Imagine there’s no Silicon Valley

Take a walk with me

Time travel fuzzy screen…. where are we? Oh! We’re in San Francisco in 2023, but it’s another universe, one where the tech bubble didn’t happen.

San Francisco is a beautiful, small-but-big city, surrounded by water and hills. It has no tech. It’s a place for stockbrokers, bankers, realtors, lawyers and doctors. And chefs, waiters, bartenders, fashion designers and struggling artists. That’s what SF was in 1993 when I landed from Geneva, excited about my new life as an Irish immigrant to the west coast.

The world of tech has moved elsewhere, and Silicon Valley just isn’t much of anything.

In 1994, we heard the early chatter of the worldwide web, the internet for everyone, and Mosaic Communications releases its web browser. But VCs weren’t too excited about the pipedream of democratized information and free services. In New York, several astute bankers and investors began to see what could be, and they like it. The internet blossomed around New York, not Palo Alto. The traditional semiconductor companies and software companies would continue their west coast quest, but the new stuff started happening east coast.