Hacker News Reader

Comment by malandrew | Hacker News Reader

The state didn't make them rich. You're giving credit where none is due.

Their hard work coupled with many others like them that worked with them made them rich. The same group of people could have been in another state and done just as well.

The people in California that made people successful are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks and Keith Rabois of the area. VC money is the king maker. In the Bay Area it all started with Fairchild. It's the same reason why Seattle is successful. All the Microsoft money seeded the tech scene there.

These kingmakers have had enough of California and are leaving for greener pastures where they can continue to build successful companies without the state leaching off their work.

If they show up in Texas and other states and succeed in replicating their success, it will be clear it was them and not California that was responsible for the success. I'm glad California is rapidly losing its undeserved monopoly on tech.

View on HN

I’m not sure how to respond but no their success comes from being in Silicon Valley at the right time and developing relationships within this ecosystem. So no I disagree that if Rabois was somehow not in Silicon Valley that he’d be just as successful and wealthy as he is now.

And I’m speaking about his investments. Cutting a check is not “hard work”. You could argue Musk is different because he’s actually the CEO of the his company.

Why is Silicon Valley where it is other than accident of history? The US government could have made military investments elsewhere and Fairchild Semiconductor would have just as easily been in another state.

California and the SF Bay Area doesn't get credit for that. Heck, Silicon Valley was a bunch of fruit orchards for decades. Could have been a different set of fruit orchards in a different state.

Had Fairchild been elsewhere, the Traiterous 8 would have become the kingmakers they became in a different place and Keith Rabois or someone like him would have moved to that ecosystem instead to develop relations at the right time and become rich.

Seattle is the perfect counterfactual to the narrative you're invested in. Microsoft is Seattle's Fairchild.

Saying that all they are doing is "cutting a check" betrays the fact that you've likely never actually worked with a successful VC. The successful ones do so much more than cut a check. For example, the hard work they put in to help you identify and hire talent is indispensable.

I don’t know why this response devolved into defensiveness and personal attacks. I never said I was a founder, though I worked at a startup that Rabois invested in early.

Being an investor is not “hard work” in the same way it is if you’re a founder or employee. Anyone who says it is is lying.

Sorry. Your comments came off as personal attacks on Keith and I mirrored your responses.

I've worked heavily with VCs when I was the first employee at a startup that did well for a few rounds and they worked very hard to help us out. The only difference is that they lived better while helping out because they were already wealthy, but they certainly worked hard for us and for their other investments.

You can be fiscally comfortable and still work hard.

Now I'm not defending how much ownership they take relative to what they put in. Both us and our VCs worked hard. They just took a greater chunk of the equity because of the capital provided.

I think you're severely underestimating the impact of California's investment in education. UC Berkeley and Stanford (private, but accepts state research grants) are top institutions which had for decades attracted some of the brightest minds (professors and students) to the area. These people helped shape the field, from early work on the ARPANET and Operating Systems to the Big Data and AI innovations of today. The expertise is passed on to students which creates not only a highly talented labor pool, but also trains the next generation of innovators.

Considering this concentration of talent, I think it's no surprise that the Bay Area is a hub for innovation, and the impressive list of companies founded by Berkeley [1] and Stanford [2] alumni is a testament to this. The concentration of talent is the environment that attracts funding and VCs, and will ensure that the Bay Area will remain the place to be in tech.

And Seattle, your "perfect counterfactual", has University of Washington, another state-funded top institution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_U... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_S...

The US federal government makes tons of military investments all over the country - I worked for one of them for years and it was not in CA. There was something specific about Silicon Valley. I think Stanford has a lot to do with it personally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com