Silicon valley billionaires

caption The Apple Campus 2 is seen under construction in Cupertino, California in this aerial photo taken January 13, 2017. source Noah Berger/Reuters Less than 5% of donations from wealthy people in Silicon Valley reach local nonprofits. Silicon Valley nonprofits are trying to rely more on data analysis to show wealthy donors how their money could make an impact. Some nonprofits have hired marketing consultants to help out. Silicon Valley is home to many prominent philanthropists – Larry Page, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, to name a few – but these billionaires often donate to causes outside the Bay Area. Meanwhile, nonprofits in Silicon Valley are struggling to raise enough money as demand for their services grows, according to The Atlantic. As a result, local organizations are being forced to act more like startups than traditional nonprofits to echo the mentality of Silicon Valley donors, who tend to measure effectiveness through data rather … [Read more...] about Silicon Valley nonprofits are struggling to get money from wealthy tech donors, so they’re acting more like startups

caption Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has dual citizenship in New Zealand. source Shutterstock and Neilson Barnard/Getty Silicon Valley is on the brink of an exodus. Members of the tech elite from Peter Thiel to Tim Ferriss are leaving San Francisco and the peninsula to the south – still the global hub of tech finance and innovation – to escape the self-described groupthink and arrogance of the Valley. A recent article in The New York Times declared, “Silicon Valley is over.” The author followed a dozen venture capitalists on a three-day bus trip through the Midwest, in pursuit of hot startups in underrated areas of the country. They marveled at the cheap home prices in cities like Detroit, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin, compared with the extreme cost of living in the Bay Area. San Francisco lost more residents than any other US cityin the last quarter of 2017, according to a report from real-estate site Redfin. Data suggests the great … [Read more...] about The tech elite are abandoning Silicon Valley in droves because of ‘groupthink’ and out-of-control living costs— here’s where they’re headed

source Blue Frontiers Peter Thiel’s dream of a libertarian utopia in the middle of the ocean may have finally sunk. Radio New Zealand is reporting that the French Polynesian government has not renewed its agreement to help the Seasteading Institute, a group created in Silicon Valley, build a permanent and politically autonomous settlement off the coast of the South Pacific islands. In 2008, Thiel, a billionaire investor and Trump transition team member, launched a mission to develop a floating city, called a seastead, that would operate independently from existing nations. Thiel invested $1.7 million in The Seasteading Institute, but resigned from its board in 2011. He later said in an interview that engineering seasteads is “not quite feasible.” Here’s what we know about the Seasteading Institute’s plans for a floating city in the South Pacific – and why the deal went under. Leanna Garfield contributed reporting to this … [Read more...] about A Silicon Valley billionaire’s dream of a floating libertarian utopia may have finally been killed