Dan Wang’s latest 2025 memo, gold again. I particularly resonate with this passage and it explains why even though I love HK/NY, I reminisce about the 2010s in chaotic Mainland cities. No one cares where you went to school. Can you build, can you innovate, can you do something crazy was the thinking back then in the hutongs of BJ, and cafes of Hangzhou.

“I enjoy San Francisco more than when I was younger because I now better appreciate what makes it work. I believe that Silicon Valley possesses plenty of virtues. To start, it is the most meritocratic part of America. Tech is so open towards immigrants that it has driven populists into a froth of rage. It remains male-heavy and practices plenty of gatekeeping. But San Francisco better embodies an ethos of openness relative to the rest of the country. Industries on the east coast — finance, media, universities, policy — tend to more carefully weigh name and pedigree. Young scientists aren’t told they ought to keep their innovations incremental and their attitude to hierarchy duly deferential, as they might hear in Boston. A smart young person could achieve much more over a few years in SF than in DC. People aren’t reminiscing over some lost golden age that took place decades ago, as New Yorkers in media might do.”