Silicon Valley From Below

One of my favorite books is “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, the autobiographical chronicles of the hijinks and achievements of the legendary physicist and professor, Richard Feynman.

An iconic chapter is “Los Alamos from Below”, in which he chronicles his time working from the “bottom” (rank-and-file) of the historic atomic bomb project. Nobel Prize winners like Oppenheimer, Bohr, and Fermi were at “the top” of the Manhattan project, while Feynman spent much of his time messing around with the combination locks on filing cabinets and trying to sneak messages past the censors who would read his mail.

Ever since reading the book, the idea of covering a major institution or historical happening “from below” has stuck with me. Feynman managed to make large contributions to a world-changing project, while retaining his sense of humor and eye for the absurdity of the experience. (“Ball Four”, another favorite, does something similar for Major League Baseball.)

So my goal for the 2020 revival of this blog is to bring a small taste of that perspective to Silicon Valley. In any objective sense, my co-founder James and I are “in the mix”—we are a reasonably early-stage company in the midst of the ups, downs, and madness of Silicon Valley. We may (or may not) be in the midst of the fourth major industrial revolution, but it sure feels a lot like we’re experiencing it “from below”.

I aim to keep these posts short, mostly as a hack to get myself to write, but also because many of my thoughts are incomplete and under-developed. I hope you’ll be generous as I attempt to test them out on you all.