| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JUNE 21, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| DIGITAL DISPATCH
In the Land of Plenty, Plenty of Angst At Buck's, the quirky, Wild West-themed power eatery in Woodside, Calif., owner Jamis MacNiven put 28 notches on his door jamb last year. Each nick marked a visit by a camera crew to get a look at Silicon Valley's movers and shakers as they cut deals and munched burgers beneath his talking buffalo head or other goofy items. The chroniclers of Silicon Valley's rich alpha nerds have churned out a long list of tell-all books, novels, documentaries, and TV series. The latest: On June 20, Turner Broadcasting will air its exhaustively hyped docu-drama Pirates of Silicon Valley, with an eerily convincing Noah Wyle as Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Steven P. Jobs. The movie is actually pretty good--and it's not unkind to Silicon Valley. But MacNiven and his Woodside cronies have reason to dread a splashy book about to hit: The Silicon Boys and their Valley of Dreams by Newsweek Senior Writer David A. Kaplan. On one level, it's a well-told but quite familiar evocation of some of the Valley's highest-profile denizens. Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison collects expensive cars and chases beautiful women. Jobs mesmerizes everybody he's not infuriating. And everybody fears and loathes Bill Gates. Well, duh. FAUX HUMBLE. Still, Silicon Boys is bound to make some smug Valley folk feel a tad uncomfortable. It gets at an undercurrent of resentment, cynicism, and materialism that's undermining the place's normally upbeat and idealistic culture. By Kaplan's reckoning, 64 new millionaires and 2 new companies are now created every 24 hours in Silicon Valley. But every wild new initial public offering seems to spawn a lot of public palm-to-the-forehead anguish and ''Why that chump and not me?'' talk. It turns out Kaplan is the perfect vehicle for this angst: By book's end, he admits he passed up a shot to become one of Yahoo! Inc.'s early employees. Silicon Boys opens with a mean-spirited stab at Woodside, a tree-thick, horsey enclave of millionaires in the valley's northwest corner. ''There's the rich, the filthy rich--and then there's Woodside,'' insists Kaplan, who calls Woodside the ''Beverly Hills of high-tech'' and zings residents for everything from overdone security gates to the faux humility of their pickup trucks. Kaplan unleashes particular bile on the annual auction at Woodside's local public school, where affluent parents and locals throw a private party and bid on each others' lavish goodies and services to raise money for the school. Auction-goers can nab such treats as a week on Ellison's yacht. Last year, it went for $125,000. Folks even bid on attending a backyard barbecue at uber-venture capitalist John Doerr's place, including diving for pennies in his pool. As tidbits from Kaplan's book zip around the Valley faster than the latest dumb E-mail joke, I'm told residents are outraged at Kaplan's infiltration of their folderol. They accuse him of putting their children's safety at risk. (After all, without Kaplan, nobody would suspect that a town where the average house costs $900,000 is full of rich people.) MacNiven says he initially helped Kaplan meet locals but backed off when the writer seemed to be after too much personal dirt. ''The wretched excess of consumption has not taken place here like other places,'' insists the restaurateur. ''Not like with the Arabs and the Japanese and Texans.'' Kaplan is clearly going a little overboard with his withering critique of Woodsiders. Surely the lifestyles, antics, toys, and parties of Silicon Valley's bigshots aren't any more outrageous than those of the robber barons in days gone by. Let's face it: It's a rare gazillionaire with the strength of character to stay crammed in his original starter home and invite his well-heeled pals over for Cheetos and Hawaiian Punch. Kaplan's tale of Ellison taking former 49er football star Joe Montana joyriding in his jet just strikes me as the lotta-money version of Uncle Ray letting the neighbor kids drive his ride-'em mower. SACRED COWS. But I don't think we should dismiss Kaplan's message as mere portfolio envy, either. He justifiably whacks some pretty sacred cows flat on the fanny. He makes a good case that Valley mantras, such as ''I'm not in this for the money'' and ''Failure is O.K.,'' are increasingly full of hooey. ''The [venture capitalists] like to say failure is O.K.,'' says the plain-speaking, serial entrepreneur Jim Clark, who co-founded Netscape Communications Corp. ''No, it's not.'' Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang may modestly acknowledge that his net worth is possibly undeserved--but Kaplan quotes one of Yang's associates noting that billionaire Jerry always seems to know precisely what the number is. Kaplan even includes some serious yanks on the chain of Doerr, a partner at venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. With such hits as Netscape and Amazon.com to his credit, Doerr is the Internet world's answer to boxing impressario Don King, complete with unruly hair--albeit blonde and more gravity-controlled. Kaplan suggests that the frenetic Doerr has put the hype meter into the red zone, annoying even his own partners. And Kaplan sneers, for example, at Doerr's oft-repeated claims of disliking media attention, counting 627 Doerr quotes in stories running in 1997 and 1998 alone. The Valley has long had overnight millionaires. It has long had excesses. In the mid-1980s, the police chief of San Jose suggested that cocaine was the currency of Silicon Valley, with addictions soaring from the stress, the money, the fast pace. Ultimately, Kaplan voices a sad tone that I think has become very real out here: The strain of Internet time and the barometric pressure of exponentially growing bank accounts is sapping souls. These days, instead of being about changing the world and making a bundle--in that order--the new Silicon Valley is about making a bundle in a changing world. As Steve Jobs sighs to Kaplan: ''There used to be something magical here...[but] people care more about material things now.'' Jobs's own second-to-second net-worth increases are displayed on the TNT Web page pushing Pirates of Silicon Valley. CHILD'S PLAY. From Buck's to the Little League field stands, there is a pervasive preoccupation with wealth. My friend Karen is a successful Woodside resident with two children. She was nonplussed recently when her young son climbed into her car after school one day and asked her a question: ''Mommy, if Casey married Mary would they be multibillionaires?'' Turns out, these are the children of two high-tech gold miners worth easily that much. It seems that local public-school children are getting hung up on net-worth comparisons, too. (Which, of course, they can download off the movie-of-the-week Web page.) It has got level-headed types like Karen freaked out: ''Everyone is obsessed with wealth,'' she says. ''How do we teach our kids values when they're hearing about private jets and all that from their friends?'' What's the fallout of all this stress and angst? I'll talk about that in the next column. BY JOAN O'C. HAMILTON _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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RELATED ITEMS In the Land of Plenty, Plenty of Angst PHOTO: Cover, ``The Silicon Boys'' PHOTO: Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs in Turner's ``Pirates of Silicon Valley'' PHOTO: Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates in Turner's ``Pirates'' TABLE: Pointers INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online | |||
