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Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

The Plateau of Plenty: Why VCs Are the Seers of Our Time



The Plateau of Plenty: Why VCs Are the Seers of Our Time

The venture capital game is not about what exists now. It’s about what could exist tomorrow. It plays out in the foggy frontiers where new products, services, companies, and sometimes even entirely new industries are born. This is not the world of proven revenue models or stable income statements. This is the world of potential. Of “what if.” Of “not yet, but soon.”

And most often, this world is shaped by technology—by advances in AI, robotics, biotech, quantum, and more. These are the tools of transformation. But sometimes, innovation comes from reorganization. From remixing what already exists. McDonald’s didn’t invent the hamburger; it restructured the system. It optimized service. It scaled operational efficiency. Innovation isn’t always inventing—it’s often refining, reimagining, and recontextualizing.

Still, when people say “VC,” they usually mean tech. They mean what’s happening on the bleeding edge. The reason places like San Francisco, Bangalore, or Shenzhen matter is not just the talent or the capital—it’s the concentration of context. It’s easier to grasp the future when everyone around you is building it. You stand on the shoulders of giants, and suddenly, tomorrow isn’t so far away.

But here’s the truth: even when you raise venture capital, you’re not winning the game. You’re buying time. Time to figure it out. Time to build. And unless the thing you’re building has the potential to grow exponentially, you’re probably not playing in the right arena. Venture capital is about scale. If you’re not dreaming in exponents, you’re not dreaming big enough.

Right now, we are standing at the edge of an incredible wave. AI, synthetic biology, decentralized infrastructure, spatial computing—it’s all accelerating. The landscape looks chaotic unless you zoom out. That’s when the fractal patterns begin to emerge. Innovation doesn’t flow linearly; it blooms from the edge cases. It looks small—until it changes everything.

But this wild ride won’t last forever.

All exponential growth curves eventually flatten. The plateau is inevitable. But this isn’t a plateau of failure—it’s the plateau of plenty. The Age of Abundance long foretold in ancient scriptures. The promised land. The world where scarcity is a design flaw we’ve finally overcome.

AI, for all its buzz and complexity, is just another tool. A mental bicycle. A cognitive rocket ship. But tools alone don’t determine right or wrong. That happens at the level of the soul. The next generation of innovation won’t just need engineers—it will need navigators. People with discernment. People who’ve undergone spiritual training as rigorous as a pilot’s or an astronaut’s. To wield the power of AI and exponential tech, we will need a new kind of ethics, rooted in wisdom.

In that sense, the best venture capitalists aren’t just funders—they’re seers. They don’t just see returns. They see realities yet to be born. The greatest among them will already sense the plateau of plenty, even as others are still chasing the curve.

And so, the VC game continues—not just as a financial activity, but as a spiritual exercise in vision. A discipline in foresight. A leap of faith that, one day, we will arrive.



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The $500 Billion Pivot: How the India-US Alliance Can Reshape Global Trade
Trump’s Trade War
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The Last Age of War, The First Age of Peace: Lord Kalki, Prophecies, and the Path to Global Redemption
AOC 2028: : The Future of American Progressivism

Liquid Computing: The Future of Human-Tech Symbiosis
Velocity Money: Crypto, Karma, and the End of Traditional Economics
The Next Decade of Biotech: Convergence, Innovation, and Transformation
Beyond Motion: How Robots Will Redefine The Art Of Movement
ChatGPT For Business: A Workbook
Becoming an AI-First Organization
Quantum Computing: Applications And Implications
Challenges In AI Safety
AI-Era Social Network: Reimagined for Truth, Trust & Transformation

Remote Work Productivity Hacks
How to Make Money with AI Tools
AI for Beginners

30 Ways To Close Sales
Digital Sales Funnels
Quantum Computing: Applications And Implications
AI And Robotics Break Capitalism
Musk’s Management
Challenges In AI Safety
Corporate Culture/ Operating System: Greatness
A 2T Cut
Are We Frozen in Time?: Tech Progress, Social Stagnation
Digital Marketing Minimum
CEO Functions

Poetry Thursdays

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Thursday, June 05, 2025

Why San Francisco Remains the Beating Heart of Tech Innovation


Why San Francisco Remains the Beating Heart of Tech Innovation

There’s no shortage of beautiful cities with great talent. Berlin has the art. Austin has the energy. Bangalore has the engineers. But only San Francisco seems to continually birth world-changing tech companies decade after decade. Why?

It’s not just the weather or the investors. It’s not even just the number of startups or Stanford grads. It’s the compounding effect of people, proximity, and history—of networks forged over coffee, late-night hackathons, and dorm room whiteboards. San Francisco has become the center of gravity for a self-reinforcing tech ecosystem that’s almost impossible to replicate.

1. The Network Effect of People

Silicon Valley’s biggest asset isn’t a policy or a program—it’s people. The density of talent here means your Uber driver is pitching a startup, your barista has an app, and your roommate is building an LLM. Every encounter has the potential to lead to your next company, investor, or co-founder. There’s a contagious optimism and shared delusion here that you might be the one to create the next platform shift.

This network didn’t form overnight. The same Sun Microsystems founders who mentored the Google team also invested in the early days of Amazon. PayPal alumni helped fund LinkedIn, YouTube, and Tesla. YC grads fund new YC companies. The social capital here has layered like sediment, each generation building atop the last.

2. Proximity Is Power

Zoom is great. Slack is useful. But nothing replaces bumping into a future collaborator at a party in SoMa or overhearing a pivotal conversation at a café in Hayes Valley. Innovation moves faster in person. The creative friction that happens when ideas collide face-to-face simply doesn’t happen in a Zoom room.

The Bay Area is unique in how geographically tight it is for such a high concentration of talent, capital, and vision. Stanford, Sand Hill Road, and South Park are all less than an hour apart. That proximity lets ideas compound at a velocity unmatched anywhere else.

3. The Culture of Risk and Reinvention

Failure isn’t a scarlet letter in San Francisco—it’s a badge of honor. This is a city where risk is a feature, not a bug. Where launching a half-baked prototype on Hacker News is expected, and quitting your job to pursue a moonshot is normal. The culture doesn’t just tolerate failure; it reveres those who swing big.

Combine that with an ever-evolving base of immigrants, dropouts, scientists, and dreamers, and you get a place wired for reinvention. From semiconductors to software to AI and biotech, San Francisco continuously reinvents itself—often before the rest of the world even catches up.

San Francisco is not the only place ideas are born. But it remains the place where ideas are supercharged.

Because it’s never just one founder, or one fund, or one startup—it’s the compounding effect of thousands of ambitious minds colliding in real time, in the same place, at the same moment in history. And that, for now, still makes San Francisco the home of tech’s future.



The Rise of Shenzhen: How a Fishing Village Became China’s Silicon Valley

If San Francisco is the long-evolved brain of global tech, then Shenzhen is its fast-beating heart. In just a few decades, Shenzhen transformed from a sleepy fishing village into a 21st-century tech superpower—home to giants like Huawei, Tencent, and DJI. While San Francisco’s story is one of compounding over generations, Shenzhen is a story of acceleration, scale, and state-engineered possibility.

So, how did Shenzhen happen—and so fast?

1. A Bold Government Bet

Shenzhen’s story begins in 1980, when Deng Xiaoping designated it China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). This single act turned Shenzhen into a giant experimental sandbox—where capitalism could bloom inside a communist country. Low taxes, deregulation, and a green light for foreign investment turned what was once rice paddies into a magnet for entrepreneurs.

It wasn’t just deregulation; it was directed opportunity. Government money flowed in. Infrastructure exploded. Ports, highways, and factories appeared almost overnight. It was top-down vision meets bottom-up hustle.

2. Manufacturing Meets Innovation

Unlike Silicon Valley, which began with semiconductors and software, Shenzhen’s genius is its physicality. It became the world’s hardware capital—the place where things get made. If you’re a startup building a device, Shenzhen is where your prototype becomes a product, fast.

The city’s dense supply chains—“the Shenzhen ecosystem”—mean you can walk from factory to circuit board supplier to packaging to shipping office all within a few blocks. Iteration is lightning-fast. Prototyping can happen in days, not months. This makes Shenzhen the ultimate “speed-to-market” engine.

3. A Culture of Copy, Improve, Lead

Shenzhen also benefited from an open-source hardware culture. In the early 2000s, many local companies started by copying Western designs. But it didn’t stop there—they improved them. They localized them. And eventually, they leapfrogged them. Huawei became a global telecom leader. DJI dominated drones. BYD took on electric vehicles.

While Western critics called it “copycat culture,” insiders knew it as rapid learning. Shenzhen startups didn’t just copy—they compounded on what they copied.

4. Talent Migration at Scale

Much like San Francisco, Shenzhen thrives on imported ambition. Migrants from across China flocked to the city by the millions, bringing hunger, dreams, and an intense work ethic. Unlike Beijing’s bureaucratic sprawl or Shanghai’s financial polish, Shenzhen became the “youth city,” where age and credentials mattered less than hustle and speed.

It’s not a place you stay forever, but it’s where you build fast and cheap. A city for makers, not talkers.

San Francisco vs. Shenzhen: Two Models of Innovation

San Francisco is a cathedral built slowly by generations of founders, researchers, and investors. Shenzhen is a rocket pad launched by policy, manufacturing muscle, and speed-focused culture.

Where SF has coffee-fueled brainstorms and venture pitches, Shenzhen has circuit boards, soldering irons, and lightning-fast scale.

One thrives on compounding trust networks. The other thrives on compounding supply chains.

Both are innovation hubs—but each tells a different story about how ecosystems form. San Francisco shows what happens when proximity, people, and history layer over time. Shenzhen shows what’s possible when policy, speed, and manufacturing intersect almost overnight.

And together, they define the poles of 21st-century tech power.



How Aspiring Cities Can Learn from San Francisco and Shenzhen

Every city wants to be “the next Silicon Valley” or “the Shenzhen of X.” But the truth is, there’s no plug-and-play model for building a world-class tech ecosystem. Still, San Francisco and Shenzhen—despite their wildly different paths—offer powerful, actionable lessons. Their stories prove that innovation can thrive under very different conditions, if certain ingredients are present.

So how can cities around the world learn from them—and chart their own unique path?

Lesson 1: Build for Compounding (From San Francisco)

SF Lesson: Innovation is not lightning in a bottle; it’s a long, rolling thunderstorm of mentorship, proximity, and capital that builds over decades.

  • Encourage founder-to-founder mentorship — Great companies often come from the alumni of great companies. Create spaces (accelerators, coworking hubs, meetups) where knowledge is constantly recycled.

  • Invest in proximity — Cities should zone and design districts where engineers, founders, investors, and researchers literally bump into each other. Walkability, coworking clusters, and third spaces like cafes matter more than people think.

  • Cultivate social capital — Tech ecosystems don’t just run on VC money. They run on trust, referrals, and collisions. Public and private institutions must act as connectors, not just funders.

Lesson 2: Speed and Scale (From Shenzhen)

Shenzhen Lesson: Infrastructure enables innovation. Manufacturing capacity, fast iteration, and bold policy bets can compress 30 years into 10.

  • Build ecosystems, not just startups — Shenzhen didn’t just support companies; it created entire supply chains and verticals. Aspiring cities must ask: what’s our local flywheel? Hardware? AI? Agritech? Biotech?

  • Accelerate iteration — If you want builders, reduce friction. Set up local fabrication labs, testing centers, legal fast-tracks for new businesses, and shared resources. Move from regulation to enablement.

  • Bet big with policy — Shenzhen was created because China decided to make it happen. Cities must act boldly—declare tech zones, deregulate thoughtfully, offer land, tax breaks, or even R&D subsidies.

Lesson 3: Talent is Everything

Shared Lesson: The best ecosystems are magnets for ambition. The city must feel like the right answer to the question: "Where should I go to build?"

  • Lower the barrier to entry — Make it easier for smart outsiders to join your city’s ecosystem. Simplify visas, provide housing stipends, subsidize internet and workspaces, offer founder grants.

  • Create a story — People came to San Francisco for the counterculture, then the code. They came to Shenzhen for jobs, then for opportunity. Your city needs a clear narrative: Come here because…

  • Make room for the weirdos — Tech breakthroughs often come from outsiders and tinkerers. Create an inclusive culture that tolerates risk, embraces failure, and rewards experimentation.

Lesson 4: Play the Long Game

No city becomes a tech hub overnight. But with the right mix of ambition, infrastructure, and cultural scaffolding, a city can light the first sparks of its own innovation fire.

San Francisco shows what can happen when culture and capital collide in person over decades.
Shenzhen shows what’s possible when speed, scale, and ambition are state priorities.

If your city wants to lead the next era of innovation, don’t ask how to copy them. Ask how to learn from them—then leapfrog in your own way.

That’s how the next great tech city will be born.

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Tuesday, June 03, 2025

Bay Bridge Therapy



Bay Bridge Therapy

therapy
is not a couch

it is steel span
and setting sun

the long inhale of the car
the hum beneath your feet
as the water flashes gold
then violet

and blood orange spills
from the speakers—
not the fruit,
but the kind that
wraps longing in synth and
lets it hover

your hands on the wheel
steady
but your chest—
light enough to float

city behind you,
or maybe ahead
who cares

the moment stretches
like the bridge itself
long and suspended
between
what you escaped
and what you haven't named yet

this is where the ache
becomes
air

this is where
you remember
you have a body
and it’s moving
forward

this is
what it feels like
to almost
feel okay.

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Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Silicon Valley And Dubai



First of all, what is technically Silicon Valley (it is an actual geography ... it's a valley, I have been) is no longer where innovation is happening. The innovation is happening north of that in San Francisco, a big city where young engineers like to live. And, by now, New York is neck and neck. Because, guess what, San Fran has nothing on New York when it comes to big city living. And Dubai makes New York look like a Third World city.

But look at this Founding Father of Silicon Valley. This guy, the first Prime Minister of India, is the primary pusher behind the establishment of IITs across India. No IITs, no Silicon Valley, pure and simple. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella look visible now, but Indians have always been the majority of the workhorses in the valley tech companies.


You also need capital. Every VC in California gets their money from the pension funds in New York. It is not like the dollar bill in California is a different color from green. Capital is capital. And Dubai has a ton of it.

Culture is big. In San Fran they have a culture where they celebrate failure. They say, fail fast. Fail better next time. But that culture can be cultivated. In other words, be tolerant.

But the truest form of tolerance is cultural diversity, the number one quality I look for in any city. And there Dubai is number one by a wide margin.

The IITs are still producing super smart graduates. But the visa regime in the US has become very unfriendly. Dubai does great there. And if there is room for improvement, it can be fixed by royal decree. I am sure.

Dubai has capital. Dubai can access the same IITs, and only better. Because Dubai is so much closer to home. People like home. Dubai's cultural diversity is the greatest symbol of tolerance there can be.

What is needed is a city inside a city. And I am going to build that. The world is big. The San Francisco Bay Area, or the Hong Kong Bay Area are not big enough for all the innovation the world needs.

And Dubai has excellent location. You have Africa and you have South Asia nearby, the next two Chinas.

To: The Crown Prince Of Dubai
No Techies In Dubai
Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings
Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation





















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Friday, February 08, 2019

New York City Beats San Francisco



This is remarkable.

Many of us have been connecting the dots for years. But this has come sooner than I expected.

The center of gravity for tech innovation shifted from Silicon Valley to the city of San Francisco a while ago. Silicon Valley feels rural. That is where the old companies are. Old like Google and Apple. And most engineers who work for those companies live in San Francisco, because, well, it is the city life they crave. But if it is about city life, San Francisco has nothing on New York City. Shanghai beats NYC on infrastructure, but NYC is not its infrastructure, it is its collection of people. There NYC beats Shanghai.

Already NYC was a strong number two. Then, in terms of VC money, NYC became neck and neck last year. And Amazon voted with its feet. Google has been expanding in the city for a long time.

Years ago Dennis Crowley of FourSquare made news by not moving to San Francisco. His startup did open up an office there, but he stayed put. I was unsurprised. At the time FourSquare was the NYC tech startup with the most buzz.

The next phase in innovation is about reimagining entire industries. I said so in my last article posted on LinkedIn. And NYC is a good place to be for that. It is home to numerous industries.


































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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Cities Can Be Much Larger







If you have bullet trains and hyperloops connecting to Penn Station, can New York City be much much larger? The affordable housing issue kind of goes away with that.

Urbanization is one of the solutions to climate change. More people living in big cities is a good idea from the environmental viewpoint.

The Ultimate Megacity: 100 Million People

San Francisco's Fog Over Growth
the advantages of agglomeration. Put lots of highly skilled, highly productive, highly innovative people together in the same place and the economic gains are huge. ...... on the whole it’s fair to say that San Francisco hasn’t exactly embraced the role of boomtown. There are voter-imposed limits on office construction, new housing developments usually face protests and litigation, and local politics boasts a strong contingent of “progressives” whose main goal seems to be keeping the city from changing. ..... homeowners favor zoning ordinances and other growth restrictions because they keep house prices up. ...... 65 percent of the city’s housing units are rentals, and 75 percent of those are subject to rent control. Most of the San Franciscans who oppose new development do so apparently not to maximize the value of their property but to minimize the odds that they will be forced out of their apartments or otherwise priced out of the city. ....... growth restrictions restrict growth not just locally but on a national level .......

lowering the regulatory constraints on new housing in just San Francisco, San Jose and New York to the level of the median city would lift U.S. gross domestic product by 9.5 percent

....... land-use regulations were also driving up inequality and reducing economic mobility

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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Giant Tech Companies Should Give Money To Individuals And Local Governments

Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Big tech companies like Google should pay money to individuals whose data they cash on, and to governments in whose jurisdictions they make money in. It should be sane amounts and sane percentages, but it can't be zero.

Empire of the geeks
Silicon Valley should be celebrated. But its insularity risks a backlash .... THE English have Silicon Fen and Silicon Roundabout, the Scots have Silicon Glen. Berlin boasts Silicon Allee, New York Silicon Alley. But the brain of the tech world is the ecosystem in and around San Francisco. ...... Airbnb, a seven-year-old firm that helps people turn their homes into hotels, operates in 34,000 towns and cities around the world. ..... American capitalism has a new hub in the west. Wall Street used to be the place to seek fortunes and make deals; now it is increasingly the Valley.

The area’s tech companies are worth over $3 trillion

...... The enormous, disruptive creativity of Silicon Valley is unlike anything since the genius of the great 19th-century inventors. Its triumph is to be celebrated. ....... insularity. The geeks live in a bubble that seals off their empire from the world they are doing so much to change. ..... Many denizens of the Valley believe that tech is the solution to all ills and that government is just an annoyance that still lacks an algorithm.
Silicon rally





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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Hyperloop



New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes is mind blowing. That might be the most popular track.




It takes an Elon Musk to save America the embarrassment of China and Japan outdoing it on bullet trains.



The Hyperloop could actually be producing excess energy. If there are solar panels on the top everywhere, that is more energy than it needs. Good thing.




The Hyperloop would be a great way to connect India's four largest cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata. Why are they still talking bullet trains in India? The Hyperloop is cheaper. Much cheaper. Just like India skipped landlines, and went straight to mobile phones, it should skip bullet trains and go straight to the Hyperloop.

Elon Musk has a Head Of State status. He is totally making impact. This guy will soon qualify for a membership of the G7.




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Friday, May 22, 2015

Reverse Brain Drain?

Best viewed large. The main terminal of the br...
Best viewed large. The main terminal of the brand new Bangalore International Airport. I was one of the first few people at the airport. My mother arrived on the third flight into this new airport. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Top Indian talent in Silicon Valley moves back home to join star startups
Top Indian talent is moving from globally iconic American technology companies to India's star startups. And homes are being shifted from Bay Area to Bangalore. ...... from Google to Flipkart, from Disney and Facebook to Zomato, from Symantec to Snapdeal ..... Matching dollar salaries and the sheer range of future career opportunities are the hooks India's tech blue chips are offering to Indian talent in Silicon Valley. ...... "The smart entrepreneurs have already returned, tens of thousands more will return over the next 2-3 years" ...... being wooed by at least half-adozen Indian startups valued anywhere between $1 billion and $15 billion. ...... All salaries look handsome and Silicon Valley-competitive in dollar terms, and most assignments involve complex technology solutions for the mobile platform...... startups such as Zomato, whose restaurant discovery app is now present in 22 countries, are articulating their ambitions on a global scale. For Silicon Valley's top talent, nothing attracts more than a mission to dominate the world. "The idea is always world domination, if you speak anything less than that, you are not ambitious enough. ......... Both are being paid Valley salaries too — $5-6 million annual packages. ...... but it's just a whole new level of intensity here ..... "India is at the forefront of the mobile innovation" ...... "I made the decision to move here in less than 30 seconds," said Mani. "Hundreds of millions of Indians will experience the Internet for the first time on a smartphone in the next few years" ........ "India will see a technology boom over the next 5 years that will make the US dotcom boom look lame. There will be dozens of billion-dollar companies emerging from India's ecosystem which will transform business, industry and society." ......... "History is witness to the savviest, smartest and most entrepreneurial people usually going off to crazy places at regular intervals. This is relatively reasonable"

 

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