Alex Danco writes a Substack newsletter on tech, venture capital, startups, finance, and social class.
HN commenters recommend it as insightful, citing his essays on Canadian tech, Silicon Valley's ethics, and startup bundles.
i threw some good parties in the 90s at warehouse spaces I lived in, and this is distinct from a community space, but closely related. with hindsight, there is a specific talent for doing that.
Alex Danco's writing on "Scenes" [1] codifies a lot of the details, but nobody so far has been able to scale it.
The main factor when I did a hacker/artist space, it was the effect of relationships with musicians and scene people, not the affect of a vision to make something cool.
The defining factor of the spaces I've seen succeed vs. fail was something physical, and explicitly not software, and to a lesser extent, politics. You can have software and politics flavored things, but unless you are doing something physical like robotics, motorcycles, puppeteering, bookselling, pyrotechnics, music production, mma, it's not going to survive. Sure, there are spaces that don't do anything physical, but if you scratch the surface there is always a mysterious source of funding by the usual suspects who want to direct the scene to some other end.
The physical activity creates the competence hierarchy that is a stable and self regulating social dynamic.
[1] https://danco.substack.com/p/how-scenes-work-with-jim-oshaughnessy
It probably won't work, the problem is a lot deeper than a something a few more talented migrants can fix. A few years ago Alex Danco wrote up what he saw as the issues [1] and it reads pretty much like the list I would have made in the 90s, except for the bit about Montreal.
There were also other issues, like accounting practices, [2] which don't sound like thy have changed much either.
[1] https://danco.substack.com/p/why-the-canadian-tech-scene-doesnt
[2] https://troymedia.com/business/tech-sector-canada-problems/
> Every paragraph dripping with absolute glib, lack of self awareness.
> ... "Compassionate To The Core" ...
The elites are truly out of touch with the reality. Some are unhinged. It is baffling.
Just the other day, some exec, who worked with Musk at Tesla, wrote that him acquiring Twitter was the part of a master plan to fix the climate: https://archive.is/uSz6I
Read also: The Michael Scott theory of social class (2021), https://danco.substack.com/p/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social
Not sure about their underratedness, but I find the following newsletters interesting and insightful:
Two Truths and a Take by Alex Danco (tech, VC, and broader topics): https://danco.substack.com/
The Uncertainty Mindset by Vaughn Tan: https://uncertaintymindset.substack.com/
The Diff by Byrne Hobart (finance, tech): https://diff.substack.com/
Kneeling Bus by Drew Austin (urbanism, tech): https://kneelingbus.substack.com/
Alex Danco offers an interesting criticism of Silicon Valley's desire to satisfy "what many people want" without any sense of responsibility or paternalism: https://danco.substack.com/p/progress-postmodernism-and-the-tech
(I am not saying the critique of postmodernism is right or wrong, but simply that it is insightful and relevant.)
They're quite explicit about their goals, they're just quieter about it now because they don't want to give away the game. Alex Danco, one of my favorite finance writers, wrote this piece about it, recommend: https://danco.substack.com/p/if-youre-first-out-the-door-its-not