Startups and Venture are the Most Competitive Game

What’s the difference between Silicon Valley and Wall Street? Not that much. It's all in the game. 

What do I mean?

I interned on the sales and trading desk at Morgan Stanley in the Summer of 2007.  While shadowing a trader, I filled the silence with the following comment with the most earnest, eager beaver voice that you could imagine: 

“It’s so great how we fulfill the role of efficient capital markets by providing liquidity to transactions.” 

That elicited a response.  The trader spun around in his chair.  He looked me straight in the eyes.  Deadpan, he stated: “We are all here for one reason and one reason only: to make as much money as possible. Don’t ever forget that.”

Wall Street was straightforward. 

Later that year, a college friend - a year ahead of me - sat me down to tell me a deep insight that he learned from his early days in VC on Sand Hill Road: 

“In California, if you are at the same party with someone once, you’re friends.  If you meet them one-on-one, you're good friends.  And, if you meet them a second time, you're best friends.”

He wasn’t wrong. 

The subtext is that in Silicon Valley, people love pretending. They pretend they are changing the world, that they all know each other more intimately than the rest of us know those in our circles, and that everyone is close friends. In reality, the environment is as competitive as Wall Street, if not more so.  

I'm still amused at the pretense in startups about what it is supposedly like versus what it is actually like. 

We are playing the most competitive, highest-stakes game of capitalism, and the people who play the game are playing to win.