Before starting the usual programming, I have an exciting announcement: I’m launching a cohort-based course on Maven!

It’s a five-session, four-week course to help you find the startup job of your dreams. For this first cohort in particular, I’m planning to keep the class size small so I can spend lots of 1:1 time with each participant.

I’ll make it my goal to find you a job at a high-growth startup, no matter what it takes. (And, no, you don’t have to live in Silicon Valley, or plan to move here.)

I hope you’ll check it out. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Who to know in Silicon Valley

In real life, you become the average of the five people you interact with most often. But none of us live in “real life” anymore.

A cursory Google search says that the average person spends 7 hours per day on the web — but, honestly, that feels low. What do people do with their other waking hours? Genuine question.

In today’s world, we’re becoming who we follow on the internet.

Spend time hate-reading the New York Times, and you’ll become a wanna-be pundit. Spend time watching gossipy, horrible dating shows on Netflix, and you’ll become gossipy and horrible. Spend time following the lives of the mega-rich, and you’ll become financially irresponsible and unmotivated.

When I moved to San Francisco to join the startup scene, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who to follow.

I read the startup books, followed the tech blogs, listened to the VC podcasts, started a few companies, met some venture capitalists, attended lots of objectively boring networking events, and even paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for an MBA degree from UC Berkeley. I ultimately joined Astranis, and have spent the last four years on the inside of a Silicon Valley unicorn, meeting various Twitter personalities in real life and learning how the startup ecosystem ticks.

As such, I’ve learned who’s who in Silicon Valley and would love to help you upgrade your startup attention diet.

Entrepreneurs to follow

• Nikita Bier — Founder of two hyper-viral social apps that sold to Facebook and Discord

Nikita Bier @nikitabier

My Product Timeline 2012: Politify - 4 million users 2014: Five Labs - 5 million users 2017: tbh - 9 million users 2022: Gas - 10 million users 20 flops in between

5:38 PM ∙ Jan 31, 2023

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• Anne Wojcicki — Co-founder and CEO, 23 and Me

• Austen Allred — Co-founder and CEO, Bloom Tech (coding school)

• Patrick Collison — Co-founder and CEO, Stripe (payments platform). Possibly the smartest human in Silicon Valley.

• Patrick McKenzie — Advisor to Stripe. Also named Patrick, also insanely smart.

• Lucy Guo — Co-founder of Scale.ai (data labeling for AI).

• Sam Altman — Former CEO of Y Combinator, current CEO of OpenAI (makers of GPT-3). My current frontrunner for “the next Elon Musk.”

• Palmer Luckey — Founder and inventor of Oculus VR, founder of Anduril (defense hardware).

• John Gedmark — Co-founder and CEO of Astranis (internet satellites).

John Gedmark @Gedmark

It is absolutely critical to the future of the United States that we get our best and brightest building real things that solve real problems

7:46 PM ∙ Nov 12, 2022

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• Susan Wojcicki — CEO, YouTube. Yes, Anne’s sister! Power fam.

• Ryan Petersen — Founder of Flexport (shipping logistics). Once rented a boat and drove a customer into the LA ports to diagnose what was wrong.

• Joe Gebbia — Founder of Airbnb. Just started a new company, Backyard.

• George Hotz — Founder of Comma.ai, a self-driving car company with <20 employees and a working product. Hacker, best known for being the first person to SIM-unlock an iPhone.

• Lenny Rachitsky — Product guru, formerly Airbnb.

• Balaji Srinivasan — Former CTO of Coinbase (crypto exchange).

• Web Smith — Co-founded Mizzen and Main (menswear), now running a media company.

• Trevor McKendrick — Founder of Seis (Spanish-native banking). A real homie.

Investors to follow

• Delian Asparouhov — Investor at Founders Fund and founder of Varda Space. Has worn non-matching shoes his entire life.

• Ann Miura-Ko — Investor at Floodgate, board member at Lyft.

• Paul Graham — Co-founder of Y Combinator. Incredible writer.

• Marc Andreessen — Invented the modern web browser, then became one of the best investors of all time.

• Ben Horowitz — Wrote the best startup book of all time, then became one of the best investors of all time.

• Cyan Bannister — Early investor in Uber, SpaceX, Postmates, others.

• Seth Bannon — Founder of Fifty Years. Climate, bio, and deeptech.

• Naval Ravikant — Angel investor in Uber and Twitter. They made a book about his sage wisdom.

• Garry Tan — Former founder, early employee at Palantir, brand-new President of Y Combinator.

Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 @garrytan

In 2008 I showed up to Y Combinator Startup School to take photos of speakers and learn how to start a startup. I was an engineer and designer and had never started a company before.

7:45 PM ∙ Jan 1, 2023

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• Logan Bartlett — Investor at Redpoint. Has a great podcast.

• Turner Novak — Investor at Banana Capital. Meme machine.

• Arlan Hamilton — Founder of Backstage Capital. Was homeless in 2015, before starting her own investing firm.

• Katherine Boyle — Partner at a16z, co-founder of their American Dynamism practice.

Katherine Boyle @KTmBoyle

We cannot build American Dynamism without American Seriousness. My latest for @bariweiss and Common Sense.

bariweiss.substack.comThe Case for American SeriousnessWe don’t need aging institutions to pave the way for 21st-century dynamism. What we need is will. And audacity....

12:19 PM ∙ Apr 18, 2022

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• Tim Ferriss: Investor turned writer of “Four Hour Workweek.”

Silicon Valley Writers to Follow

• Kara Swisher: The best tech reporter of all time.

• Ben Thompson: The best serious tech blogger of all time.

• Benedict Evans: Former investor who publishes an epic year-end report every year.

• Mike Solana: Incredible writer, shares the vibe of the more conservative corners of Silicon Valley (i.e., Founders Fund).

Mike Solana @micsolana

ngl i killed this one

piratewires.comThe Fifth Estatepirate wires #85 // summary and analysis of the twitter files, a dangerous alliance of powers, and technology’s nature brings the indus...

2:36 AM ∙ Dec 14, 2022

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• Taylor Lorenz: Washington Post columnist that tech bros love to hate (but mostly love, no matter what they say)

• Roon: Pseudonymous account with objectively absurd sway over some of the most influential people in tech.

• Noah Smith: Economics writer in San Francisco. Bunny-owner.

• John Coogan: Recent addition to Founders Fund. Makes great videos.

Thanks for reading Silicon Valley Outsider! Here are a few past editions that you might like if you enjoyed this one:

• 🙏 An Outsider’s Search for Meaning

• 😱 Should I have shut down my startup?

• 👎 Pessimism is easy, but that doesn’t make it right

If you want to join 75+ folks in getting an email from me each Monday, I’ll help you understand Silicon Valley using normal-human words.