New Generation of Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Looks Elsewhere for Status

With a few exceptions, Silicon Valley’s young millionaires are rejecting traditional status symbols such as fast cars, yachts, and luxury homes and instead are pouring their wealth into social causes and start-up ventures, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Compared with the tech boom of the 1990s, which ushered in an era of conspicuous consumption, today’s entrepreneurs “are trying to be smarter and more frugal,” says Dave McClure, a tech investor and former PayPal executive. Dustin Moskovitz, the 27-year-old billionaire who co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, told the Times that he flies coach and is saving money to fund his philanthropic foundation. Like Zuckerberg, Moskovitz has pledged to give away his wealth during his lifetime. Zuckerberg, who has listed “minimalism” and “eliminating desire” as interests on his Facebook profile, donated $100 million to help improve public schools in Newark, New Jersey, in 2010.

Alice Marwick, a researcher with Microsoft who wrote a doctoral dissertation in media studies about social status among the Internet set, found that the new generation of Silicon Valley millionaires seeks status just as much as their predecessors did — but in different ways.

“This is not a community that values good looks, visible wealth, or having a hot body. Those are not the ways that they distinguish high status from low status,” said Marwick. “Technology millionaires don’t hobnob with celebrities or buy a fancy car. They travel to Thailand or they fund an incubator. These things are just as expensive, but that’s the classic hacker ethos that prizes the mind, not materials.”

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