Rooting against tech

One thing I’ve come to fully realize amidst all this SVB fallout is just how much of the country has a negative view on tech, VC, and Silicon Valley in general. Sure, part of it is all political and you can expect that, especially in 2023. But you can’t really ignore the fact that it seems like the vast majority of the country is rooting against the broader industry. Some of it is warranted of course.

There’s a lot of load individuals in the industry that can give us a bad look. They are loud and vocal. We’ve received a lot of flak for living cushy lives funded by VCs in a near 0 interest rate environment for almost all of the 2010s. Many “businesses” never should have been funded in the first place. When they fail, it’s easier for people to laugh.

I can’t fault people for making tech, VC, and Silicon Valley the butt of a lot of jokes. We bring it upon ourselves. Hell there’s a hilarious HBO show called Silicon Valley that makes fun of us and is embarrassingly accurate. All that is fine and I have a thick skin. I’ve been in this industry for 5 years and I’ve seen a lot of this first hand. We could use a bit of a reset and we’re going through that now.

But at the same time, it is disheartening to see just how many people are rooting for us to fail. They ignore the innovation, jobs created, and life improvements that have been created in Silicon Valley. They don’t understand the repercussions of watching Silicon Valley Bank fail. When tech/SV wins, the country wins… yet we are rooting against our own.

All this does start with us. We need to do a better job getting rid of the bad apples… the grifters, the startup and VC tourists, etc. They unfortunately exist and a small number of people and companies are outweighing a lot of the positive momentum in tech right now. We can’t fully control what people think of us - there will be haters one way or another, but we can start by taking a deep hard look at ourselves and do better as an industry.