long iterated game and understand, that even if they don't make a bank themselves, knowing future-successful people will be a great benefit.