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Comment by withdavidli | Hacker News Reader

CTO of well known tech company (Stripe) speak with their investor and a person looking to poach him.

Am I supposed to be collecting the baseball cards of Silicon Valley's elite?

I mean. You brought up the point of dining with two Silicon Valley elites in the first place. Elon is more famous, but most people wouldn’t know Sam.

That context is extremely relevant in this case.

Yes I understand the relevance but I am not a person reading that blog post with that context. The context I have is this:

Here I am, some guy browsing hacker news. Oh look, some other guy wrote a blog post on becoming a CTO. I will click on that. Oh, he had dinner with Elon Musk and Sam Altman and came up with his idea with them. Sounds like something I will never do in my life. Next.

I hope HN can get over the sleight of me not showing proper deference to the masters of the universe.

Don’t you think in some ways it’s the opposite of what you’re describing?

I mean to me they’re “just” people. Successful people but just people. I may or may not have lunch with them.

You passing on because you would “never” do that in your life seems to be the deification. And not sure why you think you wouldn’t. Seems like it could happen easily if there was a reason for it.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't think you are correct. Yes these are just people, but to me this is a typical Silicon Valley insider story. It would be more interesting if he was some talented AI researcher or something like that. But no, he's a founder/CTO of a different successful company, so he meets up with other successful people and dreams up the idea for his next successful idea. And of course there will be no issues with funding or finding the best people, he already has those cards in his pocket.

Are they "just" people? I'm not sure.

I've worked with or been around some of these top people before and, with few exceptions, they seem to have some kind of aura or something. I can't explain it exactly but it's disquieting.

The aura comes from other people putting them on a pedestal. The tech world is surprisingly small and you don't have to be an SV elite to meet folks at this level.

would they have the same aura if you didn’t know who they were?

In any case I am not saying you should not be impressed by their accomplishments. But ... lunch? Come on!

It’s just the way they talk because it becomes normal for them. One of my friends candidly said I should be friends with a person in a conversation, the persons writing made the news. Those two were friends, but the writer also happened to the founder of a major tech company. Not exactly in my personal circle lol. But my friend said it so normally because that’s who she hangs out with now. Don’t count that against her or any privilege. Just meeting the right people to introduce you to more people. And suddenly it becomes normal.

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