> Jim had participated in drug-fueled “founder parties”, group orgies and all other crazy experiences in San Francisco. This naturally led to the breakup with his fiancée and a nervous breakdown.

The Bay Area is a weird place. There are countless companies staffed by smart people doing amazing things. There are also countless people cosplaying as smart people and founders who are going through all of the motions, but producing little value.

In my experience (which is as limited as any other one person's experience) the environments at the companies doing the amazing things are on the boring side. Nobody wants to hear about those because it's uninteresting. So instead all of the public stories are about crazy parties, quick wins, huge exits, and the glamorous stuff.

People go there seeking it out. Some get lucky with some early wins, like Jim from this story. But when the time comes to do work, they flounder and get pushed out, also like Jim. It's a big place, though, and there's always some connection willing to hook you up with another referral if you press hard enough. That's the step where the performative, partying people start getting grouped up with other performative, partying people, and it snowballs from there.

Meanwhile the real companies are off quietly doing boring work and getting things done, pushing the Jims out if they accidentally get hired or acquired into the fold. It's a weird place.

I always thought that Theranos was the perfect embodiment of this idea. Look, she wears a black turtleneck, just like Steve Jobs! She dropped out of a top university, just like Bill Gates! She started her startup to solve a problem she had (fear of needles), just like the AirBnB guys started their startup because they needed a cheap place to stay!

Except what she didn't have was an actual functional product (oh, and nevermind that teensy detail that the product as envisioned is actually physically impossible).

If I had one but of advice for my younger self, it would be to get very good at sniffing out who is the real deal vs. who is cosplaying. And to be fair to myself, all I really had to do was trust my instincts - in the few instances where I got taken in by bullshit I definitely sensed some red flags in the beginning, but I ignored them because I thought "well, hey, look at all these bigwigs who think this is such a great idea". Bullshit is actually really easy to spot (usually), it's just that for social reasons we're often conditioned to nod and smile in the face of obvious bullshit.

SF is such a weird vibe in general. I've watched a lot of founders/tech bros go to burning man for the first time, completely miss the point of it but adopt an air of superiority for attending. I watched a founder weave in his experience on peyote into a company all hands. They also, for reasons I simply cannot fathom, go out and buy a green Range Rover. And as someone who's been in the ENM space for a long time, SF is the LAST city I'd want to experience it in...