The creator of the Kickstarter campaign, Dorrian Porter, wanted to commission the statue as a tribute to Nikola Tesla, who’s inventions changed the world fundamentally, but who never sustained personal wealth in his lifetime. Electric car company Tesla Motors was also named after the inventor.

Along with the campaign, Porter created an animated video (embedded below) showing what it could have been like if Nikola Tesla pitched VCs in this day in age. The video highlights the Valley funding bubble and investors’ knee-jerk reaction to entrepreneurs and startups that are trying to think outside of the box of the typical VC timeline and scale.

Favorite line: “Wait, this is the deal that Larry’s in?”

Porter writes on his website:

The statue will be a permanent testament in the heart of the Silicon Valley to the genius of Tesla and his influence on wireless, energy and creativity.

And hopefully it will remind the entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley to think bigger.

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Yes, the argument and the lamenting about how the Valley can’t solve “big problems” is one that has been covered ad nauseam in recent months. Our Om Malik had a great blog post about a viral cartoon video of what it would have been like if Nikola Tesla pitched VCs (VCs are short-minded, and hilarity ensues). Jason Pontin had a fascinating cover story in MIT Tech Review about Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems.

Elon Musk standing up in Model X

But I’m specifically talking about the topic of using tech to fight the problem of the changing climate. Musk stands out above almost all other entrepreneurs in his willingness to continuously put this issue at the forefront of the discussion, both through his businesses but also through his words. Even at settings like D11, which are filled with digital-focused executives that got rich and famous off of the internet — just like Musk did.

The climate is warming while cleantech is cooling off

There are a couple reasons why climate change as a topic and a focus for innovation has gone out of fashion in the Valley in recent years. The major one is that many of the entrepreneurs and investors that actually tried to start new businesses focused on fighting climate change got completely — and utterly — burned in the cleantech boom between 2006 to 2009 and the recession-led bust over the following years (my slides from a keynote last year).

Both passionate well-known founders and venture capitalists with impressive reputations shifted their careers toward using technology to create climate change solutions, and then found out that it was far more difficult, and took far more money, than they had thought it would. Their shared experiences before they jumped into cleantech were building technologies and business around the internet, software and computing, where the drive to continue Moore’s Law has been delivering rapid progress along a transparent path for decades (making investing less risky and progress more continuous).

Some of the heavyweights of Silicon Valley are now paying the price for this big picture planetary thinking: venture firm Kleiner Perkins, Shai Agassi (the founder of now bankrupt Better Place) and Alan Salzman of venture firm VantagePoint Venture Partners, to name just a few. Do-gooder, big picture thinking and risk taking is applauded until it’s not successful.

Then there’s a cooling-off effect on others who are both passionate about these issues and hoping to raise money from the pockets of wealth in Silicon Valley. A young entrepreneur asked me a couple weeks ago if I could name any cleantech companies that had gotten series A funding from Silicon Valley in 2013 — I could name very few.

Musk is also an anomaly because he is one of the few entrepreneurs that has been wildly successful at cleantech. He’s one of the only ones I can think of who’ve had multiple cleantech bets that have exited and are still going strong (i.e., not seen their stocks tank), via SolarCity and Tesla. And I’m not even going to go into SpaceX, which seems to be going well, too.

Musk’s companies are part of his overall desire to use technology to disrupt the fossil-fuel burning energy sector and the fossil-fuel burning auto industry. They’re connected by his worry that the practice of burning fossil fuels is unsustainable for the planet. He thought about the problem first, and then designed the solutions he saw that would help solve these problems.

How many entrepreneurs can say they’ve designed companies in such a way around this global problem? Yes, there are some investors and entrepreneurs still focused on this, like Vinod Khosla, Steve Westly (he was also in Tesla), and others; hopefully, they will see similar (and more) successes.

Musk also recently called attention to the problem of the Valley ignoring the issue of fossil fuels and climate change on a political scale. He recently left the political immigration group supported by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Fwd.us, because the group funded ads for senators vocalizing support for the the Keystone oil pipeline, and oil drilling in Alaska. Khosla also brought attention to the group’s support for the fossil fuel industry and tweeted: “Will Fwd.us prostitute climate destruction & other values to get a few engineers hired & get immigration reform?”

But the fact that a Valley-led political group was so tone deaf on climate change and fossil fuels to begin with just points to how these big planet issues have been pushed out of the forefront of the Valley.

Can folks like Musk and Khosla bring them back with a combination of business success, and inspiring public speaking? I truly hope so.

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The appointment is significant because Lee used to hold the title “Head of Patents and Patent Strategy” at Google, where she issued a number of blog posts like this one calling for reform of the patent system.

Although the USPTO has yet to issue a formal announcement, Lee’s appointment was reported on Twitter by law professor Eric Goldman, who is well-respected on intellectual property issues:

Fantastic news: Michelle K. Lee, formerly Google’s chief patent lawyer, named director of the new @uspto Silicon Valley office! #htli

— Eric Goldman (@ericgoldman) November 16, 2012

[Update: Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt confirmed that a USPTO official announced the appointment at a patent event at the University of Santa Clara.]

The Silicon Valley patent office is one of several branch offices the USPTO established as part of a bid to pair specialized examiners with regional economies — high tech in San Jose, automotive in Detroit, energy in Dallas and aerospace in Denver. Lee may be hard pressed to recruit, however, given that pay for patent examiners is well below that offered at tech companies.

In recent years, patents have become a bugbear in Silicon Valley as a flood of low-quality patents has triggered a litigation arms race and given rise to a scourge of “trolls” — shell companies that don’t make anything but use the threat of lawsuits to extort licenses from companies that do.

Google and Twitter have been leading critics of the patent system while many experts have called for the reform or abolition of software patents.

The appointment has presumably been made at the behest of USPTO director David Kappos who has proved popular with both companies and the patent bar since he was appointed by President Obama in 2009.

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Yet Big Apple founders are taking pride not just in rivalling but in pitching a quite different kind of online upstart, four told a Monaco Media Forum panel event on Wednesday.

Like the east-west rap feud of the 1990s, their alternative approach exposes a cultural schism that enriches the ecosystem as a whole.

Tumblr founder David Karp said:

“The industry in New York right now would like to be known for having different sensibilities.

“The west is about making things scale but not making people’s lives better. It is about indexing, but not about creating.”

Speaking on the same panel, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti agreed:

“If you’re building a pure technology company, Silicon Valley is still the best place to do it. People there are still nerds; pure technology. But sometimes that hurts them when they need knowledge of a specific field.”

The reality is becoming clear to these folks that a different and more diverse, alternative startup to Silicon Valley’s all-engineering lifestyle is what differentiates east from west.

Thrillist’s Ben Lerer. Photo: Monaco Mediax ©

It draws not just from mathematics but from publishing, music, film, design and more. And it’s not just culture, Katie Beauchamp, founder of fashion-content-commerce cross-over Birchbox, told the Monaco Media Forum panel: ”Companies in New York are being founded with business models at the outset.”

All of which is all very well. New York is developing just fine with this relatively touchy-feely bent. But Tumblr’s Karp said New York can compete effectively, even for straight-up Valley engineering talent:

“We thought it would be an up-hill climb to convince these guys to pick up their families and move to the east coast. But we’ve found it easy to leverage.

“You’ve got all these big networks on equal footing — Twitter, Facebook and Google pulling people with very similar offerings — Palo Alto is a very similar community.

“When we show up at the end of that process and say ‘Before you make up your mind on Facebook or Google, spend a weekend with us in New York’, it puts us on a totally different footing. We show them an opportunity that’s as intriguing to them as in Silicon Valley – but in a much better city.”

Thrillist founder Ben Lerer told the same panel: “From a recruiting standpoint – people want to live in New York City.”

That is also rubbing off on investors who, traditionally, had eyes only for California, Karp said:

“West Coast VCs are starting to spend a lot more time out in New York. We’re now getting people from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock and Sequoia come over. They come to New York and they make a week of it… they hang out with us over the weekend doing something cool.”

This buzz is being amplified with Cornell’s Chelsea Technion facility, but was already fully in bloom despite such initiatives. These programmes concentrate interests, but a city so rich and relatively diverse can provide welcome distractions from the Valley’s tech bubble, Tumblr’s Karp told Monaco Media Forum:

“One really great characteristic of New York is that, after work, you’re not going out and hanging out with people in your industry.

“Walking down the street, seeing everyone with the Dropbox or Facebook T-shirt… they’re building something for themselves rather than, as in New York, for communities of tens of millions of people.

“The west coast feels like a race, whereas, in New York, you’re surrounded by passionate people rather than this hypercompetitive air on the west coast.”

BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti. Photo: Monaco Mediax ©

Karp said 50 percent of Tumblr staff were relocators. Of around 60 engineers, a dozen were candidates to join the Valley’s Facebook, Google and Twitter during recruitment. “We’re able to show them a similar opportunity in a better city,” he said.

BuzzFeed’s Peretti suggested that the east coast’s particular flavor of tech boom is now happening because non-technology folk are harnessing increasingly accessible technologies atop their specialist fields to enact niche disruptions:

“As technology becomes cheaper and easier to deploy, you’re seeing people already passionate about these fields in New York building new technology companies in these technology verticals.”

New York may be shooting for a different goal than Palo Alto but, within its own game, hasn’t yet achieved equivalent success, Thrillist’s Lerer noted:

“I think it would be nice if we had some big exits like the Valley.

“The goal is to build really big, important tech companies – the west coast has consistently done that. New York is starting to do that. Tumblr will have some nice eventuality where people will be able to say ‘New York is great’.”

Karp said:

“There are things we’d love to put us on the map to validate us further — but we don’t want to cross over as ‘Valley Jr.’ but as a whole different genre where products and technologies get made.”

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We’ll be talking more about Europe’s tech scene at Structure: Europe, our cloud-computing conference in Amsterdam on Tuesday and Wednesday. (You can see our list of Europe’s tech hotspots on a map here.)

Amsterdam

A rash of small startups have suddenly appeared, with small teams of developers building a wide range of apps and services.

Areas of specialty
Varied, but particularly strong around services for creative industries like video, publishing and advertising.

Major funding sources
The number of accelerators, and VC and angel investors is expanding.

Top startups
Layar, Adyen, Silk, WeTransfer

Notable exits
Soocial, Quova

Berlin

For years, Germany’s capital city has been an arty enclave with little or no industry. But now its startup scene is pushing hard, with a host of trendy startups and young entrepreneurs drawn in by low rents, an attractive lifestyle and easy access to Eastern European tech talent.

Areas of specialty
The city’s dominant tech force remain the three Samwer brothers, who built their empire by cloning American e-commerce businesses.The city is proving strong on digital media, social games and the quirky end of the consumer web.

Major funding sources
The angel network is still small, but international and European investors are increasingly drawn to Berlin, and some local VCs like Earlybird have shifted focus here from other German regions. Meanwhile, the Samwers’ Rocket Internet empire is happy to fund aggressive businesses in proven markets.

Top startups
Zalando, Wooga, Soundcloud, Eyeem, Gidsy, DeliveryHero

Notable exits
Citydeal, 12designer, Betreut, DailyDeal

Cambridge

Known as “Silicon Fen”, the tech industry here was built out of the venerable university’s research departments and has been strong for several generations. It’s home to hundreds of hard tech companies: not glamorous, but it’s scored some big hits.

Areas of specialty
Regional successes like ARM, Autonomy, Aveva and CSR give a good indication of what to expect: semiconductors, wireless, data and biotech are all strong here.

Major funding sources
Active alumni networks and connections to European VCs make Cambridge an attractive destination for investment, but proximity to London means most investors choose to visit rather than stick around.

Top startups
AlertMe, Bromium, Taptu, Jagex, Neul

Notable exits
Autonomy, CSR

Dublin

Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and other American tech giants run big European operations from Dublin.

Areas of specialty


Many of Dublin’s biggest successes have been in B2B and SaaS, but there’s a wealth of different industries here, from gaming and apps to telecoms, big data and CRM software.

Major funding sources


Local venture firms and investors are growing, but the city’s startups are a big draw for investors from London and the US.

Top startups
Globoforce, Openet

Notable exits


Demonware, Polldaddy

Eindhoven, Netherlands

You may cringe at the “Brainport” name, given to the region around Eindhoven, but its High Tech Campus houses more than 100 local and international companies. Local giant Philips is not the force it once was in consumer electronics, but the region still has strong links to research and development.

Areas of specialty
Green technology is an increasing specialty here, along with healthcare, and smart materials.

Major funding sources
Much of the region’s access to cash comes through corporate investment or research funding.

Top startups
Anteryon

Notable exits
Liquavista

Helsinki

Nokia’s loss may just end up being Finland’s gain. As the mobile giant slowly implodes, it is releasing batches of smart, skillful entrepreneurs into the local economy and allowing them to build interesting companies.

Areas of specialty
Mobile is at the heart of most new businesses here, but there’s also a substantial gaming industry led by Rovio.

Major funding sources
Many former Nokians are funding each other’s business ideas, and the region has good access to VC networks across Scandinavia and the Baltics too.

Top startups
Rovio, Jolla, Kiosked, Steam Republic

Notable exits
Innobase, Jaiku

London

The area of the British capital jokingly dubbed “Silicon Roundabout” is stacked with consumer web services, online retailers and mobile development teams. Now it’s morphing into the larger Tech City, with the government trying to massage the region’s access to finance and support networks.

Areas of speciality
Skype and Last.fm paved the way for a large number of consumer web services, alongside strong digital media, e-commerce and finance sectors.

Major funding sources
Europe’s strongest VCs — Accel, Balderton and Index — call the city home, and there’s a growing number of earlier stage investors and angel money sloshing around over meetings in the city’s clubs and pubs.

Top startups
Moshi Monsters, Wonga, Huddle, Hailo, Housetrip, Just Eat

Notable exits
Betfair, Skype, Tweetdeck, Lovefilm, Playfish

M4 Corridor, England

A roughly 70-mile stretch along one of Britain’s busiest highways is book-ended by two important tech clusters: one in Berkshire, where Vodafone, Microsoft and Oracle have large office parks; and the other in “Silicon Gorge”, an area around Bristol with links to the semiconductor and microelectronics industry.

Areas of specialty
The region’s most talented businesses are roughly divided between large enterprise and data-focused outfits, and telecom and mobile R&D. There’s also a strong digital media scene in Bristol, which is where IMDB (now owned by Amazon) is based.

Major funding sources
Most of the money still comes through corporate channels, with startups tending to gravitate a few miles further east to London to score investment.

Top startups
DataSift

Notable exits
PicoChip

Moscow

Buoyed by the huge growth in the Russian internet market, the high earning capacity of Muscovites, and their voracious consumerism, a whole generation of tech startups is trying to find success right now. Watch particularly for entrepreneurs who have honed their skills overseas returning home to start their own businesses.

Areas of specialty
Russia is a law unto itself: While many ideas here are retreads from elsewhere, they’re more than just copycats: in many cases, there are specific tweaks that need to be made from them to work in the Russian market.

Major funding sources
Growing network of angels and seed investors is linking into big ticket funding from Germany, the U.S. and Scandinavia. The biggest individual Russian investors, however, tend to put their money into businesses elsewhere.

Top startups
KupiVIP, Ozon, Kaspersky Lab, Tinkoff Digital

Notable exits

Yandex, Mail.ru

Munich

Berlin may be provide the soul, and Rhein-Main may be the business center, but Germany’s venture capital industry is concentrated in the south of the country — not least because it’s the base for the nation’s ever-strong auto industry.

Areas of specialty
Rocket Internet calls Berlin home, but the company likes to recruit voracious Bavarian MBAs and consultants from Munich and turn them into hungry startup entrepreneurs. What they lack in originality, they make up for in precision.

Major funding sources
Two of Germany’s big startup investors — Hubert Burda Media and Holtzbrinck, which are both spinoffs of publishing companies — have their bases in Munich, and fund plenty of local and foreign entrepreneurs.

Top startups
Veact, Westwing, Trustyou

Notable exits
Tiramizoo, Amiando

Paris

Many investors think Paris has seen its best days, not least because the insular environment and punative tax regime send many entrepreneurs packing. But when startups work here, they go big.

Areas of specialty
Media, advertising, and e-commerce are strong, particularly in the segments where French brands can draw on the national obsession with haute-couture and luxury. Wireless is seeing some inventive activity too.

Major funding sources
There are some large venture companies, often tied to local telcos or software companies, but local investments tend to be inwardly focused.

Top startups
Criteo, DailyMotion, Deezer, Viadeo

Notable exits
Vente Privee, Netvibes, Joliebox

Silicon Glen, Scotland

The central belt of Scotland became known as “Silicon Glen” thanks to the presence of large international tech firms like IBM, Motorola and National Semiconductor. But it has struggled to keep up as China and South Korea have exerted their manufacturing power and is now significantly weaker than it used to be.

Areas of specialty

While the area was traditionally a stronghold for semiconductor makers, a decade of office closures, layoffs and pullouts have led to a shift towards software development, SaaS and games.

Major funding sources

There aren’t many indigenous sources of cash, but strong startups have few problems accessing money.

Top startups
Skyscanner, Rockstar North, FreeAgent

Notable Exits
oneDrum

The Software Cluster/Rhein-Main-Neckar, Germany

This roughly hewn region runs from Frankfurt, the country’s financial heart, in the north, to Walldorf, home of SAP, in the south. That means it’s a hot spot for smart, enterprise-focused companies that develop software for businesses — and even if it doesn’t grab the headlines often, it turns over a pile of cash big enough to make most eyes water.

Areas of specialty
This is one of the places where the software that makes the world run starts: SAP, Software AG are just a few of the names from this region. A bunch of gaming companies have started up here, too.

Major funding sources
Being at the financial center of Europe’s most robust economy has its benefits. Lots of private angel activity and good funding networks — though limited VC activity.

Top startups
Mindjet, Netbiscuits, Open-Xchange

Notable exits
Systemhaus (T-Systems), Phenomic

Stockholm

Sweden’s capital has a lot going for it: highly connected and inhabited by a cadre of global citizens. Local entrepreneurs have a tendency to think laterally and challenge the status quo, whether through legit means — like Spotify and MySQL — or in more controversial circumstances, like Kazaa and The Pirate Bay.

Areas of specialty
Telecoms and P2P are traditional strengths, but don’t expect those services to be delivered in the usual way: the Swedes have a tendency to come out of left field with their offerings.

Major funding sources
Swedish investors have been active recently, and local VCs Creandum and Northzone are strong right now. Meanwhile, investment group Kinnevik has been on a tear recently, funding businesses in Germany, Russia and across Scandinavia.

Top startups
Spotify, Rebtel, Klarna, Wrapp, iZettle, Toca Boca, Minecraft

Notable exits
Qliktech, Pricerunner

Tallinn, Estonia

With the government pursuing a high-growth, internet-enabled agenda for nearly 20 years,Estonia has developed a strong engineering culture and helped build major properties—most notably Skype. Many local entrepreneurs have moved elsewhere to start up on their own, but a strong scene remains in place.

Areas of specialty
With wizardly programmers everywhere you turn, Estonia’s built a strong base of enterprise-focused software, services and security.

Major funding sources
The top local seed investor is probably Ambient Sound, started by a group of former Skype employees. But Estonian firms are drawing money from around the continent thanks to strong links with people who have joined major companies.

Top startups
Erply, Fortuno, Defendec

Notable exits
Skype

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But Silicon Valley works because it is stupid. The intelligence is distributed, and the ultimate arbiter of correctness is the market.

Let’s start with the startups. You might think that most successful startups begin with some genius’s brilliant idea. The genius shares this idea with a trusted investor who provides money to hire a team. They work really hard, have a big launch and become a success. But this is not how big companies begin. Companies that start this way tend to be good at spending a lot of money and producing useless products.

Successful startups often begin with no idea at all. They start with some friends who simply enjoy building things together, without any specific idea of what they are going to build or how they are going to make money at it. It sounds silly, but that’s exactly how Hewlett-Packard began. Two nerds in a garage. It took them a few years to find their first really good idea, which was to make cheap, high-quality oscilloscopes. Flickr began by working on something else altogether. Twitter came out of the train wreck of a podcasting startup. If a good team goes through enough ideas, they will eventually figure out how to make something that people want to use. Then, they raise money to bring that product to more people and scale it up.

Okay, so startups are dumb, but what about governments? It’s not that hard to believe that governments are dumb. What’s surprising is when that’s a good thing. The U.S. government is not smart enough to pick winners, so startups are treated like regular companies. When I first traveled to Mexico, I was asked whether the U.S. government paid for all or only part of our office space. The entrepreneurs were astonished to find out that my startup got no help whatsoever from the government. We were on our own. Terrifying. In theory, the Small Business Administration is there to help, but it is irrelevant to startups. It’s structured to help a dry cleaning shop purchase another piece of equipment, not help you hire another iOS developer so you can create Angrier Birds.

But what the U.S. government does do is get the heck out of our way. If you want to start a business, you can just go ahead and do it with no forms at all required. This is called a “sole proprietorship.” At the end of the year when you fill out your personal income taxes, you just attach an appendix that says, “Oh yeah, and I run a business and here’s how much money I made or lost.” If you want to incorporate your business, you can do it in about an hour. The form to create a tax ID takes a minute or two to fill out. Dozens of companies compete to offer cheap and easy payroll tax processing that electronically file everything you need with the state and federal governments for a few bucks a month. The government’s role is infrastructure and facilitation.

If government gave special aid to startups, it would need to ensure those startups were performing well, which would require startups to account for their progress or face punishment for wasting taxpayer money. This regular accounting smells like added paperwork. And overhead. Worst of all, it means bureaucrats are making the call about which startups stay and which go. And when bureaucrats have no incentive to pick longterm winners, they might be persuaded to be more lenient to startups that have friends in high places.

Startups funded by a government cannot, politically, afford to fail. But the real way to create new markets is to do the opposite — reduce the cost of failure by eliminating debtors’ prisons, make bankruptcy straightforward, and allow easy incorporation to shield founders’ personal finances somewhat from the failure of their companies. Even success takes too long for governments. Government programs are managed for the next election cycle, while startups usually take much longer than that to be proven out as a success.

So it’s actually much better if government is “stupid” and delegates the intelligence about which startups should thrive and which should die to others. The government should ensure clear and consistent corporate law and taxation, minimal red tape and overhead, fast and effective infrastructure, easy hiring and firing, and should expose itself as a customer of startup products.

The final dumb contingent of Silicon Valley is our awesome, dumb investors.

In many developing ecosystems, I see angels who describe themselves as “smart money.” They want to take 40 percent or more of the company in a seed round to ensure that the entrepreneur does the right thing, and that if the company is successful, the investor benefits richly. They think they will guide the company to success. They want to have a voice in the day-to-day operations of the company, and when they speak, they expect their entrepreneurs to listen.

But investors who take 40 percent of the company in seed rounds are setting themselves up for failure. If the company does well, it’ll need to raise more financing, and new investors will need substantial percentages of the company. With IPOs taking longer than ever, there may be many of these growth rounds. And if 40 percent of the company is in the hands of a seed investor, there’s not enough room for other investors. A Series A venture capitalist will realize this and simply not invest in a company with this kind of structure, meaning the company will not be able to find financing, even if it is very successful. The “smart” seed investor has effectively doomed the company.

Peter Thiel was the first investor in Facebook. He wrote a check for $500,000 and got a board seat and about 10 percent of the company (not 40 percent), but mostly he just told Zuckerberg to not f**k it up. When the company IPOed years later, poor Peter was left with a mere 2.5 percent stake of the company. But I don’t think he was too upset, because that stake was worth a billion dollars, which makes it the most successful seed investment in history. All for just believing in a smart kid and letting him do his thing. Peter was, brilliantly, not “smart money.”

So the best government defers smarts about which startups to invest in to the investors, the investors defer smarts about how to build the company to the startups, and startups defer the wisdom of what would be a good idea to build to the market. The intelligence is distributed, and it works.

David Weekly is the CEO of Oha.na, which helps users create visual newsletters. He is also a startup mentor and has helped found Hacker Dojo, PBworks, Mexican.VC and SuperHappyDevHouse.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Michiel020.  

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So we asked Tough to stop by the studio and record a special edition of our Commutist podcast. In it, we talk about the similarities between successful kids and startup founders, how super busy Silicon Valley execs can be great parents, and what managers with younger direct reports can learn from his research.

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British arch-satirist Armando Iannucci has announced that his target will be the hubris and hilarity in California’s technology scene. Talking to the UK Observer, he explained that his next project would not focus on his usual political playground:

“I’m thinking about the power of the internet,” said Iannucci. “Microsoft, Google, Facebook; you have these twentysomethings who have a way into billions of households. Where’s the power gone? The power is gravitating towards these companies.”
[…]
“I’m also interested in that personal thing of what it does to you when you’re 25 and you’re a multibillionaire and everyone in the world knows who you are,” said Iannucci.

For anyone worried about a series of hackneyed jokes about poking your friends or uncovering , don’t worry! Iannucci has good form.

He’s best known for The Thick Of It — a highly acclaimed, tremendously smart series that exposes the inner machinations of British government — and has recently transferred that to America with a run of Veep, his series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, on HBO.

According to the report, he’s already written a pilot of his show about the world of technology and social media, and is in discussions with the network about it.

In truth, Iannucci’s job should be fairly easy, because Silicon Valley has enough excesses and idiocies that it effectively satirizes itself.

From ostentatious parties to the increasing fixation with celebrity investors, there is no lack of material. Oh, and then there’s the hypocrisy. What about the likes of Eric Schmidt, who says only people with something to hide require privacy — and yet demands his girlfriends stay quiet? Or Mark Zuckerberg, who says most people don’t care that privacy no longer exists — yet makes billions from encouraging that shift in opinion.

All ripe for a slam or two, don’t you think? I’m sure you can think of more.

But even though a week in the Valley may provide him enough material for a 17 season run, Iannucci says his reason for targeting the technology industry isn’t because it’s easy — but because it’s real. Forget Westminster, or even the West Wing: the power today lies on the companies who command the net, he argues.

“Where’s the power gone?” he told The Observer. “The power is gravitating towards these companies.”

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But this news isn’t all bad. The number of principal engineers and other technical leaders leaving the company and trying to have big impacts elsewhere suggests VMware might achieve mafia status a la Sun Microsystems, Facebook Google or PayPal. Its employees appear to have the vision, skills and reputations that transcend their work at VMware.

Some of the higher-profile departures came over the past few months in the form of SpringSource Founder Rod Johnson; former CFO and Co-president of Business Operations Mark Peek (to Workday), former Chief Development Officer, Co-president of Products and Strategic Advisor to the CEO Richard McAniff; former VP of Engineering Peter Cooper-Ellis (to Cloudera) and former cloud computing CTO Derek Collison (he founded Apcera). But that’s just the start.

Digging under the covers, you find a lot of other technological leaders with years of experience at VMware heading for the door with the past year. Among them:

• Former Principal Engineer Satyam Vaghani (he co-founded ProximData)
• Former Principal Engineer Ganesh Venkitachalam
• Former VP of Product Strategy Shaun Connolly (to Hortonworks)
• Former VP of Business Operations, Cloud Application Platform Mark Brewer (to Typesafe)
• Former R&D Director Howie Xu (to Big Switch Networks)
• Former Senior Member of the Technical Staff Suresh Madhu ( he founded Onecloud Labs)

Although it’s somewhat ancient history by now, VMware also lost some veteran technologists (including its first-ever hire) in 2009 and 2010. One went Google, one went to Facebook and the other is working on his own startup. Only one of the company’s original five co-founders remains.

Do these departures spell trouble?

None of this is necessarily indicative of bad things afoot at VMware, of course. That anyone who came on board as part of the SpringSource acquisition left after their stock-option lockout period expired probably should have been expected considering how commonplace that type of transition is. And 10 years (give or take a few) is a long time to stay with one employer, especially in the fast-moving technology business. Sometimes, people just want to do new things.

But seeing the brains behind important business lines such as SpringSource and VMware’s cloud unit departing doesn’t bode well for their continued innovation. In Silicon Valley, the chance to innovate is what attracts talent, and the would-be VMware mafia’s various startup projects are sure to lure some quality engineers (as will Google, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, Twitter and any number of hot web startups).

I’ve also heard that EMC’s continued pressure on VMware to act in accordance with EMC’s wishes has driven away some talent. It’s too early to tell whether that’s for better or for worse — EMC has proven itself a smart company over the years — but working for one now-large enterprise (VMware) seemingly under the thumb of an ever bigger one (EMC) might not be a lure to top talent. While VMware certainly should strive to become as mighty as companies such as HP, Microsoft and Cisco were in their heydays (and still are), it’s still young enough that it probably isn’t quite ready to go through the trials and tribulations those companies have as they struggled to remain relevant over the past few years.

The big difference, however, is that VMware has all the technological pieces it needs to stay relevant — even to lead the way — for a long time to come. But it still has to capitalize on them and create a cohesive vision for how they interact with one another and then continue to ensure they remain on the cutting edge. That’s gonna take the right people.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock user Gail Johnson.

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Mueller’s adventure might be extreme, but for anyone who has spent enough time in Silicon Valley — and it doesn’t take long — it probably isn’t shockingly extreme. Everywhere you turn, someone is training for a marathon or planning a vacation to climb a mountain. Even Dennis Crowley (a New Yorker, I know) just finished a triathlon. They’re certainly not uncommon activities within VMware, Mueller told me, where he also works with someone who won an Olympic medal in tae kwon do.

Physical fitness is one thing (bicycling to work is commonplace, and I recently visited one startup with a weight bench, chin-up bar and tractor tire (for flipping) outside its office), but running 100 miles in an ultra-marathon like Nicira Founder and CEO Martin Casado does is something else altogether. Then there are the mad scientists, guys like self-proclaimed human guinea pig Tim Ferriss and quantified-self devotee Dave Asprey.

So what gives? Why are Silicon Valley’s best and brightest consumed by pushing themselves to their physical limits?

Average isn’t good enough

According to sports psychologist Dr. JoAnn Dahlkoetter, who works regularly with Olympic athletes (and with a technologist, go figure, preparing to complete a deca-Ironman event), technologists are drawn to such arduous physical feats because they aren’t really used to doing average things. Success in the technology world means doing something no one has ever done before, and that mindset carries over into athletic undertakings. “It’s satisfying to see how far you can push yourself,” she said.

She appears to be onto something. PayPal Co-founder, man about Silicon Valley and avid cyclist Max Levchin told Men’s Health last year, “My natural behavior is to push myself over the limit every day. … [If] I wasn’t given this direction [from a coach], I’ll do this until I fall over on the bike, dead.”

Triathletes completing the swim portion.

For successful individuals, Dahlkoetter says there’s also a “constellation of traits” that are necessary in both business and endurance sports. These include having true enthusiam for what you do, or a “fire inside,” and the ability to break a grand dream into the individual steps necessary to make it happen.

Discussing his ultra-marathons with my colleague Stacey Higginbotham, for example, Nicira’s Casado said he knows how to pace himself, even run slower than he’d like, if it means he’ll finish the race. Levchin speaks about his obsession with data, monitoring everything every aspect of his rides and his own body to ensure he’s always improving.

There’s also internal motivation and self-direction, Dahlkoetter says, and the courage to keep working even when you’re tired and to see mistakes as learning opportunities. “It takes a certain kind of mindset,” she said, “where you feel like you have to be able to push yourself through the pain and work through all the adversity that happens.”

For Mueller, it’s about gratification

OK, so these things might be true for the CEOs — the guys who join Levchin on the Men’s Health list of “fiscally fit” men, or serial risk-taker Richard Branson. They might also explain why, according to Mueller, many companies in Silicon Valley are willing to give sabbaticals (VMware gave him two months) to employees who want to undertake such adventures as climbing a mountain or rowing across the sea. They like to foster these traits.

But Mueller isn’t a CEO of a large company, and he hasn’t sold anything to Google for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet he has swam the English Channel and climbed the highest mountain on each of the seven continents (the 120th person to do). He summited Mt. Everest without a guide. (Zoom out on his adventure map below to see all he’s done.)

He thinks does these things in part because of the personal gratification they bring. When you’re working in large teams on complex problems, everything takes a long time and there’s not necessarily a defined beginning or end. And no matter how much code you contribute to a project, you know it’s going to be checked and double-checked by several people.

Mueller (far right) and his team.

It’s cool work, Mueller said, but “you have none of the personal gratification you get from climbing a mountain.” Aside from being the first team to row the Arctic Ocean, he said the gratification on this trip will be taking plankton samples from the freshly melted ocean so the University of Alaska, Fairbanks can find out where whales are and help protect them from Shell’s new oil-drilling efforts in the area. (This Los Angeles Times article on the adventure goes into detail on the science.)

The scientific aspect is Mueller’s way of actually giving back to a cause that he feels it’s easy to just pay lip service. Like most people, he recycles but still drives a gas-powered car to work most days. “It seems kind of two-headed to say you shouldn’t drill up there and then drive a gas-powered car,” he said.

Then again, as Dahlkoetter suggests, maybe it’s just about doing something very few people, or no one, has done before. Everybody in the Valley wants to be part of a first, “that’s where the spoils are,” Mueller said. “Not everyone is lucky enough to do it in business. … That’s what the Arctic row is about.”

Feature and Mueller images courtesy of Arctic Row; triathlon image courtesy of Walter Baxter.

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