Noah Smith: Facebook's IPO and post-2016 internet drove real entrepreneurs away
MarvinTBaumann · x · 2026-09-24
Noah Smith traces the end of the hippie internet era to two turning points: the Facebook IPO, which turned the scene's focus to money, and the migration of ambitious talent—investment banking in 2006, tech startups by 2012.
He borrows the econ distinction between risk and ambiguity: Bill Gates dropped out to build Microsoft without knowing how many sides his die had, while a 2016 founder already knew the names of every funding round—meaning the ambiguity, and with it the truly adventurous entrepreneurs, had left the internet.
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