She is alive and hearing her recollections is super cool. If you follow the link to the short documentary I mentioned in the column you will see her then and now.
No, I didn't write Fire in the Valley, but did write some other books. I appreciate that you felt Hackers was a cool read. But whether you believe me or not, the default for real journalists is NOT embellishing, but doing reporting to get to the nearest thing to truth. Not all writers do that (some "nonfiction" authors are frank about making up dialogue, and even moving the timeline) but to me and the vast majority of my peers, nonfiction means just that.
I have been fascinated with YC since the beginning and twice tracked batches for stories--W07 for Newsweek and W11 for Wired. So it was great to return in the Sam Altman (and large cast of others) era to see how YC has basically made the pivot from its focus on mainly helping the founders in its batches to the broader mission of spreading startups (and the mentality of founders) throughout the world. When I spoke to PG from his happy UK exile, he reminded me that he was thinking this from the start. It was also great spending time with Sam and many other partners, some of whom I've known for years. Thanks to Kat, Sharon, and all the other YC folks and founders who helped me on this.
Looking forward to reading it, however your first sentence threw me off:
"If the casting director of the TV show “Silicon Valley” were asked to produce a canonical example of an applicant to Y Combinator’s incubator program, she may well have come up with the guy strolling to the front of in a basement auditorium at Stanford on a mid-April day this year."
Am I reading that correctly or was it just an editorial misplacement?
Ballmer says that in the NBA salaries are totally transparent. And columnists know everything that the GM does. Teamwork is judged every 24 second. This makes for a level of accountability that tech firms could use. Is he right?
Good to see so many people here are agog with disbelief at this story, which understandably didn't get as much talk as the more disturbing harassment charges. I am assuming by Uber's lack of a counter narrative to the jacket story that it is accurate. To be sure I did write Uber asking if Fowler's account was correct, but they did not reply.
What is really depressing is that its only the allegedly fraudulent activity that allows the AG to sue--if Spectrum didn't lie about its speed, it would have been free to overcharge and even to keep charging for its obsolete cable modems. And from here on in, there will be LESS regulation of these monopolies.
