san francisco has a strange gravity, attracting people who want to build the future, and also those who want to be seen building the future. the result is a city that can feel incredibly performative, especially within the startup bubble.

a lot of “founders” aren’t actually building much. instead, they’re posting, going from one event to the other,... See more

The venture-backed startup path doesn’t have its 2008, but instead has has something more diffuse and possibly harder to reverse: cultural exhaustion.

The relationship between founders and their investors reflects a status shift too. Venture capitalists have been dehumanized.8 When firms were led by individuals with recognizable taste and conviction, founders treated allocation as something worth thinking about. Now the partners are interchangeable, the institutions behind them are... See more