# 23 – The mythology (and reality) of Silicon Valley

Tech Deciphered

In episode 23, we demystify 7 of the most common and core myths on Silicon Valley, from its laid-backness to “everyone is amazing”. Check out episode 22, where we explain what Silicon Valley actually is, talk about its history and geography. In episode 24, we will deep dive on our Silicon Valley loves (and hates) and finally address the elephant in the room: is there an exodus going on or not? Has Silicon Valley’s downfall started or is it highly exaggerated? Navigation: Intro (01:34) Myth 1 - Laid Back (04:25) Myth 2 - Not Transactional (16:11) Myth 3 - Self-Confidence and Assertiveness (27:22) Myth 4 - Ton of Capital Available (37:29) Myth 5 - Everyone is Amazing (47:31) Myth 6 - Failure Always Rewarded (55:17) Myth 7 - “Changing the World…” (1:00:49) Conclusion (1:04:49) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand: Welcome to episode 23 of tech deciphered. This would be our second episode of our trilogy around Silicon Valley. If you remember how previous episode, episode 22 was about what is Silicon valley, as well as what brought us there. For this episode, we're going to talk about the myth of Silicon Valley versus reality. And we are going to share with you seven myths that we have seen over these years, and we believe come a long way explaining how Silicon valley really work. Nuno: This started in some ways with an article I wrote, I think in 2016 and I have four myths in that article. So today we're going to expand on that. Bertrand has come up with a couple more and that whole story started with two things, one with an entrepreneur that reached out to me and I used to have a lot of requests on LinkedIn via email semi warm intros from friends about someone from another was coming to Silicon valley or was visiting, was going to come to Silicon valley to visit and meet with potential customers or investors. But this particular entrepreneur that shall go un-named reached out to me and we had several people in common. It was a relatively cold reach out. And then he just sent me a follow-up message saying, I'm going there for a visit. Can you introduce me to Google, Facebook, all these companies. And I was like, why am I bugged by this? And as I started thinking through it I started actually taking it one step further, which was, I am bugged by it because people have this understanding of Silicon valley that is fundamentally wrong. And that's where this whole mythology came from. In some ways we had people that we knew in common. We had acquaintances, not even really close friends, but I did not know this person. And that was one of the first things that bugged me. It's like, why is he asking me for things? I introduced him to people why? I don't know this guy. And so again, I started going through it, and the second trigger for me to write this article, the myths of the Bay area back in 2016 which is still on Medium if you want to take a look at it, I was about to be doing a keynote for an organization that I was a co-founder of called west to west, which was really linking Portugal to Silicon valley, the two west coast as we call them and really helping entrepreneurs figure out how to best go to market in the U S how to best connect with talents in US, customers, potential investors, et cetera. So I came up with four myths that really helped me frame in some ways, a little bit of my messaging back to entrepreneurs that are not classically from Silicon valley,