Silicon Valley & the Industry of Cool
Forbes’ Erika Brown has a good summary of how Silicon Valley has turned into a mini Hollywood.
She recounts the escapades of Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founders of Yelp, the local social site for reviews of bars and restaurants, who hold parties (see pic) with inebriated young women hanging over them, including a “Yelp Elite” mixer at the San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art ending in a girls-only kissing orgy. When asked where they want to be in five years, Stoppelman responds: “Sitting on top of a pile of money … [in unison with Simmons] … surrounded by women! Yeah! [high five]“
There is the book party hosted by billionaire Larry Ellison for political pundit Arianna Huffington at his swank San Francisco pied-a-terre. Nick Douglas, writer of the valley’s gossip site, ValleyWag, attended the soiree and wrote a column about it the next day, griping about his treatment by Google co-founder Larry Page and his girlfriend. There are Valleywag’s “Hotties of Web 2.Ooh!” contests, etc, etc.
Erika concludes:
I’m reminded of a scene from Almost Famous, a movie about an aspiring reporter who writes about an up-and-coming rock band. A crusty old journalist advises his teenage protégé: “You cannot make friends with the rock stars … They’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls … I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock ‘n’ roll and strangle everything we love about it … and then it just becomes an industry of cool.”
Most of the action is moving up to the city in San Francisco, leaving the more staid region to the south — the traditional “Silicon Valley” as quiet as ever.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
