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 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

When the institutions are optimized to fund the legible thing and the individuals are optimized to build the legible thing, the identity of the founder itself fades. Being a founder used to carry with it the implication that you had seen something others hadn’t, that you were willing to be wrong in public about an unlikely future you believed in,... See more