valley feels
I’m fresh off a variety of travels, from the dunes of Oregon (yes, the coast of my home state has magnificent dunes dotted with pine trees) to pilgriming the Camino de Santiago in Spain at the instigation/invitation of Craig Mod and Kevin Kelly, to a more prosaic trip to SF and LA, a soft re-entry to the professional world.
I’m still processing the Camino experience, if I’m honest, so holding back on that for now. But I do have some thoughts on the current state of my corner of the tech world from SF. If that sounds dull, skip to the end for an overshare, a book recommendation, and a review of the Apple Watch that’s really a review of our future as AI symbionts.
Are the tech good times over?
Six years ago, after I had left Tumblr and all of my possessions in storage New York, I had an acute sense that everything was on the table. I might live anywhere! Berlin and San Francisco were the only real candidates, so I gave each of them a month trial.
I loved “lively, provisional” Berlin but there it felt like technology was on the edges and cultural creation was the core. San Francisco was so obviously the inverse, I abandoned any notion of moving there a week in.
That 2012 trip was hardly a loss, though: meeting dozens of tech folk new and old, I got a survey of the energy in the Valley. Weirdo technologists showed me their side hacks, VCs tried to rope me into their companies where the idea/management see-saw was tipped firmly in the wrong direction. It relit my excitement for building products and companies and threw me on the path that eventually led to starting Beme.
I’m currently antsy as hell to get to work, to build a team, to execute on SOMETHING. So I headed to SF for a week and did the same exercise of meeting about 30 people, half friends, half friendly strangers.
In contrast to the feral optimism of six years ago, what I found was a pervasive (though not universal) discomfort. The toxic smoke appearing toward the end of the week defined the mood. Many people I met, investors and engineers at the heart of the last wave of consumer mobile technology, felt adrift in the current ambiguous trends of ML and pure-logistics-execution everything. They felt the party was over. Others, designers and engineers I really respect, were more critical and reflective than I’ve ever heard them, seemingly asking “what the hell kind of party is this, anyway?”
The pessimism felt like a symptom of startups’ shift toward the mainstream. I learned to write C so that I could add features to a MUD that I loved playing, a deeply uncool, primitive social network of teenagers sneaking hours on the family computer. That clandestinely won skill has turned out to be the keys to the kingdom of this current moment of the global economy. We are not hacking away in the middle of the night, we’re being called to testify to Congress. The limelight burns.
I find many reasons to be optimistic still:
Being thoroughly mainstream means startups get to play in industries that were totally off-limits, monopolized by rent-taking, entrenched players. Consumers consistently are running to new companies, because they have learned the prices will be lower and the service will be better. The capital is more available to technologists to attempt audacious, difficult things than ever before–regardless (at least for 2-3 years) of where public markets head.
I’m also optimistic about the other source of pessimism, the idea that automation and AI will soon destroy most jobs. Tech encroaches on every imaginable industry, and growth does mandate that we invent new economic activity (or reinvent our concept of the economy altogether) once its efficiencies set in. But as Luke Kanies argues brilliantly, increases in efficiency tend to lead to higher quality and the expansion of the whole definition of work and entertainment. We will see inventions of many new categories still of entertainment, gaming, media, etc, and distributed software (my home turf) will be at the core. Some of these new categories will count as work (as much social media has), some as leisure. Happily for our threatened planet, most will consume remarkably little in the way of physical resources.
I’m also optimistic that tech’s being out in the light means massive expansion in what gets made, who it gets made for, and who gets to make it. The tools are now inexpensive, the skills are widely learnable. The culture within tech companies still lags, but that gap is closing too.
Having met the founders of companies like Even (great to meet you, Quentin), and given the opportunity to fiddle at experimental places like Dynamicland (thanks, Carl), I don’t think we’re at the end of startups.
Out in SF there were sparkles of optimism at the periphery, some part of which will inevitably become the glowing core.
An experiment in professional oversharing
🔗 Google Doc - Matt Hackett: What I Think I’m Good At
I still don’t know what I’m working on next. It could be joining a company, it could be starting another, it could be a more directed version of the finger-in-many-startup-pies I’ve been up to this year.
I do know that the peg of “CTO” is a strong and uncomfortable one. I am absolutely an engineer and a manager, but I identify less and less with just the technical. I’ve managed teams of journalists, led brand designs, accidentally done a half dozen kinds of sales.
In an effort to better describe all that, I’m publicly sharing a (still very rough) doc of what I think I’m good at and enjoy doing. A provisional, hopefully more honest sort of resume.
I’d love to know what you think.
If you know me, are there things I’m missing? If you don’t, does this give you a better idea of what I do? Make it sound like you’d wanna work with me?
On living at the command of nascent AI
Apple Watch: A (p)review of cyborg life – Matt Hackett – Medium
I’ve so wanted to love the Apple Watch, not quite successfully. I tried version 4 again, and at least got something out of it: a taste of cyborg life.
#1 sci-fi book recommendation
🔗 Light by M. John Harrison
I cannot stop recommending this novel, on par with Neuromancer for the way it hurls you at full speed into the middle of a psychotic future world. You could read this in a couple of holiday flights.
Next up
I wanted to throw an update on my angel investing in here, but it just didn’t fit. I want to share as many real numbers as I can about my investments (11 so far this year), and will do that with you all in a couple weeks.
I’ve also started collaborating with a good friend on a hardware music product I’m really excited about. It’s too early to reveal yet, but early next year I think I’ll have some bits to share.
Thank you so much for subscribing and letting me work out my weird ideas on you. If any of this makes any sense, I’d love to hear from you.
By Matt Hackett
I'm an entrepreneur and engineer, currently in exploration mode. Subscribe to follow along.
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