Siliconned

I picked up this book recently after listening to an interview on the Tech Won't Save Us podcast (kudos to John Medland for putting me onto that). It's a really great read and very eye-opening. After reading the book, a lot of business decisions that I didn't quite understand now make a lot of sense. The book spells out exactly how the Vulture Capitalist and Startup ecosystem works. I did not know all the details. Now that I do, the title of the book seems more apt. It all seems like one big con. You should read the book though and make your own decision. It's obvious from the title which side the author is on and yet he does a good job of summarizing the other side's arguments before refuting them, so it's not completely one-sided.

It's no secret that the Silicon Valley startup scene is full of absurd ideas that end up raising tons of money and then going nowhere like Juicero, Teforia, and WeWork, as well as outright scams like FTX and Theranos. It is also no secret that for every tech unicorn that succeeds, many more fail. Along the way some people make a lot of money and many more lose money. How does the whole system work? How did we end up here? Why does it feel so broken?

There is plenty of blame to go around. Broadly, the author blames: Poor business models that rely on miracles to succeed, an obsession with growth and rapid scaling, venture capitalism and the misaligned incentives behind it, low-interest rates and tax breaks in an effort to boost innovation, and general bloat in unproductive roles and the amount of meetings.

The book is not all doom and gloom and finger-pointing. At the end, the author does have a chapter of suggestions on how to fix the problems. If you work in tech or a tech-adjacent field or are just trying to make sense of how Silicon Valley works, I highly recommend this book.