conor brennan-burke(@contextconor):chamath is the last person who should be making this claim but he’s wrong on the substance too in 1991, the LA Times warned that “the basic character and culture of Silicon Valley” was being permanently altered and its entrepreneurial ethos was “slipping away.” that was 10 years before chamath even arrived in silicon valley in 2001 people love to romanticize the past. every generation remembers the weirdos and idealists and forgets the careerists, mercenaries and people who just wanted to get rich in 60s, fairchild engineers were leaving to start competitors and make fortunes on equity in the 70s, gates was arguing that hobbyists needed to pay for software and jobs stopped woz from giving his designs away for free so he could sell them even paul graham has openly said he started viaweb because he wanted to get rich silicon valley has always been a messy mix of idealism, ambition, ego and money. that tension isn’t new and it hasn’t ‘ruined it’. it’s part of the reason it works the magic was never that everyone had pure motives. the magic is that ppl with wildly different motives can show up, compete, build, and create things that impact the world the oldest silicon valley tradition might be believing its best days are behind it

2026.08.22 19:56

chamath is the last person who should be making this claim but he’s wrong on the substance too in 1991, the LA Times warned that “the basic character and culture of Silicon Valley” was being permanently altered and its entrepreneurial ethos was “slipping away.” that was 10 years before chamath even arrived in silicon valley in 2001 people love to romanticize the past. every generation remembers the weirdos and idealists and forgets the careerists, mercenaries and people who just wanted to get rich in 60s, fairchild engineers were leaving to start competitors and make fortunes on equity in the 70s, gates was arguing that hobbyists needed to pay for software and jobs stopped woz from giving his designs away for free so he could sell them even paul graham has openly said he started viaweb because he wanted to get rich silicon valley has always been a messy mix of idealism, ambition, ego and money. that tension isn’t new and it hasn’t ‘ruined it’. it’s part of the reason it works the magic was never that everyone had pure motives. the magic is that ppl with wildly different motives can show up, compete, build, and create things that impact the world the oldest silicon valley tradition might be believing its best days are behind it

dnap@dnapway

2026.08.21 21:43

Chamath says Silicon Valley lost what made it great and only cares about money now "Silicon Valley has completely lost what made it great. It was a place for weirdos, for people at the fringes, for people that really were idealistic. And it has become something that's far from that now. It is the equivalent of what Harvard used to be. It's a credentialing place." "When we came, we used to aspire to meet the Bill Campbells of the world, Mike Moritz, John Doerr. Those folks are gone. We used to aspire to work for Steve Jobs. He's not here." "And in that breach, all we have done is focused on making money in every single way that we can, hand over fist. And there's nothing wrong with that. Except now it’s at a point where we need to do a better job of acknowledging it and trying to do a little bit better.” “Every time we don't, and we're given a chance to be better, and we're not, the hatred builds, the animus builds. And that's what we're seeing now."