The moralizing around Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel’s The Audacity is exactly why the tech industry is currently drowning in a sea of beige mediocrity. Critics are clutching their pearls because the book fails to provide a "hero" to root for. They gaze into the chaotic history of Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb and see a void of humanity. They want a protagonist with a conscience. They want a moral compass in a Patagonia vest.
They are looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope.
The lack of a traditional hero isn't a flaw in the narrative of Silicon Valley; it is the fundamental feature that makes the engine run. We have been conditioned by decades of Hollywood tropes to believe that progress requires a "good" person at the helm. That is a comforting lie. The reality is that the massive leaps in human connectivity, logistics, and economic friction-reduction have almost always been driven by the socially maladjusted, the pathologically ambitious, and the deeply unlikable.
If you want someone to root for, go to a community theater production. If you want to understand how the modern world was built, you have to embrace the villain.
The Myth of the Compassionate Founder
The "lazy consensus" among tech journalists is that Silicon Valley "lost its way" when it traded idealism for growth at all costs. This assumes there was an Era of Purity that never actually existed.
Look at the history. Hewlett and Packard weren't just tinkerers in a garage; they were ruthless defense contractors. Bill Gates wasn't a philanthropic saint in the eighties; he was a shark who would gut a competitor just to see what they had for lunch. Steve Jobs didn't build Apple by being a "nice guy" who fostered a healthy work-life balance. He was a tyrant who park in handicap spots and screamed at engineers until they produced the impossible.
When critics complain that The Audacity makes it hard to find a hero, they are really complaining that the mask has slipped. They are upset that the "Move Fast and Break Things" mantra actually involved breaking things—including laws, social norms, and the delicate sensibilities of the chattering classes.
The "audacity" referenced in the title isn't a bug. It is the fuel. You do not disrupt a trillion-dollar taxi industry or a global hospitality market by asking for permission. You do it by being the person who thinks the rules don't apply to them. Often, those people are insufferable. That doesn't make their impact any less vital.
The Competence-Character Paradox
We have entered a dangerous era where we prioritize a CEO’s "vibes" over their ability to execute. This is the Competence-Character Paradox: we want leaders who are empathetic and inclusive, but we also want products that work perfectly and stocks that go up forever.
In my fifteen years advising growth-stage startups, I’ve seen more companies die from "kindness" than from "audacity." I have watched founders spend six months debating the ethics of a minor UI change while their competitors—led by people you wouldn't want to grab a beer with—simply shipped the product and captured the market.
Consider the "People Also Ask" obsession with "Who is the most ethical tech CEO?" It’s the wrong question. Ethics in a vacuum produces nothing. The question should be: "Who is creating the most value while minimizing systemic risk?"
The "unlikable" founders described in Mac and Frenkel’s work—the Mark Zuckerbergs and Travis Kalanicks of the world—provided a service that billions of people use daily. You might hate the way they handled data or how they treated drivers, but you still have the app on your home screen. Your actions have already voted. Your moral grandstanding is just noise.
The Cost of the Moral Vetocracy
When we demand that every founder be a "relatable hero," we create a Moral Vetocracy. We empower a class of critics who can veto any innovation if the person behind it hasn't passed a purity test.
This results in a sanitized version of Silicon Valley that produces "safe" software. We get another SaaS platform for human resources or a slightly better way to order overpriced salads. We stop getting the moonshots. We stop getting the technologies that fundamentally alter the human experience because those technologies require a level of obsession that usually comes with a complete lack of social grace.
Imagine a scenario where the inventors of the combustion engine or the airplane had to pass a modern Twitter sentiment analysis before they were allowed to raise capital. We’d still be riding horses—but at least the horses would have excellent carbon offsets and a diverse board of directors.
The False Idol of Transparency
The competitor article suggests that the "darkness" revealed in The Audacity is a sign of a broken system. On the contrary, the internal chaos of these companies is a sign of a system working under extreme pressure.
High-growth environments are not supposed to be "nice." They are high-stress, high-stakes combat zones. When you are scaling a company from ten people to ten thousand in three years, things will break. People will be mistreated. Mistakes will be made.
The demand for total transparency is a demand for the end of innovation. If every internal memo and every heated board meeting is subject to public scrutiny, no one will ever take a risk again. We are incentivizing founders to lie better, not to act better. We are creating a generation of CEOs who are essentially politicians—skilled at the optics of leadership while the actual substance of their work rots.
Stop Looking for a Hero to Save You
The most counter-intuitive truth about Silicon Valley is that the "good guys" rarely win, and when they do, they usually don't stay "good" for long.
The pursuit of a hero in the tech landscape is a form of intellectual laziness. It’s an attempt to outsource our own moral responsibility to a billionaire. We want the CEO of a social media company to be the arbiter of truth so we don't have to think for ourselves. We want the founder of an AI company to be a philosopher-king so we don't have to worry about the implications of the technology.
They aren't going to save you. They are there to build.
The Audacity is a brilliant catalog of human failings, but the conclusion shouldn't be that Silicon Valley is "unrootable." The conclusion should be that "rooting" for people is for sports fans. In the world of technology and economics, we should be looking at utility, scale, and the cold, hard reality of what works.
If you find yourself unable to "root" for anyone in the story of modern tech, congratulations. You’ve finally stopped being a fan and started being an observer. The heroes are a myth. The villains are the ones who actually build the future.
Accept the trade-off or get out of the way.
