
Silicon Valley’s Secret: Proximity, Stolen Parts, and the Kindness of Strangers - jackgavigan
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/geek-life/history/silicon-valleys-secret-involves-proximity-stolen-parts-say-atari-alumni
======
keithwhor
I've spent the last two months in Canada, taking in bits and pieces of the
investment landscape and technical culture I left for Silicon Valley two years
ago. I'm interested in the contrast.

To preface, I love Canada. I love Toronto. I was born and raised here. (Yes,
Drake's pretty cool, too). But my biggest criticism of the industry in Toronto
is that it seems to be missing this _spark_. A meeting in Silicon Valley isn't
just a meeting. Due to proximity and kindness of strangers, it's the start of
propagating wave of influence. As you create more of these waves, constructive
interference forms peaks that manifest in specific individuals who are not
only willing to help you, they're willing to champion for you.

Toronto doesn't lack kindness of strangers. At all. But it lacks a large-scale
cohesive human medium via proximity that Silicon Valley so readily provides.
As a Toronto-born Canadian, I'm deeply interested in how Canada's ecosystem
can better facilitate and grow this kind of critical mass of talent and
connections. There are good places to start, my friend Ahmad Nassri runs
TechMasters ([https://techmasters.chat/](https://techmasters.chat/)) and is
bringing thousands of developers together.

I think a great approach might be heading towards deepening SV ties and
becoming part of a larger social medium instead of trying to bootstrap its
own. I think this is a huge part of the NYC tech community that is blossoming
and I've been able to witness first hand as well. I guess we'll see how far SV
influence can reach. :)

~~~
acchow
Also Toronto born-and-raised and living in SF. I'm not sure what this spark
you speak of is, but I feel a ton of energy, enthusiasm, fearlessness, and
widespread talent in SF that barely exists in Toronto. I believe that much of
it has to do with self-selection - SF is full of people that decided to be
there and _intentionally_ moved there - wanted to learn programming, or wanted
to start a company, or didn't feel comfortable being homosexual in their small
town, or wanted to live somewhere with warmer winters and hiking in December.
It feels like most people in Toronto were born there or moved there as young
kids when their parents immigrated. The self selection of people in SF has
dramatic influences on its culture. Maybe you can call it homogeneous and sure
there's a big tech industry in SF, but it's hardly the largest industry there.

------
b1gtuna
" I graduated 256 out of a class of 256 (at the University of Utah). That is,
I had the most efficient degree possible. I got a degree, but I didn’t do one
bit more than I needed to."

LOL!

~~~
bduerst
Well in the 1960's, just having a degree meant more than it does today.

~~~
rhizome
That was before making student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy (1976)
created an educational finance industry[1] requiring the world to produce more
postsecondary students.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Phoenix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Phoenix)

------
blister
I had breakfast with Nolan Bushnell back in 2013 at GameTech and he's been a
huge inspiration to me. The dude is 80? and has the energy and enthusiasm for
tech that is simply contagious. We talked for 20 minutes over bacon on how he
wanted to use his company BrainRush to bring high school education down to
take just six months. Everything he does, he does with gusto and a full heart.

He's one of my favorites. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak at a
conference, take it!

Disclaimer: I am not Nolan Bushnell. :)

------
gopalv
> One of the nice things about Silicon Valley, is, you all have worked next to
> an idiot who has gone off and been successful

That sort of under-cuts the meritocracy message by a lot.

I think success is a product of more things than talent, it could be about
projected talent as much as what's underneath the hood - confidence as a
product of ignorance and narcism is indistinguishable from the real thing,
unless tested.

And guess what, some of those people who talk big actually become those people
by a mixture of opportunity and hard work - I feel like one of those imposters
:)

But asking a lottery winner on picking the best numbers is nearly as useful as
picking a loser on how not to pick them - it's what they do after they win a
dice roll that matters (invest, avoid going bankrupt etc).

This is not without lessons though - that the failures were made in a
consequence-less environment ( _sic_ at Nutting & their bankruptcy) and those
lessons were carried into aa future success instead of being the opening
chapters of a student loan driven panic.

~~~
ryandrake
> > One of the nice things about Silicon Valley, is, you all have worked next
> to an idiot who has gone off and been successful

> That sort of under-cuts the meritocracy message by a lot.

What meritocracy message? If there is one thing Silicon Valley ISN'T it's
meritocratic. Success here is a function of luck, access to capital, personal
connections and shameless self-promotion. Nothing meritocratic about that. We
HAVE all worked with idiots who have gone off and been successful. It's an
encouraging message--if you're an idiot.

~~~
late2part
Silicon Valley is a hell of a lot more meritocratic than just about any place
on earth. I've lived in Europe, Asia, West Coast, Midwest and East Coast. SV
is not perfect but it is magical compared to the norms.

------
pbiggar
This is so true. I didn't steal any parts (though I was given free office
space and other stuff), but much of the success of CircleCI was strangers (or
at least "very new friends") giving me advice, referring me to their friends
and colleagues and investors.

------
jackgavigan
In addition to reinforcing my already-entrenched belief that Proximity and the
Kindness of Strangers are key ingredients in Silicon Valley's success, this
article TIL'd me that Nolan Bushnell, Larry Ellison and Ray Dolby all worked
at Ampex (whose big sign I've driven past many times on 101). That explains
why there are so many buildings in San Francisco with 'Dolby' signs.

------
doener
Isn't Silicon Valley's biggest secret its close relation to the US military?

~~~
Animats
What close relationship? That all changed in the 1980s, when consumer
electronics sped past DoD purchases. This bothered many DoD agencies at the
time.

Not well known: BSD Unix was supposed to die when DARPA cut off funding. DARPA
had decided to support Mach, which was more of a research project and
potentially could have better security. But instead, BSD Unix was taken up by
Sun as a startup.

~~~
dllthomas
I'm failing to find anything on it now, but I remember rumor from the 90s that
the NSA was an early SUN customer. If true, Eric Schmidt is all the more
interesting.

~~~
Animats
NSA probably did buy some SUN workstations. They'd buy a few of anything in
those days.

I was at an aerospace company that made satellites and ground stations back
then, and we had a few Sun workstations in the early 1980s. One had a TV-
resolution color display in addition to the black and white display. Someone
ported an orbital elements program plotting program for satellite orbits and
positions, and the positions of the ground stations, providing a real-time
display. An Air Force general was visiting, and demanded that the entire
machine be immediately moved over to the USAF Satellite Control Facility (the
old "blue cube" in Sunnyvale), which was still running on the 1960s technology
used by NASA for Apollo. This was done, and the in-house machine was replaced
at USAF expense.

------
komali2
Hm. Short article, very fun to read about these alumn though. I'm not so
bought in on the idea that silicon valley itself was the thesis her - seems
like it's just an argument in general for real world networking. I'm bought in
to that, I've never regretted a single meetup I've been to.

------
mschuster91
> A guy working on a database at Ampex was Larry Ellison. A guy working in
> audio was Ray Dolby. Ampex was incredibly generous about letting these
> people start their own companies.

This just can't happen today, anymore. Everybody/-thing and their dog is bound
at least by NDAs, if not worse by non-compete agreements.

The only exception I know of is Google's 20% program, but IIRC even this has
been scaled down.

~~~
kcorbitt
I work for Google, and I've asked for -- and been granted -- IP for a side
project I've been working on. Actually under California state law I probably
had rights to the IP anyway (I haven't worked on it at work or with work
resources) but I've been officially granted a legal promise that Google won't
sue me into bankruptcy to try and assert ownership. :)

It wasn't a hard thing to do, and I get the impression that unless you're
planning on directly competing with something they care about, they're pretty
liberal with such releases.

~~~
mifreewil
Seems like a bad idea, why would you ask for permission? If you're not using
company resources and unless you tell the company about some IP they don't
know about, they aren't going to sue you. You're just giving them the option
to assert themselves.

~~~
kcorbitt
If nothing ever comes of it, it doesn't matter either way.

If it becomes successful enough to launch into its own company, there is a
huge disadvantage to not having the IP situation clarified up front. For one
thing, investors get very concerned about even the remote possibility of
someone else trying to claim copyright to your code. And once you are
successful, it's not safe (or ethical, really) to just assume your [former]
employer will never hear about it and connect the dots.

------
agumonkey
Title sounds like China scene.

