Thanks for the pointer. I was unaware of 1. how important midwesterners have been to Silicon Valley, and 2. how old the Silicon Valley-Wall Street cultural divide is. Plus, just a fun read.

It was a really great read. My dad was a solid state electrical engineer working on silicon, and went to Grinnell as well for his undergrad. We are from just south of there. Nice to hear about the place

Thank you, I had read that before and lost track of the authorship when I wanted to share with a colleague.

This is the single most elucidating thing written about the cultural matrix of Silicon Valley.

Yes but that's years before. I'm talking dotcom era.

When $300M of investment capital ends up in the $125,000 sale of a sock puppet mascot, was he (broadly speaking) wrong?

While big companies came out of that era, examined at the time and surrounded by since-deceased dotcom peers, I don't fault a reasonable person for concluding as he did.