Bay Area startups have returned to intense, long-hour work patterns reminiscent of the pre-pandemic era, edging close to all-consuming models of toil. Leaders and employees feel pressure to outwork rivals to secure funding and market share. Pandemic remote-work norms loosened, and many firms resumed classic in-person, high-commitment schedules. Venture capital has concentrated heavily, with 40% of U.S. VC dollars this year going to ten companies, eight AI-focused, including OpenAI, xAI and Anthropic. The funding concentration makes raising capital harder for smaller startups and increases incentives for founders and teams to work extended hours.
With the AI frenzy breathing new life into the Bay Area tech economy, and pandemic disruptions mostly over, Silicon Valley's famous startup grind is back and if it doesn't typically involve China's infamous 996 model of all-consuming toil 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, it can get pretty close. There's just this general feeling that, Unless we work as many hours as we possibly can, someone else is going to beat us,' said Adrian Kinnersley, CEO of TwentyAI, a recruitment and staffing firm with many clients in the Bay Area.
Silicon Valley startup guru Steve Blank, an adjunct professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, believes Silicon Valley tech's work ethic mostly collapsed during the pandemic, as lockdowns drove people into remote work, and work-from-home became prevalent. No one knew what the hours were, Blank said. You were feeding your dog, you were playing pickleball. Now, Bay Area startups have swung back to the classic work patterns birthed in the '80s, when budding enterprises were filled with young single guys who didn't know what families were, or old divorced guys who didn't have them anymore, Blank said.
The return to what Blank describes as a Darwinian struggle to survive by beating rivals to funding and markets comes as startup founders and workers face multiple pressures to put in long hours with few days off, experts and industry insiders say. So far this year, 40% of U.S. venture capital dollars Silicon Valley's startup fuel have gone to just 10 companies, eight of them AI-focused, with giants OpenAI, xAI and Anthropic the top three recipients, market-intelligence firm PitchBook reported this month. Raising money for smaller startups is not very easy these days, said Anis Uzzaman, CEO of San Jose VC firm Pegasus Tech Ventures.
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