#Chapter Outline
####Introduction
An introduction to the themes and topic of the dissertation.
####Chapter 1: Bold technical innovators and reckless speculators
Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial capitalism is in many ways defined by the activities and pronouncements of a select group of highly influential founders and investors. Their positions are, as this chapter will show, derived from a quite specific set of economic theories, most notably Schumpeter’s definitional work on entrepreneurship and its development by contemporary scholars such as Carlota Perez, and the evolutionary economics of Brian Arthur. Normative expectations of entrepreneurial character are also, it is proposed, shaped by a tradition stretching to Weber, Sombart and even earlier writers – a focus on the exceptionality of the founder’s abilities which is, it will be argued, more significant in Silicon Valley’s venture-based development model than in other modes of contemporary capitalism. Presenting a brief history of the startup and venture capital firm in relation to this genealogy of the concept of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur (and speculative investor), this chapter will present ethnographic accounts and contemporary writings by participants in startups and VC firms, through which the intersection between historical–theoretical constructions of entrepreneurship and everyday activity in Silicon Valley can be interrogated.
####Chapter 2: Making things that somebody wants
This chapter describes the process of customer and product development which has been institutionalized in Eric Ries and Steve Blank’s “Lean Startup” movement. Treating this process as an exercise in what George Marcus calls “para-ethnography,” it shows how making knowledge about the social world in which a startup’s products are (or might be) consumed has become the predominant activity of early stage firms, and how their success or failure increasingly depends on their ability to develop this picture of their customers as much as on their technical prowess. This chapter will present a selection of first-hand ethnographic accounts of the author’s own product development process, along with discussions of the influential trade literature, interviews with leading exponents of the Lean Startup methodology, and participant-observation in other startups’ customer development processes.
####Chapter 3: Design and (and against) ethnography
This chapter will situate practices of “ethnographic” and other product development and design methodologies within their broader anthropological context, placing professional UI/UX theory in dialogue with contemporary archeological and ethnographic approaches to material culture and technological change. In particular, it will critically situate UX research practices, and the field’s sometimes antagonistic relationship to anthropology, in the context of contemporary theoretical stances toward material culture and cultural change. Treating the mobile software at the core of so many Silicon Valley startups’ business models as an artifact between situated between media systems and material culture, it will show how the process of user research in design is emerging as a reflexive discipline with its own distinct philosophical genealogy and, at the same time, how it is enmeshed with other para-ethnographic processes of value mediation to assemble the agencement of a startup. In this chapter, observations from the author’s own involvement in the product design process and interactions with professionals in the field will be combined with interviews with product managers from other firms, and critical analysis of the trade literature in dialogue with contemporary material culture studies.
####Chapter 4: Unicorn hunters, angels and animals
This chapter will examine the venture capital sector in Silicon Valley, taking as its point of departure the critical differences between this highly social mode of capital management and the quantitative calculative logics of “Wall Street” financial traders. Treating this domain of activity as a third site of para-ethnography, along with the customer development and user testing processes considered in the two previous chapters, this chapter will present a collaborative engagement with the internal discourses of Silicon Valley’s venture capital sector, combining analysis of public texts with interviews and the “studio” methods of ethnographic research which have proven so productive in other studies of techno-economic elites. This data will ideally be supplemented by the author’s participant-observation in at least one firm or angel investor’s analysis and due diligence process.
####Chapter 5: Exit strategies: investing in post-human futures
Looking beyond the current state of technological development, this chapter considers how Silicon Valley is able to envision a future in which dramatic developments in machine learning and other fields related to the automation of what are currently human labor processes will bring about, at the least, significant shifts in the global economy in general – and at the worst existential risks to human survival. These futures are already seen as sufficiently probable to justify premising entrepreneurial strategies on these radically contingent paths of technological development. This willingness to assign value to this kind of future-oriented enterprise is, it will be argued, premised on a set of ontological commitments to the evolutionary nature of technological change, and, notably, the expectation that the pace of this change will itself increase exponentially. Through analysis of the writings of various significant figures in Silicon Valley, including entrepreneurs, investors and “Singularity” proponents, combined with interviews and participant-observation in conferences and other events, this chapter will show, the technological futures of Silicon Valley become, in Appadurai’s terms, a “cultural fact” which enables – indeed, requires – today’s entrepreneurs and investors to think beyond capital, and beyond the human.
####Conclusions
To be determined.