How Silicon Valley is becoming more like Los Angeles and New York

Minal Hasan, a venture capitalist and Silicon Valley
native.
Minal
Hasan

• Silicon
  Valley has undergone many changes since it first became the
  hub of the tech world decades ago.
• Minal Hasan, the co-founder of a Silicon Valley venture
  capital firm, has lived in the region her whole life.
• The biggest change she’s seen is that Silicon Valley
  residents today are more materialistic and more likely to show
  off their wealth than in the old days.

Silicon
Valley has been the center of the computing world for
decades.

But the region is a lot different today than it was 20 or 30
years ago, says one native who’s witnessed the changes firsthand.

Minal Hasan is the 35-year-old cofounder of the venture capital
firm K2 Global. Her
parents emigrated from India to Cupertino, California, where
Hasan was born and raised. Her mother founded a semiconductor
company and her father was an angel investor.

“I really kind of grew up in the startup space, where I was
a baby crawling around under the board table at board meetings,”
Hasan told Business Insider.

Hasan’s resume includes stints as a lawyer for notable
Silicon Valley startups including Twitter, Square, and Uber. She
even spent a year as a columnist for her local paper, the San
Jose Mercury News.

For Hasan, the biggest change she’s noticed in her years in
Silicon Valley is that people are much more public about their
spending than they were in the old days.

“There’s definitely a lot more wealth on display than there
was in the past,” she told Business Insider. “I feel like Silicon
Valley is becoming more culturally like New York or Los Angeles,
not that that’s a bad thing, just in terms of the displays of
wealth.”

Although Silicon Valley had its fair share of ultra-rich
residents in the ’80s and ’90s, when Hasan was growing up, she
said it was harder to tell who was wealthy and who wasn’t. And
more importantly, she said, money wasn’t the only goal for the
early pioneers.

“They would live in normal houses and drive normal cars and you
couldn’t really distinguish them from anyone else on the street.
There was a lot of humility and money wasn’t really something to
strive for,” she said. “The goal was to innovate and create
something new and interesting in the world, to improve society.”

“I feel like there’s definitely some of that in Silicon
Valley, but to some extent it has become a little bit more
materialistic and showy.”

But some aspects of Silicon Valley have changed for the
better in the same time frame, she said. Her mother, for example,
faced discrimination early in her career, when women and
minorities were a rare sight in the tech industry.

“Since women and minorities were rarely seen starting
companies, it was harder to be taken seriously, particularly when
fundraising from venture capitalists,” Hasan
said. 
“Back then, women had to have a thick
skin. The same continues to be true today for women and
minorities, however it’s probably gotten somewhat easier as the
numbers improve.”

“I think there is more diversity now. It’s nice that there
are so many more transplants in Silicon Valley and a wider range
of people who are coming to Silicon Valley starting companies
than there were historically.”