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War Bros Didn’t Always Rule Silicon Valley
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In September 2015, the Founders Fund hosted a retreat at an eco-resort in British Columbia.
Key facts
- In September 2015, the Founders Fund hosted a retreat at an eco-resort in British Columbia
- As Kay, in full raconteur mode, spun stories of optimizing the mouse and advising Steve Jobs, Thiel listened with increasingly visible incredulity
- The reporter thought back to that moment a couple of weeks ago while reading an op-ed in The New York Times headlined “ Silicon Valley Was Right From the Start,” by Sharon Weinberger
- But even as DOD funding kept fueling innovations (Darpa grants provided dough for the GUI, the internet, and Google Search), that new generation was characterized by idealism, a hackerish love
Summary
One morning at breakfast the reporter was sitting across from Kay at a long table. The man who conceived the Dynabook —the modern computer that they all use—was expounding on his exploits when Founders Fund leader Peter Thiel plopped down next to him. The mustachioed legend was stunned. He began stumbling out his bona fides, but quickly realized that for someone unacquainted with his résumé, it would have sounded ridiculously overblown. The reporter thought back to that moment a couple of weeks ago while reading an op-ed in The New York Times headlined “ Silicon Valley Was Right From the Start,” by Sharon Weinberger. “Silicon Valley’s values haven’t changed, its customers,” she wrote, calling the industry’s current love affair with military tech “less a story of political conversion than of market adaptation.