The Ethos of the Silly Con Valley

Facebook’s offering results in another fleet of tech millionaires and even a few billionaires being added to the ever-rising assemblage of mega-wealthy scions of the Silicon Valley’s tech entrepreneurs. In Hollywood, wealth comes with mega mansions, flashy Ferraris, Bentleys and an occasional Aston Martin, tailored flashy designer clothes that just scream money, even when the underlying careers may not actually support the expense. In the sports world and in that remaining vestige of the music business that once generated a multiple of the total industry gross today, it’s bling, hot parties at expensive clubs, an entourage of hangers-on and even a bevy of body guards, and maybe even buying into a major sports team or starting your own fashion label.

But the Valley is different. Money is the measurement of success, to be earned, posted on the NYSE or the NASDAQ, but never flashed in ways that makes the rest of the world go oooh and aaaah. Still, the little flashes are a permitted indulgence, “inside” expenditures that others might not recognize: “Fabulous home theaters are tucked into the basements of plain suburban houses. Bespoke jeans that start at $1,200 can be detected only by a tiny red logo on the button. The hand-painted Italian bicycles that flash across Silicon Valley on Saturday mornings have become the new Ferrari — and only the cognoscenti could imagine that they cost more than $20,000.” New York Times, May 17^th. And for heaven’s sake, if you didn’t found the company, please do not drive your Maserati to work! That old Jeep will do fine thank you.

Indeed, if your social network page is a reflection of your wealth, the Valley will ridicule and turn their back on you. Keep the garage door of your mega-million-dollar tract home closed. If you want to flash money, invest in another start-up, repeat the glory that made you rich in the first place and show that it wasn’t a fluke. And make sure to avoid expensive Italian suits and anything but the Zuckerberg-hoodie or the Jobs-black-mock/jeans equivalent signature look. You can spend a fortune on that “ordinary” look, but it better appear ordinary!

So does that mean folks are willing to work for less in the Valley? Not exactly. “Make no mistake. In this, Silicon Valley’s gilded age, money is chasing money. Lucrative salaries and stock options are dangled to recruit or hold onto engineers. The shares of established companies like Apple have soared. And Facebook itself has turned to Wall Street for a vast infusion of fresh funds… But here in one of the richest corners of the country, the tech elite display an ambivalent, sometimes contradictory approach to wealth. Money, as one scholar of the Valley described it, is treated as a measuring stick, gauging the power of the companies that entrepreneurs have built, rather than a thing to display.” NY Times.

Wanna flash? Try some hot socks… for as long as this trend continues: “In a land where the uniform — jeans, hoodies and flip-flops — is purposefully nonchalant, and where no one would be caught dead in a tie, wearing flashy socks is more than an expression of your personality. It signals that you are part of the in crowd. It’s like a secret handshake for those who have arrived, and for those who want to… ‘I have been in meetings where people look down and notice my socks, and there is this universal sign, almost like a gang sign, where they nod and pull up their pant leg a little to show off their socks,’ said Hunter Walk, 38, a director of product management at YouTube, whose favorite pair is yellow, aqua and orange striped.” NY Times, February 3^rd. Solid American values. Recession? What recession?

I’m Peter Dekom, and living in this Los Angeles “Silicone Alley,” it’s interesting to note that successful local tech entrepreneurs dress like they live in the Valley, but have homes that scream they live in the Alley!