30 UNDER 30

The money-maker behind Forbes Media and published annually, twenty-something tech founders are obsessed with how to get on this list that signals the start of an aggressive career in Silicon Valley. Panic for those who are 28 and not yet on the list.

AGING

You’re ancient if you’re over 31. No experience? Great! All the better for the investors to rip you off. Young people don’t sleep much either and that’s really useful for being an entrepreneur.

ANGEL INVESTOR

Early-early stage investor. Anyone who has any semblance of success in Silicon Valley is an angel investor putting capital back into the world that brought them success. Angel investors never miss an opportunity to tell others they’re an angel on, say, their Twitter profile; they also rarely miss a chance to attend a highly curated drug party.

APPLE VS FACEBOOK

Apple tells us what we want. Remember? That’s what Steve Jobs did on stage, he told us what we wanted and we mostly agreed. On the other hand, Facebook analyzes our data and then figures out what we might want and adapts to our behaviors, continuing to nudge us down a path we’d only fleetingly considered. Humanize tattoos those impulses on our forearm

PULSE BILLBOARDS

Sections of Highway 101 are infamous for the billboards communicating the current pulse of Silicon Valley. Lately, the billboards have been pushing aggressive promo for NFT plays and new pump and dump crypto coins. Oh! And Miami’s Mayor Suarez has been getting in on the action too.

BIOHACKING & TRANSHUMANISM

Putting chips in your body to monitor everything imaginable.

BROTOPIA

A book written by the host of Bloomberg Tech TV’s Emily Chang on breaking up the boys’ club of Silicon Valley. It was first partially released in Vanity Fair to much attention, Technorati series creator Susan (EMBED LINK TO CREATOR’s PAGE) had a salon with Emily during the book’s launch in NYC and interviewed her on the topic.

BUNKERS

Every tech billionaire has one either in New Zealand or, more conveniently Monterey County. When shit hits the fan, the technorati will bolt and hide. Covid put that issue to test as they all vacated San Francisco to fresh-air climes.

BURNING MAN

BM was started on a beach in San Francisco in the 90’s and became popular with the freaks and geeks. It now has over 70,000 participants. Everyone who’s anyone knows this is a place to get a deal done. Fantastic venue to get really high with a tech CEO or investor and pitch him while he’s wearing purple sparkly go-go boots, hot pants and and a system full of MDMA. Get it in writing! The first two weeks of September are awash in the Bay Area (don’t plan any pitch meetings) as either half the city is in the desert high, or when they return in their Playa-dusty cars, their dopamine levels are so low they’re to be avoided till their internal chemistry returns to a better level.

CHILDREN

Fact: there are more dogs than children in San Francisco.

COLLEGE

Why bother? Waste of time. Unless you went to Stanford. Or Harvard. Or MIT. But otherwise, forget it. Drop out and Peter Thiel with give you $50k if you’re smart (Thiel Scholars).

CONSCIOUSNESS

Hot fringy topic. Every. Decade. Like Esalen. Better to explore the true nature of awareness with boatloads of psychedelics to take the edge off.

COOPTATION

Fierce competition and cooperation. Eg Goog and Apple. IOW, make your competitors feel like collaborators so they won’t see the writing on the hostile-takeover-wall.

COPY CATS

Whatever Valley billionaires indicate an interest in, the rest of the Silicon Valley ecosystem follows. Whether that’s veganism, living forever, stoicism, early morning salt drinks, wearing all black, colonizing Mars, or hating on San Francisco.

CULT OF FOUNDER

The Founder is God. The rest of us just follow along.

YOUR DATA AND PRIVACY

“Data is the new oil of the 21st Century.”

Yes, tech companies are using your data in nefarious ways. But it’s complicated, and the value of the data is complex. It depends who you are. While oil is a commodity that is found and then hauled and sold around the world to an eventual end, our data is slippery and, in fact, companies don’t tend to actually sell the data itself. For example, Amazon would never sell its data to Google. Far too valuable.

In California, Gov Newsom suggested a “data dividend” where companies like Facebook would pay their users a fraction of the revenue they make from data. Very California. (Also, you’d get about $25 annually). And of course, don’t forget you actually agreed to have your data used. Facebook isn’t cheap to run, friends!

The golden rule in Silicon Valley is if the product is free, you are the product.

DEPRESSION

Big issue amongst entrepreneurs that is not spoken about. It’s really hard to be an entrepreneur! Constant rejection of one’s ideas by investors. The wild ride of running a startup, the ups and the downs and no security. Laurie Seagall did a series on this while at CNN.

DOPAMINE-FASTING

Hot new Valley trend of avoiding things that are pleasurable such as conversations with friends, movies, tasty food, sex, and eye contact. Why? Because getting too much of a good thing is considered bad, and we need to have more time for no stimulation.

DIVERSITY

Whatever Valley billionaires indicate an interest in, the rest of the Silicon Valley ecosystem follows. Whether that’s veganism, living forever, stoicism, early morning salt drinks, wearing all black, colonizing Mars, or hating on San Francisco.

ENGINEERS

A very special breed of people who should be treated as such.

Setting the scene early on for this in 1997, NYT: "People who have to think deeply, like programmers, need individual offices," said Eric Schmidt, the former chief technology officer for Sun Microsystems, who recently became chairman of Novell, a software company. "The best and the brightest drive this industry and the high-tech economy. Giving them an office to be more productive is a smart investment."

ESALEN

Still popular! Every new generation of founders in Silicon Valley rediscovers Big Sur’s Esalan as if getting naked in a hot tub with a cracking view of the Pacific is a new thing (no, they didn’t watch Mad Men). Great place to reset and deal with one’s guilt over making money at others’ expense.

FAILURE

Failure is to be celebrated. Start again! Particularly if you are a 27 year old male who went to Stanford. Less so if you’re a 36 year old woman who has a kid at home, elderly parents to be looked after and venture capitalists to pitch. "Fail upwards" is a favorite cliche, fail flat on your face and if you're a charming dude, especially a white dude, other people's capital will still be there for your next venture.

FOUNDER HOUNDERS

Women who like to date founders in the hopes their men will be the next billionaire. Of course, this doesn’t work in the opposite direction because so few women are founders.

GROUP HOUSING

Venture-backed living situations for adults who work in the tech industry. It’s like you never left college. (And if you dropped out, voila, now you get to experience dorm living with a wicked steam room, sauna and pickleball court.)

FANGS

Facebook - Amazon - Netflix - Alphabet (Google), your company either better be trying to get acquired by them or better not slide in their lanes - if you have any meaningful success the FANGs will be coming for your venture one way or another.

FASHION

If you’re into fashion, you’re dumb and not working.

FIX THINGS

Huge drive to fix things using technology. From your mental health to politics.

FREE WILL

Do you still have free will? Or are the algorithms making your decisions? Does this keep you up at night? It should.

HOMELESS

Like much of California, Silicon Valley has a very deep shortage of housing. Tech companies have started to get involved in funding new affordable housing, but it’s still barely a drop in the bucket.

Bloomberg: “Silicon Valley’s Shame Living in a Van in Google’s Backyard”

(Series co-creator Susan did a salon on housing in 2020 interviewing the NYT’s Conor Dougherty on the housing crisis in California and beyond.)

HOMELESS

Like much of California, Silicon Valley has a very deep shortage of housing. Tech companies have started to get involved in funding new affordable housing, but it’s still barely a drop in the bucket.

Bloomberg: “Silicon Valley’s Shame Living in a Van in Google’s Backyard”

(Series co-creator Susan did a salon on housing in 2020 interviewing the NYT’s Conor Dougherty on the housing crisis in California and beyond.)

JOY

What is that? Nothing is done for joy in Silicon Valley. (Circle back to Dopamine Fasting. Except MDMA at Burning Man, that brings a lot of fleeting joy.)

INNOVATION

Innovation used to be big in Silicon Valley. Then came Big Tech. Big Tech kills innovation. Innovation is killed internally at these companies due to sheer size. Eg. Google has 120,000 employees; how do you keep the startuppy innovation vibe with so many people? On campus massages and dry cleaners are nice but don’t stimulate innovation. (Rather they just keep the employees working at all times). Secondly, these companies slurp up small startups who potentially may compete with them or who have cool products. So Cool New Company Startup suddenly becomes part of Google, and the founders are usually bound to stay at the Big Tech company for 3 years.

KITE FOILING

An unsociable, dangerous sport that involves flying over the water. Thursday night races are a good schmooze fest despite being in a wet suit and freezing in a car park.

MIDAS LIST

Published by Forbes once a year, it’s a list of the VCs, “The World’s Best Venture Capitalists.” VCs think about it all year and are desperate to get to the top.

MORAL COMPASS

Popular term with seemingly do-gooders in SV, or the press berating the Valley.

Humanize is built to exploit humans’ desire to be seen having a strong and good moral compass.

NIMBYS

Not In My Backyard... that is, don’t build new affordable homes in my city because the city is charming just as it is and new, affordable housing will ruin my city.

NOT AGING

Aging is a disease to be cured. Tech billionaires obsess about death. There are two reasons for this: 1) They can control almost everything in their lives except death which remains frustratingly inevitable. 2) Colonizing Mars is a one-way ticket.

THE OXFORD MAFIA

Huge numbers of Oxford grads since about 2005 when Peter Thiel first went over to the SAID Oxford Business School and recruited a few young hopefuls.

PALANTIR

The intelligence company started 17 years ago, cofounded by Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale. It recently went public. It has never had a profitable year, and it went public at a $21B valuation in October 2020. To repeat, in 17 years it has never been profitable and it went public in 2020. Are you bummed you didn’t invest?

PHOTOSHARING

Sites that have photo-sharing capabilities on messaging can be quickly used to become child pornography hotbeds.

PR

Silicon Valley startups are built on PR. The first thing a founder thinks about is: Who is going to write about me? The PR is done by women. Which company does best is typically which company has the best PR to differentiate itself from the other companies doing exactly the same thing. Laura Sydell @NPR story.

PRIVACY

We all think we want privacy but, actually, most people just don’t care that much. You’d have to give up using any technology to hold on to any semblance of privacy.

PSYCHEDELICS

Everyone’s doing it. Lots of micro-dosing to deal with the Valley’s depression but also for creativity (innovation is at an all time low in the Valley).

RELIGION

The shame! No, religion is NOT ok in Silicon Valley. It’s not rational. Still, it presents an opportunity: no company has yet disrupted religion.

ROGUE LABS

Very rock and roll! Like Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, they are biohacker lab communities doing things like trying to make insulin, and make it cheaply. Also very 1995 Internet vibe. Doing it for the community. Freaks & Geeks.

RUNDLE

A term coined by NYU Stern Professor of Marketing, Scott Galloway, to describe the bundled recurring revenue subscriptions like Amazon Prime. Humanize sells the rundle model to their community members. The companies that are outperforming their peers are the ones that have created alluring subscription rundle programs. For example, Dollar Shave Club, Peloton, Stitch Fix, BlueApron, and Frank and Oak.

SALT JUICING

Water + Salt + Lemon Juice Popularised by Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, who says it’s how he starts his day. Boom! Gulp.

SAUDIS

Their money is found throughout the Valley, causing moral distress only when there is a press outrage over, say, an American journalist is murdered in Turkey. NYT, 2019 - Silicon Valley’s Saudi Arabia Problem

SECTION 230

Section 230 came about in 1996 under the Communications and Decency Act. It immunizes websites aka “interactive computer services” from legal liability for the comments of their users and says they can’t be treated as the publisher or speaker of third-party content (you, me, any user). When Congress enacted Section 230, it recognized that holding websites legally responsible for user-generated content would cripple the rapidly developing online world. Section 230 defines Internet culture as we know it: It’s the reason why websites can offer platforms for critical and controversial speech without constantly worrying about getting sued.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) crafted Section 230 so website owners could moderate sites without worrying about legal liability. The law is particularly vital for social media networks, but it covers many sites and services, including news outlets with comment sections. In 2021, Section 230 is a bipartisan issue. Mostly. Both parties want to update the 1996 law but for different reasons. Broadly it’s like this: The Democrats want the Internet companies to take more responsibility for their platforms, and be held more liable. The Republicans say that the Internet companies are moderating their sites with an eye to sweep off conservative points of view. (You’ll recall Trump freaking out at Twitter earlier in 2020.) For a company like Google that already has over 100,000 employees, they can moderate the content fairly easily. For smaller companies like craigslist (50 employees but about 70 million users a month) having to moderate every posting with the threat of liability over them could be crippling.

SLEEP

Not much. Good news though, there’s an app for that from the Valley. (Calm.com)
From Buzzfeed: “I think meditation’s very 2014 or very 2015,” half-joked Susan MacTavish Best, a self-described brand influencer who was throwing the sort-of slumber party for a sleep app, Calm, at her home. “I think sleep is a great market and a great business, because we all have to do it.”

SMART TECH TO ABUSE

Using smart tech to mentally and physically abuse and control people. This has been cropping up more and more in the Valley amongst couples.

SPAC

These are all the rage right this moment. Special Purpose Acquisition Company - aka a blank check fund that helps a company go public. This is almost an entirely all-male dominated world .. both those who start SPACS as well as the funding from them. Sometimes they’re started by men with deep connections who’ve been kicked out of their jobs for bad behavior. See this article in TechCrunch. One of the only women to raise a SPAC is Joanna Coles (ex EIC of Cosmo USA/Hearst).

STARVATION

Current trend amongst the men of Silicon Valley due to apparent health benefits and slowing down the aging process.

SUPER COMMUTER

Drives over 3 hours a day to get to work as too expensive to live near workplace.

SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM

Term coined by Harvard’s Shoshana Zuboff. Big Tech is following you around on the Internets and using your FREE data to make money off of it. As Big Tech needs to make more and more money (shareholder value!), they aggressively find new ways to get you to give up more data. For Free. So they can make more money. You don’t have a say in the matter other than to not use any Big Tech. Obviously that is quite impossible to achieve if you’re a normal member of society.

THE BATTERY

Private members club in San Francisco that is a hot spot for Silicon Valley dealmakers. Has about 5000 members now. (co-creator Susan member #21).

TAX BREAK FOR TECH

Tax break in San Francisco by the city for companies like Twitter to lure them and their employees to the city.. City told it’s great for the neighborhood but actually, it makes no difference because the employees never actually leave work and the neighborhood remains shitty. Eg. Market Street around Twitter.

THE PREPPER

Finally vindicated during covid. Most engineers are also preppers. Susan has two technorati friends who were prepping hardcore starting in December as news came out of Covid in Wuhan. Both who coincidentally now live in LA took their kids out of school in December.

TRANSHUMANISM

The idea that human beings can transcend our current natural state using technology, that human evolution should become self-directed - all the rage in Silicon Valley.

UTOPIA OF 1998 - a distant memory

Connecting the world with the Googley mantra Don’t Be Evil. HAHAHAH.

VELVET ROPE ECONOMY

Looq is a velvet rope economy company.

From NYT’s Nelson Schwartz’s 2020 book Velvet Rope Economy - How Inequality Became Big Business

In nearly every realm of daily life--from health care to education, highways to home security--there is an invisible velvet rope that divides how Americans live. On one side of the rope, for a price, red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened. On the other side, middle- and working-class Americans fight to find an empty seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college acceptance, or a hospital bed.

We are all aware of the gap between the rich and everyone else, but when we weren't looking, business innovators stepped in to exploit it, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to profit by serving the privileged. And as decision-makers and corporate leaders increasingly live on the friction-free side of the velvet rope, they are less inclined to change--or even notice--the obstacles everyone else must contend with. Susan interviewed Nelson during early lockdown March 2020 the day his book came out.

WHISTLEBLOWING

Well, yes. Hullo Theranos! Susan has done a handful of salons on whistleblowers with the Theranos/Boeing whistleblower attorney Mary Inman.

WOMEN & EQUITY

Women have about a quarter of equity that men have in Valley companies. The long term consequence of this is that men continue to have a leg up on the power in the Valley. Women are paid less for positions they tend to fill such as Chief Marketing Officer. See this CNBC article.

WOMEN AND FUNDING

It’s really hard for women to get their startups funded. Here is a December 2019 headline in TechCrunch .. just soak this in: US VC investment in female founders hits all-time high - Female founders raised 2.8% of venture capital this year. Since then, funding for female founders has tanked.