I am immensely grateful to Daniel Levin Becker, Molly Fischer, Henry Freedland, Jen Gann, Sam MacLaughlin, Manjula Martin, Emily Nakashima, Meaghan O’Connell, Hannah Schneider, and Taylor Sperry, for their intellectual generosity and editorial insight. I am thankful to Nick Friedman for early, foundational conversations. Thank you to Moira Weigel for her friendship and intelligence, and for always offering the systems view. Thank you to Gideon Lewis-Kraus, for wild kindness at every stage.
Thank you to Mark Krotov, for genius edits and unfailing support of this project. Thank you to Dayna Tortorici, for encouraging me to write about San Francisco and startup culture in 2015, and for brilliant editorial advice. I am indebted to n+1: thank you for taking a chance on me.
Thank you to Chris Parris-Lamb, for developing this book alongside me, and for being a constant source of wisdom, advice, clarity, humor, and support; truly beyond. Thank you to Sarah Bolling, for sharp and understanding notes, and to Rebecca Gardner, Ellen Goodson Coughtrey, and Will Roberts, for bringing this book to readers abroad.
Thank you to my editor, Emily Bell, for believing in this project from the beginning, and for being a fierce advocate at every stage. Thank you to the team at MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, especially Jackson Howard, Naomi Huffman, Sean McDonald, and Sarita Varma. Thank you to Rebecca Caine for her thoughtfulness and poise while working on this manuscript, and to Greg Villepique, Chandra Wohleber, Kylie Byrd, Kathleen Cook, Nina Frieman, Jonathan Lippincott, and Gretchen Achilles, for their attention and care. Thank you to Anna Kelly, Caspian Dennis, and Sarah Thickett, for championing this book in the U.K.
Thank you to Jason Richman, for his exuberance and insight, and to his team at UTA. Thank you to Johnny Pariseau and Alison Small, for their excitement, integrity, and open-mindedness. Thank you to Michael De Luca Productions and Brownstone Productions. I am grateful to Sara’o Bery for his frank, crucial advice.
Thank you to Emily Stokes, for working closely on sections of this book, and for being a wise and generous sounding board. Thank you to Michael Luo, Pamela McCarthy, David Remnick, and Dorothy Wickenden for offering me a place to continue writing about tech culture. Thank you to Carla Blumenkranz, Anthony Lydgate, and Daniel Zalewski. Thank you to Joshua Rothman for his insightful, enriching editing on my Silicon Valley dispatches.
Thank you to Leah Campbell, Danilo Campos, Patrick Collison, Parker Higgins, Cameron Spickert, and Kyle Warren, for their friendship and trust. Thank you to David Gumbiner. Thank you to my former coworkers at the analytics and open-source startups, especially those who took the time, and some risk, to speak with me for this project. Thank you to dear friends in California and New York, so many of whom have helped untangle my thoughts about labor, life, art, capitalism—like anything, a work in progress.
Thank you to the Shermans, north and south, for their kindness and encouragement. Thank you to my family, especially David and Marina Wiener. Thank you to Dan Wiener and Ellen Freudenheim, for their enthusiasm and guidance. I am grateful to Ian Sherman for his love, for his steady support of my writing, and for always asking the right questions.