

Silicon Valley has horrible role models - jasonadriaan
http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2011/08/08/silicon-valley-has-horrible-role-models/

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kelnos
Poorly written article, weak arguments, link-bait title.

I think it's a bit weird to use Mark Zuckerburg as an example here. How is
Facebook a "money burning doomsday device"? It's one of the most successful
web startups of the past decade (probably _the_ most successful). And calling
him a douchebag is just a dick move. Do you know the guy personally?

Acquiring skills like "marketing, business management, development" is clearly
a great benefit to bootstrapping your own business. It seems like most if not
all of the Silicon Valley "darlings" end up having to do this. How are they
bad role models for doing exactly what you suggest is good?

The failure thing is clearly misunderstood here. No one is praising failure in
the generic sense. It's a specific type of failure that involves trying
something new and potentially revolutionary. For these kinds of things, it's
_very_ hard to know if you can be successful without actually trying it out.
The failure is only bad if you don't learn something from it. Even if you
don't, someone else likely will, and can build a better business based on a
modification of your failed idea.

Regarding the money: no one is forcing angels and VCs to invest. They do so of
their own volition, and in as an informed or uninformed manner as they so
choose.

If we have such an insane attitude toward money and business, why is SV still
a leading region for innovation and economic output? Clearly we're doing
_something_ right. We're not perfect, but why not direct your ire at entities
that really _are_ destroying wealth, like our friends on Wall Street, or,
hell, the US government?

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free
I am far away from SV.

>The issue is an insane attitude towards money and business, and in our case
we have adopted it through idolizing Silicon Valley types Thats is the
standard attitude in any business driven community. The stock trading firms
are the same all over the world. I'd bet that the silicon valley idols are
much much better than any other role models I have seen.

>Ironically when he fails the community will congratulate him because in this
industry failure for some crazy reason is good. What I understand is that
failure is acceptable there. This is the reason people can do things that
otherwise would not be possible and is crucial to its culture.

>Mark Zuckerberg and any other Silicon Valley douche-bag you can think of are
the worst role-models for kids because they teach kids bad habits. I don't
seem to have learnt any bad habits from them. I don't know of any douche-bags
but I do know of a lot of people I look up to who are from SV.

>What happened to the real entrepreneurs? Remember those guys? Yes, The guys
that built real businesses and not money burning doomsday devices! I miss
those guys… because you could always learn a lot from them. Is there a strict
definition of entrepreneurs? and by some rule the guys at SV are not
entrepreneurs. I'd like to hear that.

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Synthetase
I don't agree with the author's premise that founding service companies are
somehow anymore noble than building a product companies or whatever else. A
dollar from a local business is as good as a dollar from an advertiser.

The image of the Silicon Valley douchebag doesn't seem to ring true. My
friends who've met Mark have nothing but good things to say about him.

I've had the fortune of meeting some fellow college students who have passed
through YC and fit the mold of "young hotshot." Rather than arrogant and brash
divas, they've all struck me as thoughtful and responsible adults. They were
mature beyond their years. Their respective businesses are well on the way to
success.

To each his own.

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wccrawford
While I agree, there's 2 things happening in Silicon Valley:

1) People are making money, investing money, and generally concerned with
money.

2) People are making things, developing things, thinking about things, and
generally adding new things to the world.

For #1, I totally agree that the rolemodels are bad.

But for #2, there is no 'right' way to invent something. It takes on many
different forms, and works differently for everyone. They aren't so much role
models as they are inspiration. And we can all use a little more inspiration.

