Silicon Valley Secrets

A few months ago I was interviewed by a 19 year old intern who asked me why people blog in the silicon valley. "Because of the secrets," I said. "It's such a secretive place that we're bursting at the seams." While I was utterly captivated by this idea, the intern decided to focus her article on the parallels between our mom-based blog and phone sex blogs. (Yeah, right.)

Hey, it's an approach. One of those residual "girliness" category things.

But I kept thinking about secrets and the silicon valley. Any piece of society has their secrets. Heck, the American south has made a whole literary name for itself by mining a pastiche of repression, secrets, and strange characters. What makes the silicon valley unique is the high tech business. And what makes us interesting is what we're not talking about - our secrets.

The six degrees of separation theory postulates that we're all connected - with six jumps through people that we know to connect anyone on the planet. Seems just a bit western-specific but heck, it spawned an internet company (or fifty), a book or two, a game, a play, and a movie. Good street cred. Here in the silicon valley (and connected technology world), it's more like three degrees of separation. Everybody has a secret or knows someone who does.

One of the things that always tickles me about the silicon valley is the gossip factor. When I first came here, I didn’t really know that men gossiped. Ha! The men I know here in the valley gossip far more than the women.  And everyone does it.  Gossip here isn’t your classic social/sex stuff though. It’s about money. Success. Who's doing what business with whom. New ideas. And technology is the biggest, sexiest thing around. Picture an enormous elephant with blonde hair and boobs, lounging in the middle of the living room, wearing Fendi. Buffing its toenails, with huge clanking bracelets sliding up and down its forelegs. THAT's technology in the valley. The coolest new product - awesome!  Oooh, check it out.  And <insert name here> just started a new company with <insert name here> making <oops, can't tell you> and funded by <insert name here.>  What fun!

But here's the thing: Nobody talks about personal things in their blogs. This particular blog is about what it's like to be a silicon valley mom - sort of. But you notice that we talk about the everyday stuff. Nobody's talking about what it was like when everybody and their dog lost their shirts in 2001. Nobody's talking about mates disappearing for literally years, about husbands who come home and endlessly pace up and down the halls, cellphones glued to their ears.

You might hear us speculating generically about the "effects of stress," but we don't tell you about the constant "just got dropped in the roller coaster" feeling about being 3/4 of a million dollars in debt - and worrying every single day that your life will go up in flames.  We don't even get any really amusing stories about the gloriously (and not so gloriously) "monied" valley types.  (Now that Steve and Larry are aging, that is.)

Why not?

Can't do it. Sorry. Everybody's in bed with one another -- God Forbid you should alienate someone or piss off an investor or leak a secret. And anything can be a secret. People regularly go into "stealth" mode here when they start companies, and I have seen best friends (admittedly, two highly neurotic, type "A" ones in this particular case) circling one another when talking about their new companies, not telling a thing. For months.

I think it's too bad. If you want just technical stuff you can always go to www.techdirt.com and get the word about companies and such, but wouldn't it be fun to have some really bitchy billionaire wife who no longer cared just let it all hang out? Or someone whose wife/husband just drove a company into the ground, talking about just which loser aspects of their mate's behavior were the reason that 20 mil of VC funding got flushed away?

Insider trading? Ha. Don't look at me to tell you. It would get back. But I do chuckle at some of the names. Multimillionaires? From what I've seen and heard, some of these people could use most of it in therapy. But you didn't hear it here. Valley sex secrets? Told one by one, after several drinks, and never in a way that could impact potential funding.  Stories about out-of-control wives who do things like buy second houses for their children to play in (so the décor in house number one stays pristine?) Talked about over dinners by laughing valley types – and recognized by people at the next table.

There's something else. If you want to be a success in America, especially the silicon valley, you can do it.  We're one of the best meritocracy systems around.  First step?  Be a success.  Yup. You heard right. That's the law of the valley.  Hang up a shingle, say you're already what you want to be, and then go do it.  Very few junior types around here.  Everybody's a big, swinging ...Ahem.  Yeah.  Well the 2001 crash got rid of the worst of the posers (rumor has it that they first went back to living with their parents, and now they're all either in alternate careers or working on the "package a feature, call it a Web 2.0 product" frenzy), but it's honest to goodness valley culture that you don't show weakness.

This is respected. It's how we do things. And when you're keeping up appearances, you keep smiling (and keep your secrets quiet.)

Here are some typical (and real) valley secrets and situations. Do any sound familiar to you?

• You have talked with 180 VC's and nobody will fund you.
• In your startup, your working-from-home, equity-paid engineers have stolen the source code and are holding it hostage until you renegotiate their contract, giving them the ability to license it.
• Your best programmer is manic depressive and "codes better" without his meds.
• The president of your company has disappeared and it later comes to light that he's been murdered by a woman who works on the assembly line.
• Your ex-boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse is being investigated for something which you can totally believe and which tickles you mightily.
• One of your executives has a collection of knives, which he likes to play with and often leaves lying around the office.
• One of your coders is having a sex change.
• Things suck and you don't want people to know.
• You're in talks to sell your company for millions of dollars and terrified that information will leak and the deal won't go through.
• The deal went through just as your best friend's company tanks and he loses everything.
• Your best friend's company just sold and your company is tanking.  (What do you talk about over dinner?)
• You went through negotiations and hired a top-level, very well-known firm to prepare the paperwork - they screwed it up and the deal is off. 
• You find out that a competitor’s CEO was part of the swinger’s scene several years ago.
• In a period of insanity, you founded your company yourself. It's three years later, you have maxed out three credit cards, your employees are furious at you, and you're looking as good as you can while you're praying that someone will buy you.
• You are now worth a hundred million dollars and all of your friends are having a hard time financially (as many are in the valley.)

Are you bursting at the seams?  Is the pressure getting to you?  Allow us to help you out.  Give us a nice anonymous comment and spill the beans!