Get Rich or Die Trying

In the shadow of the Silicon Valley of death

Marco Verch/Flickr
Marco Verch/Flickr

When there’s a gold rush on, the thing to do is not to dig. Instead, sell shovels to all the suckers who think they’ll get rich digging for gold. This is one of the lessons that investigative reporter Corey Pein learned when he moved to San Francisco at the height of the Silicon Valley start-up boom. In his analogy, the gold rush is the tech boom, and the suckers are all the start-up wannabes who flock to the Bay Area for a slice of the venture-capital pie. And all of us, the consumers, who fell for the excitement of the gig economy and the lure of a free social network that promised to never sell our data? We’re suckers, too.



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Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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Stephanie Bastek is the senior editor of the Scholar and the producer/host of the Smarty Pants podcast.

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