I was in San Francisco for 3 years from 1997 working for Te…

I was in San Francisco for 3 years from 1997 working for Telstra the big Australian Telco which had us finding opportunities with big American corporations to create telecom networks that used Australia as a gateway to Asia - ti take advantage of the Timezone (same as Asia) the American way of life (for Americans who wanted to move down here to establish these regional hubs and also take advantage of the Asian Australian element both the long standing relationships that Telstra had developed with all Asian nations telcos in an altruistic non capitalistic way for the original purpose of telecommunications as well as the. large pool of multilingual multicultural Asian Australians including many with technical skills.
Also Telstra had some cutting edge technologies which they had developed (out of the necessity rather than profit motive) over time which they wanted to bring to the global market. And I saw how the Silicon Valley kids could use their MBA networks combined with venture capitalists money to take just the idea and raise huge amounts of money via the Stockmarket to win market share and find partners to co create a new competing product from scratch. The Silicon Valley model looked like lots of smoke and mirrors, and a “a fake it till you make it” ethis fueled by both the fear of the shame that comes with American failure, and the exciting possibility of great wealth. And so even though there was lots of smoke and mirrors, the combination of fear and greed is a force to be reckoned with. at the end of the day Microsoft and Google and the rest are the reality that they are. I remember that amongst the silicon alley crowd of hipsters -going to work for Microsoft was nicknamed - selling your soul and going to work for the devil - but it also meant that you had an insider who would tip you off on the next acquisition and such insider trading info in of itself was the ticket to instant wealth. And if you could get your Microsoft buddy to put your start ups software icon / app on his desktop to “ demo” your product - it could make headlines “Microsoft partners with such and such” which would bring in the loot via venture capital or stock market. Telstra didn’t understand this and so their ten year tested and developed (far superior) product never made it to market.