The back cover of the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog (Stewart Brand, 1974), via Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.

Dear Product, Design and Tech folks of Silicon Valley:

If you have a great startup idea and a burning itch to do it, you don’t need to read this post — go full steam and make it happen! But if not, please pause tonight to reflect and ask yourself a simple question — Do you find yourself at the right place at the right time?

We could all use the reminder that the rest of the planet calls this place where we live and work a magical place. As folklore puts it, Silicon Valley might be the only place in the world that is not trying to become Silicon Valley. You might agree with Sander Daniels [1] who said that “living [in San Francisco]… is like living in Florence at the time of Renaissance” [2].

This post is an exhortation to explore this magical place better for yourself.

By way of introduction, we are Specialized Types. Our group is made up of people who are deeply technical in a specialized area and the group’s mission is to connect technical folks like yourself to the world of startups.

We see it over and over again: the supreme talent of Silicon Valley is — barring a few — not taking full advantage of Silicon Valley [3].

Source: Silicon Valley poster, Etsy

An open secret to Silicon Valley

Here is a wonderful secret — there is a big arbitrage opportunity for impact and growth available only to Valley folks like you. And that is to start working early enough at a startup that will be great in a few years. Think Google before 2004, or Facebook before 2011, or Twitter before 2012, or Uber or Airbnb before 2014. In a few years, everybody else — equally talented, experienced and hard-working as you — will want to work at that startup as well. But, because you went there early, they will have only a small fraction of the fun, meaning, excitement and money as you. No, luck and timing do not matter more than merit, but should be given their due respect.

Think about why you didn’t go to Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, or Twitter in their early years? (Relax, you are far from alone.) Perhaps because (1) you just didn’t know about them — even though they were right under your nose located less than a few miles away from you. Perhaps because (2) even if you knew about them, you were too content where you were, as you rationalized to yourself that you are after all growing in your current role, project, tech ladder, salary etc. Or (3) you didn’t have the right connections and advice — and this is especially true for women and minorities. Or perhaps (4) you didn’t think that new fangled technologies like social networks, smartphone enabled transportation, accommodation, etc. will be more than a fad may be because you didn’t take the time to go deeper [4]. Unfortunately, busy intelligent technical (engineering, product and design) folks are more susceptible to this kind of thinking than non-technical folks.

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for” — John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

Ever wondered what exciting startups might be out there looking for people like you? Ever wondered if you could have coffee with some of those startup founders and have a casual chat without any obligations?

We are today releasing a simple tool we call Hyperlink. Check it out at https://specializedtypes.com/hyperlink/explore/. It is just a form to help you explore privately and informally with exciting startups — startups that we have curated from diverse fields such as drones, health care, networking, security, data science, transportation, finch, gaming, biotech, robotics etc. in partnership with top VCs in the valley. They span the spectrum of seed stage to late stage and are not necessarily a part of the Specialized Types co-investments. We get to see many such startups because of our unique sprawling network of startup founders and VCs. (You can read more about us at specializedtypes.com or read our launch blog post.)

We have been using this tool internally with our founder and VC network over the last few weeks and the response and effects have been tremendous, prompting us to make it public. In less than 5 minutes, you fill out simple information about yourself and we privately connect you to exciting startups to help you explore informally. This is especially meant for senior folks such as senior software engineers or data scientists, senior product managers, directors or VPs of engineering, product, design etc. and includes advisory or part-time engagements.

We want to emphasize that your information and desire to explore is kept completely private so your boss or peer does not know about it. To be clear, we are not a recruiting firm and are not being paid by anybody to facilitate this matching. We are deeply technical people from many different startups ourselves — and simply wish to help more of our ilk explore the wonderful startups around us.

So, y u no explore?

Footnotes

1. Sander Daniels, co-founder of Thumbtack, a startup in San Francisco.
2. “To fly, to fall, to fly again,” The Economist, July 2015.
3. We have chosen to focus on the San Francisco Bay Area in this post primarily for effect. Having a deep network might be even more important for places outside Silicon Valley.
4. Sometimes there are other reasons like immigration and inability to move for personal reasons. Barring that, one could still have two valid objections: (a) Silicon Valley is already full of people who are chasing the success of tomorrow. It is true that there is a factory of VCs and entrepreneurs here. However, for every founder, there are a thousand working away in one corner of a yesterday’s success story. Too many people join or remain at a big company (or a big startup) for too long while making 1–2x of salary. All this while some of their friends work on cutting edge, exciting problems of tomorrow, at a startup where they have a shot at making 10–100x of their salary. The beauty of Silicon valley is that the downside is limited to 1x of the same salary. (b) How does one really identify future successes? The answer is easier than most people think as Silicon Valley runs on deep networks that are easy to tap— e.g., you could ask your trusted friends who are at that startup, or you could ask a VC friend to get started, or you could ask us too 😉.
5. We have many curated startups on the other side of this connection whether or not they are a part of the Specialized Types family. If you are a startup, we have a form for you as well that you can get by sending us email. We do not make this public because we want to curate the set of startups we include in our matching.