It's one thing to be a startup founder with a great idea. It's another thing entirely to know how to carry a conversation on cap tables, liquidation preferences, and building out a company's org chart.

For those scrappy startup founders who have hit on an idea — but aren't totally speaking fluent startup — there's a new term being tossed around: "off-the-grid entrepreneurs."

Normally this would mean someone who is building something off-the-grid, i.e. without internet, but this is the tech industry so that's obviously not the case. 

Instead, as Joanne Wilson of Gotham Gal Ventures first described in a blog post, the off-the-grid entrepreneur is someone "not familiar with the verbiage that gets tossed around in the start-up world":

"The entrepreneurs who walk into your office with a company that is gaining traction and gets their audience (business to business or even business to consumer) and gets the void they have filled but doesn’t really understand where to go to raise capital.  Doesn’t really get what a cap table entails, doesn’t really understand how to build out a work org chart, doesn’t really have the greatest grasp of their financials, doesn’t really get all the nuances in a legal document, doesn’t fully understand what kind of equity they should give away.  Enough said.  Red flags?  Perhaps or perhaps not."

As Wilson goes on to point out, she's afraid that in today's funding environment many investors will pass on these sorts of deals because the company will require more help navigating the venture world than others. If investors are over-extended, then they may not have the time to give the assistance an off-the-grid founder needs to catch up to speed — and more importantly, to be able to raise that next funding round.

"The environment in Silicon Valley is far different from the other hubs such as NYC, Berlin, Chicago and others.  You need to speak the language and it is scary for an investor if you don’t," Wilson states. 

Thankfully, the knowledge gap between those inside Silicon Valley and those outside is shrinking. There are books (like Brad Feld's "Venture Deals" that Wilson recommends), and incubators like Y Combinator have started fellowships so non-Bay Area types can still learn how to build a business and their network.

And if Wilson does meet an "off-the-grid" entrepreneur, she says she'll make sure there's another engaged investor in the round if she can't be that person herself.

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Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is turning into a place affordable for only "Joe Millionaires" and not the average Joe, warned former planning commissioner Kate Downing.

In her resignation letter, the former Palo Alto planning commissioner described how the city known for being an epicenter of the tech boom continues to do nothing to stop the bombastic rise in rent prices, which have creeped so high that Downing warns that not even a software engineer can afford them now:

"We rent our current home with another couple for $6200 a month; if we wanted to buy the same home and share it with children and not roommates, it would cost $2.7M and our monthly payment would be $12,177 a month in mortgage, taxes, and insurance. That's $146,127 per year — an entire professional's income before taxes. This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer."

Part of that is because of the rise of the tech industry in a city that has incubated the early life of companies like Google and Facebook and is now covered in Palantir offices. In the last five years alone, the median home value of the town has doubled from $1.2 million to over $2.5 million, according to Zillow.

In her open letter, Downing in part blames the city council for not listening to the planning commission's recommendations.

Small steps, including adding two floors of housing instead of one in mixed-use developments, legalizing duplexes, and allowing areas like shopping centers to build housing on top of shops and offices, could have help curb the meteoric rise.

Rather, Downing says, the city council "ignored the majority of residents" who listed housing as their No. 1 concern.

As a result, professionals like Downing are being forced out of their homes when they can no longer afford them. If the city doesn't reverse course, then she cautions that those people who once made Palo Alto famous wouldn't be able to live there today:

"I struggle to think what Palo Alto will become and what it will represent when young families have no hope of ever putting down roots here, and meanwhile the community is engulfed with middle-aged jet-setting executives and investors who are hardly the sort to be personally volunteering for neighborhood block parties, earthquake preparedness responsibilities, or neighborhood watch. If things keep going as they are, yes, Palo Alto's streets will look just as they did decades ago, but its inhabitants, spirit, and sense of community will be unrecognizable. A once thriving city will turn into a hollowed out museum. We should take care to remember that Palo Alto is famous the world over for its residents' accomplishments, but none of those people would be able to live in Palo Alto were they starting out today."

You can read the entire letter on Medium.

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Startup-life comes with some pretty sweet perks. There are the free lunches, shuttle buses, and branded t-shirts. A lucky few may even work in offices equipped with nap pods.

But only in Silicon Valley will a truck bring a dental office to tech companies' doors.

Studio Dental, founded in 2014, is the first dental office on wheels. The truck visits patients at work, making regular visits to tech companies like Google and Airbnb to provide employees services from teeth cleanings to wisdom teeth removals in the parking lot.

"Dentistry is in serious need of sprucing up — the industry is stigmatized as old, smelly, and often times scary," cofounder and dentist Sara Creighton told Rock Health in a 2014 interview.

Creighton, who built her first practice while still in dental school, set out to create a dental office that would actually entice people to come in for a check-up. She thought about how she could incorporate technology and smart design, and teamed up with cofounder Lowell Caulder, an investment banker and a Harvard Business School dropout, to bring her vision to life.

Studio Dental fits on a 26-foot-long trailer bed and includes a waiting area, a sterilization room, and two patient stations. Once you step inside, you forget almost immediately that you're in a truck. Cut-outs in the walls and wood cabinets create constellation-like patterns that draw the eyes upward — because really, don't you hate looking at a plain stucco ceiling while you sit in a dental chair?

Televisions that stream Netflix also hang overhead.

The office may appeal to techies more than traditional dental offices, though it isn't just for people who work in tech — patients book appointments online, receive email receipts after their visit, and view digital X-rays and impressions on the website.

According to the website, the company's prices are in the 80th percentile of Bay Area dental practices. It accepts PPO plans from most insurance providers.

Studio Dental has over 25 corporate clients, including well-known tech companies Bot & Dolly, Dropbox, Jawbone, Twitter, and Square. CNN Money reported in 2015 that the business made about $1 million in its first year.

Crighton told Fast Company in 2015 that she hopes to add more trucks, more dentists, and more cities. Patients may some day be able to track a truck's location and book appointments through an app — "like an Uber almost, so you can see which truck is near you," Creighton said.

The "uberification" of dental care is officially here.

SEE ALSO: 13 things that only happen in Silicon Valley

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I'm sitting in a WeWork office in San Francisco that looks torn from a West Elm catalog, talking with Michael Brandt about Nootrobox, a subscription service for "smart drugs," or cognitive-enhancement supplements.

But I can't stop admiring his shoes — a pair of fuzzy gray sneakers.

"They're really awesome. I don't wear socks anymore," Brandt, a cofounder of Nootrobox, says as he flexes his feet to show off his treads. "'Cause it's just like wearing a sock."

Allbirds' debut sneaker, the $95 "Wool Runner," has been called the world's most comfortable shoe by venture capitalists and startup founders — as well as the company itself.

Tim Brown was playing professional soccer in New Zealand when he dreamt up the idea for a wool sneaker. Allbirds uses merino wool from Brown's home country that's processed in Milan, Italy. The result is a shoe so incredibly comfortable, they're like slippers made of clouds.

If you choose to wear them without socks like Brandt, Wool Runners can be tossed into the washing machine on a wool cycle (delicate or hand wash cycles with cold water work, too) for easy cleaning.

Brandt isn't the only Silicon Valley techie hopping on the Allbirds bandwagon.

Liz Wessel, CEO and cofounder of WayUp, a startup that connects college students with local job opportunities and internships, also got pretty excited about her pair of Wool Runners.

But it's venture capitalists who are singing Allbirds' praises the most.

Brett Jackson worked for four years at Crocs, the titan of comfort footwear, before becoming managing director of venture firm v1.vc. He's now an investor in Allbirds.

Kyle Russell, a deal partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, is also a fan.

Venture capitalists on the East Coast are catching wind of the shoes.

Here's a tweet from Andrew Mitchell, founder of the New York-based, early-stage venture firm Brand Foundry Ventures, which counts itself among Allbirds' investors.

Henry McNamara, a general partner at Great Oaks venture firm, liked Allbirds enough to invest, as well. His video is worth watching because it shows off Allbirds' surprising packaging design. He now owns several pairs.

Allbirds is becoming a ubiquitous brand throughout Silicon Valley, as evidenced by the company's ability to raise a $2.2 million seed round of funding.

Their sneakers could become a quintessential part of the venture capitalist dress code, in the same way that a hoodie and T-shirt currently make up the "startup uniform."

Get ready for the inevitable episode of HBO's "Silicon Valley" that rips on the shoes.

SEE ALSO: We tried the wool sneakers from New Zealand that claim to be the 'most comfortable in the world' — and they lived up to the hype

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A big story has developed in the last decade: Silicon Valley and the car business are converging — high-tech code meets heavy metal.

The latest is that Ford, which — alongside China's Baidu — is investing $150 million in Velodyne, a tech company that makes laser-radar Lidar systems. Ford has been working with Velodyne for a decade and uses the expensive Lidar "pucks" on its fleet or self-driving cars, currently undergoing testing in several state.

Over the past few years, the convergence between car makers and tech companies has accelerated, and this graphic (from CB Insights) shows just how much:

You can see that since late 2015, the density of these collaborations, partnerships, investments, and sometimes outright acquisitions of tech companies by old-school car makers has increased.

Why? It's simple: the General Motors, Fords, and Toyotas of the world are making a lot of money right now, as auto markets boom. And they're taking their profits and investing in an uncertain future, but one whose shape is becoming more clear.

The trend is that city dwellers are increasing the pace at which they use ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. Urbanites haven't traditionally been good car customers, because the don't need vehicles. But they do need transportation. And so traditional automakers are striving to bring them into the fold, as well as avoid being left behind if, say, Uber gets really big.

The trend is already intensifying. Expect it pick up even more speed in the years ahead.

And there's more: self-driving cars are happening much faster then anyone expected. So automakers are also getting aggressive about acquiring and investing on that front.

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A Silicon Valley venture capitalist spent so much money that his firm is reportedly falling apart at the seams and may be under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sarah Buhr and Connie Loizos at TechCrunch report that several top execs at the firm have left in recent days, citing founder Mike Rothenberg's excessive spending.

One person told TechCrunch that the SEC is looking at the firm after an employee alerted the agency to possible wire fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.

TechCrunch detailed Rothenberg's outlandish expenditures, including but not limited to:

• Tickets to the Golden Globes
• A birthday party for actor Chace Crawford
• Executive producing a video for Coldplay
• A suite at the Super Bowl
• A $2,000-a-month membership with a private-jet service

For some perspective: TechCrunch did some calculations based on the amount that the firm has under management, and Rothenberg likely has less than $940,000 to fund the entire operation. According to a quick Google search, a suite at the Super Bowl costs about $400,000.

Business Insider tried to reach out to Rothenberg, but the firm's website is down and the company could not immediately be reached for comment.

Read more over at TechCrunch.

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As summer vacation winds down, many college kids are heading back to campus ready regale each other with stories of their summer internships. 

Few will have more bragging rights than former Facebook interns. 

The social media giant has a particularly robust and perk-laden program, earning it first place on last year's internship ranking from job site Glassdoor. 

So, what's it really like to be a Facebook intern at its Menlo Park headquarters? 

Think cool projects, cushy wages, and an emphasis on empowerment. Facebook treats its interns like regular employees, so even though they're living together dorm-style in free apartments and taking the occasional coordinated trip down the coast to Santa Cruz or Yosemite on the company's dime, they're working their butts off too. 

A few 20-somethings who've been through the program dished on what it was like:

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg: CEOs need to take risks, but shouldn't have to do 'big, crazy things'

Interns make big bucks and get freebies galore.

For those uninitiated to the Silicon Valley status quo, the pay and perks that Facebook interns get sound almost ridiculous. 

Although Facebook declined to discuss specifics, Glassdoor lists salaries for interns between $6,400 and $7,500 a month. A recent survey cited by Bloomberg pegged wages at $8,000 a month. One intern showed us an offer letter for $8,400 a month.

That would be $100,800 annually. 

To help that sink in, the national wage index was $46,481 when the Social Security Administration last compiled data in 2014. 

And that's not to mention the free food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Facebook's Disneyland-esque campus, the free housing, the free shuttles to-and-from said housing, and all of the activities (a weekend in Yosemite, a day renting out Great America amusement park, theatre performances, Alcatraz tours, scavenger hunts, and more). We also heard about a "wellness" stipend in the range of $240 that one intern used to book a weekend trip to Tahoe.

Of course, those lavish perks come with big expectations (and lots of access).

As an English and literature major at Spelman College in Atlanta, Janelle McGregory never pictured herself working at a tech company in Silicon Valley.

But she applied on a whim to Facebook's FB University for Business program in 2015 after a recruiter visited her school. Now, she earnestly describes her experience as "changing the trajectory" of her life.

After her internship last summer, she returned a second year to research and work on the company's safety products. 

"We're not just here to do grunt work," she says. "[Facebook] allows us to really head our own projects, they really listen to what we have to say. They take our opinions seriously."

Facebook assigns interns to nearly every team — there's no project that's off-limits because it's too secret, Hyla Wallis, who runs the intern program, says. Interns are also given the same access to internal resources and information as regular employees. 

Cesar Ilharco, who interned at Facebook last fall, tells Business Insider that he even asked Mark Zuckerberg a question at its weekly all-hands meeting once. 

"He'll answer anything," Ilharco says (while declining to reveal his question, noting that interns adhere very closely to Facebook's confidentiality policy). 

Each company has its own office culture, different traditions and perks for its interns.

We interviewed current interns at a handful of the biggest tech companies to give you a feel for what it's like to intern with them today. 

Since not all of the interns had permission from their companies to share their experiences, their names have been changed to protect their identities. 

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Uber

Role: Fusion/Strategy Intern at Uber

Major: Computer Software, Private Research University 

How he landed the internship: John had been following Uber's career page and applied for the Fusion/Strategy internship online when he saw an opening.

After a recruiter reached out and he passed an initial phone screen, John spoke with two potential managers in separate hour-long phone interviews where he was asked how we would lead a team through a theoretical scenario. 

John had already done several past internships and tried his hand at running his own startup before applying to an internship with Uber. "I think Uber was mostly just looking for people that were self-starters that were willing to work hard and were hustling in every aspect of their lives," John said. People that "are going to take ownership, not people that are just going to come punch a time clock."

Interning at Uber: John said Uber has a strong sense of cultural values, from the CEO down.

"I always see TK — Travis Kalanick, our CEO — strolling around the office jumping into product meetings. He wants to feel involved even though it's a large company with probably eight or nine thousand employees."

John said he and his coworkers at Uber are "always trying to make big bets around what the next big thing is." Everyone is encouraged, even interns, to challenge what is being done.

"The best idea will win, even if it come from an intern or if it comes from someone higher up," he said.

While John conceded that there are many incredible tech companies to work with, he's really enjoyed working at Uber because he's trusted to take a lead on projects. As a strategy intern, John regularly coordinates with people from around the world via conference calls, and heavily in Brazil leading up to the Olympics. As an intern, John was trusted to run the overall strategy for ensuring that Uber ran smoothly in Rio through the Olympics. 

Working Hours: John said that interns are encouraged to work 40 to 50 hours a week. Personally, he tried to keep his work closer to 40 hours a week, but would stay later if there was anything he ever needed to finish. 

Overall Program: At Uber, breakfast, lunch and dinners are all catered. Depending on the team they work with, students are provided a stipend for housing and Uber credits for most of their transportation needs. 

While Uber has exploded, John said it has retained the feel of a startup because, as the company continues to expand globally, there are new challenges to tackle in every new country and culture. As John put it, Uber is "still in the process of solving their problem."

A subway station near the buffalo paddock in Golden Gate Park, a tunnel to Alcatraz Island—feasible or not, you can have San Francisco review your ideas for transit expansion, thanks to a tool that lets you design and submit your “dream” subway system.

The “Subway Vision” map plots existing major lines in the Bay Area, and asks you to plop in more stations and lines where you think they’re needed. It’s a joint production from San Francisco’s planning and transportation departments (as well as other stakeholders), who want to incorporate some form of crowd-sourcing in the next several decades of public-transit development. Here’s more from the SFMTA blog:

To get this right, we need your input on priorities—whether it’s extending the Central Subway to Fisherman’s Wharf, building a second Transbay Tube for BART into Mission Bay or extending the Market Street subway across the city to allow for longer trains....

We’ve done a lot already. The Central Subway tunnels are dug and stations are under construction. We’re replacing the entire Muni bus fleet, and new trains are on the way. We’re creating a Muni Rapid network, and we’re about to break ground for the city’s first bus rapid network on Van Ness Avenue. We’ve also built 30 miles of protected or buffered bike lanes in the last five years, and we’re requiring new building developments to contribute more to help address the transportation demand they create.

But there’s more to be done, so we’re planning for the next 50 years right now—and your input is key.

The map does not distinguish between BART, Muni, or other regional systems; it simply wants you to go wild with your subway fantasies. Look, I’ve eliminated train backups and prepped the arrival of 24-hour service with three more Transbay tubes:

All you techies can thank me when the city launches BART service to Silicon Valley:

There’s a good crab-roll place in Bodega Bay I always want to get to more often:

When you’re done, hit “Submit Map” to receive a message telling you to have a nice day, as well as the personal satisfaction some municipal worker will (probably) glance at your dream map before trashing it as impractical. Read more about the new tool, as well as other transit stuff the city has planned, atConnect SF.

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The New Yorker once called Stanford “a giant tech incubator with a football team.”

Although the publication clearly intended this as an insult, it’s also an ode to the dominance that Harvard and Stanford have held over Silicon Valley in the last few decades.

Alumni of these institutions have founded an impressive list of companies including Facebook, Instagram, PayPal, Google, Netflix, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

In fact, according to Pitchbook, companies led by graduates of these two organizations garner almost 50% more funding than their closest competitors.

So does that mean that Harvard and Stanford are the best training ground for entrepreneurs? Maybe not.

Although these schools may dominate Silicon Valley, it’s helpful to remember that there’s more to “tech” than the Bay Area, and as innovation infects traditional fields such as agriculture, healthcare, banking, government, transportation, etc… the relevance of local and international tech clusters – and therefore tech feeders – can only grow.

One such region worth examining is Israel, a country that produces more startups per capita than any other nation in the world:

Once we account for the relative success of “Startup Nation” two new contenders for “Startup U” begin to emerge – Israel’s elite 81 and 8200 units; military intelligence detachments responsible for signal intelligence, code decryption and tech-enabled ordnance. In other words: cyber spies.

Richard Behar provides an excellent analysis of these units in Forbes, detailing how they have emerged as legitimate heirs to Silicon Valley, founding notable companies such as Waze, Wix, ICQ, CheckPoint, Palo Alto Networks, Mirabilis, NICE, Outbrain, AudioCodes, Gilat, Leadspace and Ezchip.

So why are graduates of the 81 and 8200 so successful?

The Cauldron of Entrepreneurship

The units can attribute their inimitable success to a host of factors including selection bias, training, culture and dedication. First, the 81 and 8200 have access to the nation’s best and brightest. Every country yields a handful of technological savants each year, and Isreal is no exception: The Financial Times tells the tale of a 19 year old applicant that reverse engineered a USB drive to become a hacking tool and two 17 year old hopefuls that built a working cellphone from scratch.

But unlike the United States, where top students have the option of attending Stanford, Caltech, Harvard or MIT, military conscription is compulsory in Israel. Although only half of conscripts eventually serve, this still gives the units their choice of the “top 1% of the 1% of the country.”

Given that the entire 8200 numbers fewer than 5,000, that yields a level of selectivity greater than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Caltech or Stanford. Furthermore, while exact figures are unknown, Unit 81 is reported to be even more discerning.

Second, new recruits have access to some of the best training in the world. While the official syllabus is confidential, interviews with 81 and 8200 alumni describe a curriculum that is a mix of academics (e.g. physics, mathematics, computer science), practical knowledge (e.g. big-data, IT infrastructure, machine learning, natural language processing) and “tradecraft” (e.g. hacking, virtual spying).

Perhaps more importantly, however, are the critical-thinking skills fostered by the program. In a piece in Forbes, Israeli VC and 8200 alum Inbal Arieli calls the unit a “boot camp for the mind” where students are “put into small teams where [they] study, brainstorm, train, analyze [and] solve problems, from early in the morning to very late at night”. The fact that most entrepreneurs spend at least half of their time problem-solving makes this instruction particularly germane. Third, the embedded entrepreneurial culture of the 81 and 8200 (and some would argue Israel as a whole), is very similar to that of a startup.

In general, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) tends to be much less hierarchical than other militaries. But even in that relatively flat structure, the 81 and 8200 enjoy a special place. Unlike most military units, disruptive conduct and challenges to authority are not only tolerated – they’re encouraged. As alum and serial entrepreneur Rami Efrati says, “in intelligence, you can’t work only by rules.”

The democratic cultures also foster a leadership style that is conducive to launching a startup. 81 and 8200 officers are often forced to lead their peers, which means that they can rarely rely on antiqued authoritarian management methods. To be successful, leaders must develop a transformational style — one that emphasizes long-term aspirations, shared challenges and inspires team members with a sense of purpose and excitement. This is a powerful trait for young CEOs, who often need to attract capital, talent and customers solely on the strength of their vision.

Finally, the units have a unified sense of purpose – an esprit de corps driven by ample resources and a resolute motivation to stay on the vanguard of technological development. While becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg or Evan Spiegel may serve as strong motivation for a California-based entrepreneur, many would argue that it pales in comparison to the responsibility of national security. Military intelligence officers believe that they serve a critical function in the protection of the nation. The 8200 was created as a response to a massive intelligence failure – the surprise invasions of Egypt and Syria that led to the Yom Kippur War – and Israel has dedicated a significant amount of its budget to support its overall mission through intelligence and R&D. 

These shared goals undoubtedly catalyze the development of grit and “hustle” – essentials for entrepreneurial success – and also give alumni an extremely strong support network to lean on through challenging times. Reunions and networking events are common, and soldiers grow strong friendships that lead to lasting business contacts for years to come. If the maxim “you are the average of the people you spend the most time with” holds any merit, then 81 and 8200 graduates are in good company.

Where are the Israeli Unicorns?

Although the 81 and 8200 get most of the press, they are by no means the only relevant unit in Israel. There’s also Matzov (part of the communication corps), Unit 9900 (visual intelligence division) and Air Force Intelligence. And many believe the umbrella of “Startup Nation” spreads even further: Moran Bar and Reut Shechter of Geektime argue that military service of any type is conducive to producing strong entrepreneurs.

But there may be one glaring flaw to the highly specialized background of these soldiers – the fact that “tech” is just one piece of the complicated puzzle of building a successful business. Indeed, history is littered with examples of technically superior products failing spectacularly, which reminds us that many other elements are just as, if not more, important to building a lasting enterprise. 

Early-stage entrepreneurs must not only focus on their product, but also on design, branding and user experience; recruiting and management of key employees; budgeting and capital allocation; and, of course, marketing and distribution. After all, it was Reid Hoffman who taught us that, “having a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.”

Unfortunately, interviews we conducted with several 81 and 8200 alumni reveal a potentially endemic problem among Israeli entrepreneurs – many continue to hold the view that “technology is king” and tend to build technology-based features rather than complete products or companies. And even the founders that don’t fall into this trap may find it difficult to receive the commercial expertise they need in the Israeli startup ecosystem.

While I won’t opine on the quality of ‘business’ talent coming out of Tel Aviv, I will say that Silicon Valley is still a hot bed of expertise in these areas, with alums from Facebook, Apple and Google producing a steady stream of aptitude in the fields of growth hacking, branding, customer relations, strategy and business development. There’s also the question of leadership at scale.

While 81 and 8200 graduates get a lot of experience leading small, agile teams – which is undoubtedly vital to the success of a fledgling enterprise – many alumni report that they’re much less comfortable operating in highly structured and rigid environments. And since, almost by definition, bureaucracy increases with size, many of the strengths noted above may turn into weaknesses at scale.

Indeed, the scourge of “Startup Nation” has been its inability to scale and penchant for early (and relatively modest) exits. 

Despite having several strong advantages, CB Insights only lists two Israeli unicorns on its list of 169. As The Times of Israel points out, “traditionally, foreign investors have snapped up Israeli companies while they are still in their infancy and at low valuations.”

Given that we’ve previously shown that at least 3 unicorns have been created each year for the past 20 years, what can 81 and 8200 graduates (and Israeli entrepreneurs as a whole) do to increase participation in this list? Should founders relocate to Silicon Valley to have access to top commercial talent? Should they expand into China and take advantage of the massive consumer market? Should they be patient and stay in Israel and benefit from the maturing startup scene? 

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Tory Green is a principal at Tiller Partners, a Los Angeles-based VC (www.tillerpartnersllc.com). Special thanks to Csaba Konkoly for advice and input, Kamil Zarychto for in-depth research and analysis and Liron Azrielant for her superb insight into the startup ecosystem in Israel.

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At Oracle HQ, class will soon be in session.

In the fall of 2018, teens will invade Silicon Valley tech giant Oracle when a public charter high school opens its doors on campus. Design Tech High School, or D.tech for short, combines personalized education and workshops taught by Oracle employee-volunteers to foster problem-solving skills in teens.

D.tech is currently housed inside a Bay Area trade school, but upon completion of the new facilities, it will become the first public high school in the US located on a corporate campus. Blending a corporation with public education on the same grounds might sound strange, but it could bring better access and resources to kids living in the shadow of the major corporate campuses scattered across Silicon Valley.

The summer before D.tech first set up shop, administrators sat down with the Oracle Education Foundation to figure out how Oracle could make a positive impact. They landed on an initiative that would bring Oracle employees into D.tech to run workshops on design-centered thinking, a pillar of D.tech's teaching. 

That wasn't enough for Oracle CEO Safra Catz.

When Colleen Cassity, executive director of the Oracle Education Foundation, came to Catz's office to pitch the program, Catz stood up from the board room table and walked to the window.

"She pointed down 11 stories to this undeveloped parcel of land beside the Belmont Slough and said, 'I'm pretty sure that we own that. We could build a school there,'" Cassity says.

Designing the new facility became an assignment for D.tech's first freshmen class, who will be seniors when the building at Oracle opens.

Ken Montgomery, founder of D.tech, says students toured Oracle's campus to get a feel for the aesthetics and met with architects and the design gurus at the Institute of Design at Stanford to develop blueprints for the new facility.

"They wanted to have part of the building that could transform into a boat and go out to sea for biology class," Montgomery said. "That makes the zipline look doable."

D.tech's future home will stretch 64,000 square feet across Oracle's campus, located across from the conference center. It does away with the traditional classroom environment, instead rotating students through glass-walled learning stations. There's also a Design Realization Garage where students can prototype their inventions.

Students will have access to the basketball courts in Oracle's gym and the auditorium, though Cassity stresses that resources will only be shared selectively. Students won't have access to the employee locker rooms, for instance, or the corporate cafeteria.

The school will be free to attend. Admission is based on a lottery system, and preference is given to students living in the San Mateo Union High School District.

Since Oracle began hosting workshops for D.tech students in 2014, 57 employees have gotten involved — including many repeat volunteers. Projects have included a pickpocket-proof purse, which syncs with a ring the owner wears to determine who's reaching inside, and soccer shin guards that contain sensors so coaches can create real-time heat maps of player movement.

"We're trying to build a school where we teach students that the world can be better, and they can be the ones to make it happen," Montgomery says.

Both Montgomery and Cassity are optimistic that D.tech can serve as an example to others on how the public and private sectors may join forces to better education in America.

It's not the first high school to attempt this kind of public-private integration. In 2014, computer hardware giant IBM opened a six-year vocational high school in Brooklyn, where students learn STEM skills and graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree. Business software company SAP followed suit that year with a similar school.

Cassity hopes that Oracle employee's work on the ground level will help plant the seeds of innovation in students.

"Nobody told Elon Musk how to start Tesla Motors. Nobody told Larry Ellison how to create Oracle," Cassity says. "Nobody can tell you how to innovate, you have to do it."

SEE ALSO: Teens are totally divided on this social media star who could be the next Justin Bieber

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NOW WATCH: These animations will help you understand the math concepts you never got in high school

If you've watched "Silicon Valley," you're probably wondering: Is "rest and vest" a real thing?

In season three, the sweet and utterly useless Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti learns he's been promoted at the Google-inspired tech giant Hooli, but is unassigned to any project teams.

Confused, he joins a group of other unassigned employees squandering the days left in their contracts on the company roof.

There's a lot of this going on.

Turns out "rest and vest" is real.

When a startup is acquired by a major company, the founders are sometimes relegated to do nothing. They run out their contracts wandering campus while their equity vests. It's unclear how accurate the show's depiction is, as debated on Quora and Reddit.

Actor Josh Brener, who plays Big Head on "Silicon Valley," has no doubt there are tech workers living out his character's storyline. The proof is on his phone.

"Since the show has been on, I've actually had a number of people — including today at Google X — I've had people send me pictures of themselves on a roof, kicking back doing nothing, with the hashtag 'unassigned' or 'rest and vest,'" Brener told Business Insider. "It's something that really happens, and apparently, somewhat often."

It's likely those Googlers in particular are just joking, but it's no less funny.

There is, at least, good news for Big Head's career future. It looks like season four of "Silicon Valley" will follow his and Erlich Bachman's escapades as they take control of Pied Piper.

"We're all secret Big Heads, you know?" Brener said. "As hard as we work, we're all pretty sure that inside there's just sort of, like, a dummy who wants to drink soda."

SEE ALSO: The 'Silicon Valley' cast reveals the origins of the infamous Pied Piper jacket

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NOW WATCH: Bumble founder: Here's what's seriously wrong with the growing trend in Silicon Valley called 'brogramming'

Since its debut back in 2014, "Silicon Valley" has sparked debate on who in the tech world inspired the show's motley crew of characters. Richard is Mark Zuckerberg. Erlich is Sean Parker. Laurie is Marissa Mayer, and so on.

Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti, played by Josh Brener, has remained a mystery.

He climbed the ranks at Google-inspired tech giant Hooli to become "cohead dreamer" of the moonshot division; landed a profile in Wired (for real); and went on to acquire Pied Piper. But Big Head did it all with the technical acumen of a first-year computer-science student, and even that might be generous. His job for much of season three involved idling on a roof.

He is, as Brener describes, the "manifestation of tai chi, just blowing in the wind."

Who of the tech elite could possibly inspire such a dud?

Big Head is actually an amalgamation of Silicon Valley has-beens.

When a startup is acquired by a major company, the founders are sometimes relegated to do nothing. They run out their contracts wandering campus while their equity vests.

"As far as I know, Big Head was inspired by a number of different real-life stories where people were basically in the situation of being unassigned to any project — basically being fired without being fired," Brener tells Business Insider, adding that there was no one-to-one comparison.

There is one surprising source of inspiration for Big Head that has nothing to do with the valley: the main character of the 1979 dark comedy, "Being There."

Watch the trailer below.

In the film, Chauncey Gardiner (played by Peter Sellers) fakes his way to financial and political prominence after being kicked off the estate where he has worked as a gardener his whole life. His simple words about gardens and the weather are often mistaken for profound metaphors, and most of his knowledge comes from what he sees on TV. Still, he excels.

"In the early episodes of 'Silicon Valley,' I had no idea what Big Head would go on to achieve in all of his glory. So, it was as much a surprise to me," Brener says, "but I definitely went back and looked at Chauncey Gardiner after the fact and tried to pick up a couple pointers."

He remembers the show's writers telling him, "Hey, if you're going to steal, steal from the best."

"Being There" has since become one of his favorite movies.

SEE ALSO: Season 3 of 'Silicon Valley' was almost completely different

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NOW WATCH: These real-life robocops are patrolling the streets of Silicon Valley

Sam Altman, the Silicon Valley investor behind the venture-capital firm Y Combinator, has some thoughts about Donald Trump's tax returns.

Tweeting from his personal account on Saturday, Altman said the IRS should drop its audit of the GOP presidential nominee's tax returns "in the interest of citizens being able to make a fully informed choice in this election."

"Even though he can release his returns under audit, and there's precedent for this, it seems like he won't," Altman said.

Trump has refused to release his tax returns, despite it being the customary move for modern-day US presidential candidates. The real-estate businessman and his legal advisers have asserted that because of an ongoing audit, he will not release them publicly until the audit is complete — which is not expected to happen before the November election.

High-profile figures in politics and in business have scoffed at the notion that Trump is unable to show the public his tax returns.

The 2012 GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, called the move "disqualifying." Warren Buffett suggested that Trump is "afraid" to release his returns. Entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban implied that Trump isn't budging because the Clintons "made more" money than him.

In his tweets, Altman argued that if the IRS drops its Trump audit, the New York businessman would be forced to make a move, "so if he doesn't," Altman said, "it'd be reasonable to assume he's hiding something."

The venture capitalist then turned his attention to Hillary Clinton: "I also think Clinton should release transcripts from her speeches to financial institutions."

Calls for Clinton to show those speech transcripts were ignited by her former Democratic primary rival, Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator routinely condemned the influence of big banks in politics and attempted to cite Clinton's closed-door speeches as evidence of that.

For her part, Clinton has indicated that she's open to showing the public those transcripts "if everybody else agrees to do it."

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NOW WATCH: 'It's a tired disgusting argument': Trump responds to Clinton linking him to white supremacists

Richard Barbrook had to wait 20 years to speak publicly about his landmark essay “The Californian Ideology” in California. Though he’d toured the paper around Europe when it was first released in 1995, UC Santa Cruz’s “50 years of Imagined Futures in California” conference was the first time he’d talked about it to an audience anywhere in the US, and they were very prepared to listen. After all, he’d been right about so much of what California, or at least its tech industry, has become.

“Now it’s orthodoxy,” Barbrook, who’s now 60, told me of the manifesto, which he co-authored with the late Andy Cameron. “That’s the weird thing. People were turning up, other academics were quoting from The Californian Ideology. And, then there were all these students who’d read it. It’s like on all the reading lists.”

While The Californian Ideology has garnered a following in the two decades since it was first published, it began as Barbrook and Cameron, two Marxist academics, critiquing a very Californian institution: Wired, circa the early 1990s. The two leveled the accusation that Wired was reproducing some of the right-wing ideas then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was promoting. And they claimed the magazine was ignoring the effects of policies like welfare reform, and was “instead mesmerised by their enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities offered by new information technologies.”

“We had all these people in England who were going on, who loved Wired magazine, because it was, you know, New York, California, new, the internet! We had these people who would not approve the privatization of the Health Service or the railways, which they did actually do, absurdly. But as soon as it became anything to do with the internet, they used to spout all this free market nonsense.”

Before writing The Californian Ideology, Barbrook had a background in the punk scene and pirate radio while Cameron was an photographer and artist. The two wrote the essay in about a month in 1995, in part for themselves, and in part as a sort of statement of purpose for a new Masters program in Hypermedia Studies they were setting up at the University of Westminster.

Unsurprisingly, Wired disagreed with Barbrook and Cameron’s assessment that the tech industry’s libertarian tendencies were generators of inequality and oppression. The magazine’s co-founder, Louis Rosetto, wrote a rebuttal that began by labeling the piece as “[a] seeming understanding of the Digital Revolution’s crucial left-right fusion of free minds and free markets, followed by a totally out-to-lunch excursion into discussions of the role of the government, racism, and the ecology in California.” He called the two “smug Europeans.”

Despite Rosetto’s objections, many of the diagnoses Barbrook and Cameron made have been borne out, though they often come in (admittedly vague) packages or sweeping pronouncements. The following could be a description of governmental mass surveillance, the technological walled gardens that companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple are increasingly creating, or both:

While the proponents of the electronic agora and the electronic marketplace promise to liberate individuals from the hierarchies of the state and private monopolies, the social polarisation of American society is bringing forth a more oppressive vision of the digital future. The technologies of freedom are turning into the machines of dominance.

Much of The Californian Ideology is also devoted to addressing the internal culture of the industry and its workers, the “virtual class,” who were flooding Northern California in 1995 and have continued to do so rampantly ever since:

Like the labour aristocracy of the last century, core personnel in the media, computing and telecoms industries experience the rewards and insecurities of the marketplace. On the one hand, these digital artisans not only tend to be well-paid, but also have considerable autonomy over their pace of work and place of employment.

As a result, the cultural divide between the hippie and the organisation man has now become rather fuzzy. Yet, on the other hand, these skilled workers are tied by the terms of their contracts and have no guarantee of continued employment. Lacking the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main route to self-fulfillment for much of the virtual class.

It’s all but an exact description of what Anna Weiner describes in her insider’s description of startup culture from earlier this year:

Work has wedged its way into our identities, and the only way to maintain sanity is to maintain that we are the company, the company is us. Whenever we see a stranger at the gym wearing a T-shirt with our logo on it, whenever we are mentioned on social media or on a client’s blog, whenever we get a positive support ticket, we share it in the company chat room and we’re proud, genuinely proud.

Barbrook attributes the accuracy of many of these guesses to the fact that he’s simply read about it all before. When I mentioned mass surveillance, he started listing instances of technological surveillance going back to Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police.

“I was trained as a historian, and I now teach in a politics department, and I am teaching in the media studies department. What’s interesting is there’s always this resistance to history,” he added. “It’s always got to be the latest thing, and, you know, you’re lucky if they’ll go back to 1968. Some people go back to 1917. And [when] people like me start talking about the 19th Century or the 18th and 17th Century, their eyes start to glaze over. And so I actually think if you’re going to talk about capitalism, you have to talk about the whole of capitalism.”

Not all of what Barbrook and Cameron hoped for came to pass, and indeed the alternatives they laid out were largely ignored. The Californian Ideology offers a lengthy explanation of how Minitel, the now-defunct French, government-administered proto-web, could be a model for centralized, largely available internet access. It also holds out great hope for tech-based art, which while still a venue for protest, has arguably been largely co-opted by the technology industry.

Despite his critiques, Barbrook remains fairly, even surprisingly, optimistic, particularly about people using the internet to organize. He was buoyed earlier this month when thousands of people turned out in Liverpool, gathered on short notice through social media to support Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who’s being challenged for party leadership by Owen Smith. (Barbrook helped to write a “digital democracy manifesto” for Corbyn’s leadership campaign.)

But Barbrook wonders if what’s really necessary for the internet’s potential to be fully realized is that it’ll have to become like electric light: an underlying layer that’s largely taken for granted. Barbrook now has a two-year-old son, and while he still has misgivings about how technology is produced and owned, he holds out hope that his son’s generation will be able be able to put it to better use.

“Maybe the internet will only become radical when we don’t even think about it,” Barbrook said. “My little boy, he won’t even think about [the internet and social media]…but they’ll just assume that they can just express their opinion, socialize, mobilize, do everything like this without all those barriers that people had….We haven’t even got there yet. We’re getting there.”

SEE ALSO: Microsoft is trying hard to silence the internet's haters

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NOW WATCH: This one trick for your work schedule will make you a lot more productive

Silicon Valley is a great place to create the next world-changing business. But for founders with no connections, it can be an intimidating place to break into.

Business Insider spoke to 10 top-tier venture capitalists about what advice they give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking for a way into the tech industry.

Here's the advice from some of the best on how to break into Silicon Valley:

SEE ALSO: Here's the moment when I realized how miraculous self-driving technology really is

Breaking into Silicon Valley is about connections.

"Start by finding the best connections to a few seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Angels or VCs via your contacts, LinkedIn or other means. Get a warm intro to them, meet them and pick their brains. At the end of the meetings, ask them in turn to intro you to other folks who can be helpful and then meet those folks. Rinse and repeat! Voila! You will have the start of a good SV network. The awesome thing about Silicon Valley is that most people are willing to 'pay it forward' and be helpful to smart folks who are starting on their entrepreneurial journey. "

— Ajay Chopra, Trinity Ventures

Have a point of view.

"Sometimes folks who are trying to build relationships come off as bland, because they're afraid to express a point of view. But I'm much more impressed reading a blog post or email that shares a thoughtful, opinionated point of view. Even if I disagree with the conclusion it proves the person cares about something. Shows me how they think and communicate. Demonstrates that they did the work to get more than superficial on an issue. Those are all qualities which I correlate with success in Silicon Valley."

— Hunter Walk, Homebrew

Identify individuals who could dramatically increase the chances of your business becoming successful.

"You are always one amazing advisor/partner/investor away from achieving the uber connectivity that will help get to you success in Silicon Valley. You have to believe in this. I've met so many individuals who've done extremely well thanks to the amplification effects of having just one phenomenal relationship."

"Identify individuals who could dramatically increase the chances of your business becoming successful. The person you're looking for will be just as passionate about your area of interest as you are. Look for them on LinkedIn and at professional meet-ups. And don't just title-shop. For example, associates at VC firms might not be able to write you a check (yet), but they can be incredibly strong advocates. Get hold of them; impress them. Be persistent (in a nice way)."

— Niko Bonatsos, General Catalyst

Penny Kim, a marketing professional with a one-month career at a Silicon Valley startup, shared a detailed account of one of the ugliest startup stories we've ever heard.

Her tale started with a job offer in July of $135,000 a year plus equity and a $10,000 signing bonus for relocation expenses. (She was moving from Dallas for the job.)

It ended with her dismissal in August after she filed a complaint with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement over failure to properly pay her, and an account of her month at the startup — which she did not name — on Startup Grind, entitled, "I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup." Her story has been a big topic of discussion on Hacker News for the last couple of days.

Business Insider spoke to Al Brown, former CTO and one of the founders of the startup, which was called 1for.one and JobSonic and recently renamed itself WrkRiot. (He's the one Kim called "Charlie" in her story.)

Brown confirmed much of her account, even the most outrageous accusation: The CEO she dubbed "Michael," whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as Isaac Choi, gave employees fake receipts for money wire transfers to convince them the company had paid their back wages when in fact it hadn't.

Until this week, the company was still in business and still had employees, Brown says. It's unclear if it still is or does.

When one of the company's advisers heard Kim's tale, he published the company's name, posted an apology letter, and declared he was no longer associated. Shortly after that, the company's website went offline.

The CEO and cofounder has not responded to Business Insider's requests for comment through multiple channels — email, social media, and phone.

The company's website, Facebook, and Twitter accounts were not online as of Tuesday morning, and its LinkedIn page has no contact information on it other than a headquarters address.

Caught in the lie

The most startling allegation is that the company tried to trick employees into thinking it had paid them back wages when it hadn't. In her account, Kim wrote:

"Thursday, August 4th was D-Day ... That afternoon in the office, Michael emailed each employee a personalized PDF receipt of a Wells Fargo wire transfer with the message: 'Here is the receipt. It has been calculated for the taxes on your semi-monthly salary and signing bonus. The money is arriving either today or tomorrow. I am sorry about the delay.'"

If the money didn't arrive in their accounts, the CEO told employees, it was a problem with the employee's bank and they needed to sort it out on their own.

Because the company was a month in arrears with their salaries at the time, and because this was such an odd way to get paid — not a payroll check, not even a cashier's check — an intern grew suspicious, Kim reported.

The intern quickly discovered that the receipts were fake. Someone had pulled an image of a wire transfer receipt from a Google search and photoshopped one for each of the 17 employees to make it look as if it came from a lawyer and was going into their accounts, paying the proper wages.

But the person forgot to change the details on the image, like the date on the bottom of the form, which said 2014. The intern and other employees confronted the CEO about it.

Meanwhile, Brown knew nothing about the wire transfers or any of the books, he told Business Insider.

He developed "lack of trust" issues with his cofounder around this same time, and a week ago on Monday, he quit the company.

"I'm out $230,000 plus expenses from April and back pay," he said. "I got pretty hurt here."

Brown met Choi through a trusted acquaintance. He's the brother-in-law of a former employee, someone he worked with and knew well. But Brown admitted a big mistake: He didn't do an extensive background check on his partner before launching the company.

The startup was still in the friends-and-family stage of funding, and looking for angels and seed investors.

Choi had promised Brown that he was investing $2 million of his own money into the company, but he had really put in $400,000, Brown says.

As Kim recounts, the CEO had convincing stories about why the rest of his funds were delayed, all while promising that he would have the money any minute, Brown says.

The startup was founded in November, and "everything was fine until April," Brown said. Employees and bills were being paid on time, "and we were growing."

By the end of April, the company was running short on cash and hadn't secured a seed offer yet.

"Every week, [the CEO] said the money was coming, but something happens — a long list of stories. I broached it in May and June with pointed questions, and I was not getting good answers," Brown said.

Two employees pitch in another $65,000

But Choi was so believable that he talked two employees into "loaning" the company cash, Kim wrote and Brown confirmed. One employee loaned the company $50,000 and another $15,000, Brown says, and that's how the company made its next payroll.

"I didn't find this out until August," Brown said.

Choi had told him that the cash came from a $500,000 loan his lawyer helped them secure. Brown had met the lawyer and, at that time, believed that the company had the remaining $500,000 in the bank.

But Brown says that in truth the company had plowed through $695,000 — between Choi's original $400,000, Brown's $230,000, and the employees' $65,000 — and didn't have a $500,000 loan from elsewhere.

An actual angel investor did invest in August, Brown says, allowing the company to pay its employees the month of salaries it owed them for July.

He adds that the company paid Kim's salary in full, which she confirms in her account, although Kim says she never got the signing bonus and has a quibble with the severance amount.

Rite of passage

Brown has been telling his side of the story, including posting a lengthy reply on Hacker News.

"To this day, I don't understand the game plan from the CEO. Why accelerate into a brick wall? None of it makes sense," Brown wrote.

One person on Hacker News offered this explanation:

"Welcome to the club. It's pretty much a rite of passage here to spend some time with a psychopath VC, a completely self absorbed CTO with a rich investor dad that fuels his fantasies, or an idiotic CEO with an ego problem, and to pay the price for it (just time if you're lucky, time+money if you're not)."

For her part, Kim said that if she had heeded the many red flags she saw at the company, she could have saved herself some heartache — but, she writes:

"There's this default human condition to trust others and give the benefit of the doubt ... There is also a default human condition to not give up ... I haven't given up on Silicon Valley or California, and I sure as hell haven't given up on good people."

Business Insider has reached out to Choi multiple times to hear his side of the story but have not heard back. We'll update this post if we do.

SEE ALSO: This woman chose to go homeless in San Francisco instead of paying high rent

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NOW WATCH: Bed Bath & Beyond paid less than $30 million for a startup that was once worth $900 million

You don’t need me to tell you how hyper-competitive, White, and male the worlds of finance and technology are. I believe I am being entirely fair in saying it is not any small feat that I – Black, female, and from a working-class Tennessee upbringing — have successfully navigated both of these worlds.

But I have not done it through “beating the odds” – a phrase that conjures up an image of someone at a craps table shooting dice and getting lucky. “Beating the odds” is a total erasure. It undermines the very deliberate hard work, diligence, and persistence that it actually took to get where I am.

If my experience demonstrates one thing, it is that the total of one’s experiences combined with unrelenting preparation will lead to opportunities. Preparation + opportunity leads to “beating the odds.”

In reflecting on my path, I flash back to middle school, when I watched the 1999 TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley (which I’m pretty sure I was a lot more into than the rest of the world). To say that I became obsessed would be putting it mildly.

Up until then, I had wanted to be a doctor (and was expected by many to be a nurse and never leave Tennessee). I got the message loud and clear: Medicine was the noble profession that smart people pursued. I had no idea tech careers even existed. But after my rapt movie-watching and my realization that I hate blood, my mindset changed. I set out to teach myself HTML.

I quickly progressed to playing around with color codes and creating random web and landing pages. I loved working with computers. It made me feel like I was on the cutting-edge of something or in on some big secret. While my peers aspired to be police officers and, yes, nurses and doctors, I was out in left field with my newfound interest interest in technology and this whole computer thing.

I started researching tech luminaries. I discovered Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the empires they were building. When it came time to apply for college, I sent applications to several schools close to Microsoft in Seattle and Apple in Silicon Valley. I gained admission to many — in fact, every school I applied to in California save for Stanford. But in the wake of the Stanford direction, my high school self swore off the entire state of California, so I ended up on the other side of the country, at Wellesley College. It was among the top-five liberal arts colleges in the country at that time, and between the ranking and the scholarships, I was sold; off I went to major in computer science.

Not so fast. My path took some twists and turn from there. After a year as a computer science major, I had received my first grade below a “B.” In addition to fearing further damage to my GPA, I also started thinking that programming wasn’t the right path for someone as extroverted as I am. I love talking and was not a fan of long and often solitary coding marathons that seemed like they were required of all effective software engineers. I decided computer science was not for me.

After talking to upperclassmen and my school’s career services office about what fields might have a high potential for earning and give me a solid corporate foundation, I learned that a career in finance could check both of those boxes. I became laser-focused on grooming myself to be the most well-studied and hireable investment banking candidate out there.

I spent an inordinate amount of my sophomore year of college studying the fundamentals of finance and banking to prepare myself for internship interviews. No one explicitly told me that I’d have to work harder than other people in order to overcome the presumption that I wouldn’t be a good fit for the roles I was pursuing. No one had to. I already knew what the deal was.

My preparation paid off. The four methods of company valuation, the formula for DCF, major line items on the three key financial statements — I knew all the fundamentals down cold. I ended up landing a coveted finance internship my sophomore year and getting invited back the following two summers.

After graduation, I plowed through the finance world for five years and learned a lot, yet I still found myself fascinated by all things tech. Even though I felt distant from the Silicon Valley changemakers and communities I constantly read about — I was literally 3,000 miles away — I believed I could have a place there. To unlock those opportunities though, I needed to practice dogged persistence and act with enough energy and preparation to fight the societal typecasting that too often works against people like me – Black, female, and a “unicorn” in Silicon Valley.

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I did know I was ready to move on from serving the old captains of industry. In tech and out in the Valley, there may not have been a ton of diversity, but there also wasn’t the same legacy. I saw the power of the internet to transform not only the lives of consumers, but the entire corporate landscape – and I wanted to be a part of that. It had been 16 years since I first saw Pirates of Silicon Valley, but my desire to remain on the cutting edge never left me.

My first position on the West Coast was in business development at a mid-stage company. I got to strengthen my presentation skills and use my banking knowledge to help the CEO spin off a small subsidiary. My new role forced me to learn and build skillsets I’d never had to use as a banker – from making cold calls to manning customer relationship management software to creating marketing collateral for the sales team using Adobe Creative Suite.

Being around all of the entrepreneurial energy in the Bay was infectious. A few exciting years and roles later, I decided to transition to working for myself.

Honing the skills and licenses from my finance days and the experience and network I’d built in tech, I launched Spry Ventures, a strategic advisory firm. I also recently started a company called Ambitious Grads to provide the ultimate guide for anyone fresh out of college and considering careers on Wall Street and/or in Silicon Valley, and my e-book comes out in this fall.

Through Spry, I advise investors and employees at tech startups about opportunities to sell their company stock in the private market. The same little girl who fell in love with Silicon Valley through a mediocre TV movie now has a seat at the table advising tech executives and leading nine-figure stock sales.

In retrospect, everything I had done up until starting my own companies – the things I’d learned when I was “supposed” to be taking organic chemistry in pursuit of a nursing degree – made my current role in Silicon Valley a possibility.

So yes, you could still argue that I “beat the odds.” But I still don’t see it that way. My accomplishments are the sum of my work and decisions over the years. At a young age, my community instilled in me that I needed to be twice as good to get half as far. It’s a common refrain for minority kids who grow up without direct access to an abundance of professional role models they see working the same jobs they one day want.

People have all sorts of different definitions of success. For me, success is the sum of preparation and the relentless pursuit of opportunities you choose for yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s as simple as getting lucky. You need intent — and more.

This post originally appeared on The Well, the editorial hub of Jopwell. 

SEE ALSO: Go inside a Facebook product designer's bright New York studio apartment

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NOW WATCH: Here's what happens when you order something on Amazon Prime Now

Judging by the political winds, Silicon Valley seems headed for a showdown with antitrust regulators.

For the first time since 1988, the Democratic Party’s platform includes stronger antitrust enforcement, while leading liberals have singled out Google, Apple and Facebook for holding too much market power.

Republicans considered (but ultimately rejected) inserting stronger antitrust language in their party platform, and standard-bearer Donald Trump has a famously frosty relationship with Silicon Valley, favoring heavier taxation and forcing Apple to shift manufacturing to the U.S.

Those expecting a showdown, however, may be disappointed. That’s because antitrust regulators and U.S. judges tend to believe that products that don’t cost a dime are beyond their purview. And that’s how most of Silicon Valley’s products are marketed these days. Facebook’s slogan reassures: “It’s free and always will be.” Google claims: “One free account gets you into everything Google.” And Apple has an entire section of its App Store devoted to “free apps.”

Drawing on my experiences as a former Department of Justice antitrust attorney, I’ve argued that U.S. antitrust laws are in fact broad enough to include these products – which are hardly “free.” Unfortunately, however, as my analysis of the history of enforcement in these markets shows, the trend in the U.S. has been away from antitrust oversight.

Everything is 'free'

We live in an increasingly “free” world.

Ours is a world where vast libraries of information and content are available at the click of a button or tap of a screen – and all of it is (seemingly) free. Google search, Twitter, Instagram, Pokémon Go: all free.

If these products are freely available, what room is there for antitrust, a body of law often understood as focused on protecting consumers from artificially high monopoly prices?

Prominent judge (and antitrust legend) Robert Bork, for example, contended that search engines cannot be liable under antitrust laws because they are “free to consumers.”

U.S. antitrust enforcers appear, for the most part, to agree with Bork. Since the early days of the internet, “free” digital products have largely escaped scrutiny.

Giving 'free' a free pass

The first antitrust case targeting free digital products was also the most famous. At the outset of the 1990s Microsoft trial, the Department of Justice initially pursued a predatory pricing theory: Microsoft, it alleged, “set a zero price for its browser for the purpose of depriving Netscape of revenue and protecting [Microsoft’s] operating system monopoly.”

In other words, the DOJ at first argued that offering a product for free doesn’t excuse a company from antitrust liability. But the government subsequently dropped this theory on appeal. It is unclear why it did so, though a 1993 Supreme Court ruling had made any predatory pricing lawsuit virtually impossible to win. Perhaps the added difficulty of convincing an appellate judge that “free” was illegal simply caused the government to focus on more core aspects of the appeal.

In any case, ever since then the courts have continued to be skeptical of that type of argument.

One of the earliest antitrust lawsuits against Google was brought by a private company that alleged Google was exploiting its free online search service in an anti-competitive manner. The complaint was dismissed in 2007 by a court reasoning that antitrust law does not “concern itself with competition in the provision of free services.”

In 2008, the Federal Trade Commission allowed Google to acquire online advertising giant DoubleClick. Only one of the five commissioners voted to block the merger, pointing out that the acquisition would give Google access to a wealth of user data that could tip the market for search advertising (closely related to the market for free online search) further in favor of Google.

Four years later, the agency unanimously approved Facebook’s acquisition of free photo-sharing network Instagram, though many industry observers concluded that Facebook was paying a massive premium to stave off competition from its upstart rival.

And the next year, the agency voted (again unanimously) to close its investigation into Google’s conduct in the free online search market, despite a leaked staff report identifying harm to consumers caused by the search giant.

All in all, “free" products seem to warrant a free pass from U.S. antitrust laws. But not so in other jurisdictions.

Russia’s Federal Antitrust Service in August issued a US$6.8 million fine against Google for abusing its market position with Android by favoring its own digital services over those of rivals.

Earlier this summer, the European Union issued its third statement of objection to Google, meaning Google could face up to three antitrust charges relating to its free search service, free smartphone operating system and its search-advertising platform. And Germany’s antitrust regulator is currently investigating Facebook’s privacy practices.

'Free' markets are still markets

Why have international enforcement agencies responded so differently than those in the U.S.? Are they just unfairly targeting successful U.S. firms, as some (including Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew) claim? Or do they see something that we’ve missed?

U.S. antitrust law is uniquely devoted to a strain of economics often called “price theory.” Beginning in the 1970s, price theory came to dominate antitrust law and scholarship.

Price theory (no surprise) focuses on prices. Supposedly, price theory uses price as a synechdoche to represent all aspects of competition. But in fact, businesses compete not just on price but also on quality, innovation, branding and other product attributes.

Yet U.S. antitrust regulators and courts have traditionally focused heavily on price competition. When products are “free” (or, more accurately, “zero-price”), they simply slip under the antitrust radar.

Such, I would argue, was the case in the broadcast radio industry, which has long offered a service “free” to listeners.

In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, which removed a longstanding limit on how many stations a single entity can own. A frenzy of mergers and acquisitions followed.

U.S. antitrust enforcement agencies screened these transactions for possible harm to competition but only looked for higher prices to advertisers, neglecting to analyze potential harm to listeners. Most of the mergers were cleared without objection. The resulting lack of competition in many regions means that radio listeners now pay more– by listening to more ads – in exchange for the product they want.

That result should come as no surprise. Listeners may not pay for broadcast radio with money, but they do pay with attention. At its core, this is a prototypical market exchange, as contract law has long recognized.

There's (still) no such thing as a free lunch

In fact, the very idea of for-profit businesses giving consumers products for free ought to seem odd.

When it comes to the marketplace, as Milton Friedman famously quipped, “There is no free lunch.” The internet did not destroy firms’ profit motive. It also did not eliminate the cost of making products: Try recreating Google’s “Street View” feature without funding for a global fleet of cars, cameras and drivers, not to mention banks of servers for processing and data storage.

Companies like Google, though innovative, are not in the business of giving away their products for free – and they are surely not immune from the temptation to stifle competition.

“Free” isn’t really free. Consumers pay for “free” products with attention to ads and with personal information. Each time you log on or run a search, you pay with your time (that fraction of a second your eye spends darting over to the “Lose belly fat with this one weird trick!” ad) or information (letting Google know that you are thinking about buying a new sofa or suffer from anxiety disorder). These are commercial exchanges, even if consumers– and consumer protection laws – often fail to recognize them as such.

Antitrust laws are meant to safeguard marketplace competition, but doing so effectively requires protecting all markets, not just those with obvious prices.

This is why I believe U.S. enforcement agencies and courts ought to follow the lead set by their international peers and withdraw the free pass enjoyed by businesses supplying “free” products.

John Newman, Professor of Law, University of Memphis

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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In the HBO comedy "Silicon Valley," Pied Piper board member Erlich Bachmann drives around Palo Alto, California in a bright green-and-yellow SUV.

The car is a leftover from his first startup, Aviato, in the show's mythology. Now a real life Silicon Valley startup is using the car to promote its app — and you might be able to drive it.

Turo, a startup that's best described as "Airbnb for your car," is renting out a 2006 Ford Escape emblazoned with full Aviato branding, with HBO's permission, among other cars from popular culture, such as a vehicle "Mad Max: Fury Road." 

The listing was even written by HBO writers, according to Turo. 

The idea is that users can rent their car through the app to make a little bit of extra money, similar to how an Airbnb user might rent out a room.

People browsing Turo will now see the fictional Bachmann renting out his beloved Aviato Ford Escape.

I had the pleasure of driving the Aviato car last week in San Francisco. It is, true to the Turo listing, a 2006 Ford Escape. These are not the doors of a billionaire.

The air conditioning's not great, and it doesn't have modern amenities like Apple CarPlay. But what else could you expect from a car that costs $49 per day? The car will be available to rent in San Francisco at first, then Los Angeles. 

One thing is for sure: This ride attracts attention. I drove it for a few short hours around San Francisco and Silicon Valley and people couldn't stop taking pictures — even ex-Googlers love the show. 

Judah Friedlander was shooting a new show in San Francisco, and his crew stopped to take photos as well.

The Aviato car shows the promise of a service like Turo, which counts VCs like Kleiner Perkins, Canaan Partners, August Capital, and Shasta Ventures among its investors. It's possible to get a much wilder and more interesting car than the Zipcar or other rental services offer. 

SEE ALSO: 13 ways HBO's 'Silicon Valley' nailed the real tech industry

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