Ayn Rand & Silicon Valley
My friend Jason Crawford, a tech entrepreneur longtime Objectivist, has a delightful and insightful post on the parallels between Ayn Rand and the Silicon Valley ethos. Here’s my favorite section, which contains a fascinating observation about entrepreneurship and investing I had never thought of before.
Going against the consensus
The virtue of independence—thinking for yourself—is the theme of The Fountainhead and a cardinal virtue of the Objectivist ethics. It’s also a part of the maker mentality: innovation comes from following one’s own judgment, not the herd. Fred Wilson says social proof is dangerous, while Brad Feld exhorts investors to make their own decisions.
In contrast to the makers, mere copiers like the Samwer brothers are looked down upon. In the Valley, you get more respect if you try an original idea and fail than if you copy an idea and succeed.
Rand’s basic conception of independence is having one’s primary orientation to reality, to the facts; not to other people and their ideas. To succeed in entrepreneurship and especially in investing, though, you need to go farther. You need to be not only be right, but non-consensus right. I first heard that idea and that phrase from Mike Maples, but I heard a variant of it from Peter Thiel in his recent Stanford lectures on entrepreneurship, and from Reid Hoffman at a Pando Monthly event.
3 Comments to “Ayn Rand & Silicon Valley”
These comments are spot on regarding Ayn Rand and Entrepreneurs. The leading edge of entrepreneurship is populated by visionaries who see possibilities where others see only problems or simply see nothing. Ayn Rand made up the stories of her heroes, but she had plenty of inspiration in the entrepreneurship department.
Read-world stories abound: Fulton getting the idea of steam power while watching a whistling tea kettle, the Wright brothers determined to make a man-carrying airplane after seeing flying toys in Europe. Edison doggedly determined to invent light without heat, which we now know as the light bulb. John Ball figuring out a new process for refining bauxite into aluminum which drove the production costs from over $80 per pound to pennies.
Rand’s unique contribution to world of heroes is John Galt, the man who knows the moral value of his mind, his vision and his life, and lives that moral ideal.
There has to be at least one “real” thinker in a think tank for that think tank to have any real success.
There’s a BBC documentary called “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace,” about the philosophy of Silicon Valley. Ayn Rand is the first influence they mention, showing some interviews with her, etc.