Op-Ed Contributor: New York, the Silicon City

New York has, over the last decade, become a tech city to rival San Francisco, Boston and Seattle. And it has done so by moving away from its old reliance on the finance and legal sectors, and the industries like hospitality that rely on them. The challenge for Mr. de Blasio is continuing that trend, and making sure all New Yorkers benefit from it.

Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, can justifiably boast about New York’s rise to prominence as a “digital city.” On his watch, the technology and information sector has become the city’s second-most-powerful economic engine, after financial services. New York now has 10 percent of the country’s jobs in the “Internet publishing and web search portal” industry, up from just over 6 percent in 2007.

Surprisingly, over the past couple of years, the city’s minority populations have been among the main beneficiaries of this boom. Since 2010, the number of blacks working in computer and mathematical occupations — the Census Bureau’s term for tech-related jobs — in the city has risen by 19.7 percent, based on a preliminary analysis of new census data.

Over the same stretch, the number of Hispanics in such occupations in New York City has risen by 25.4 percent. By comparison, non-Hispanic whites in computer and mathematical occupations experienced just a 6.4 percent gain since 2010.

The rapid growth of minorities in New York tech jobs reflects, in part, the soaring number of tech degrees earned by minorities in recent years. For example, bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences granted to Hispanic students have risen by more than 40 percent nationally over the past three years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That supply is then sucked up by the tightness of the city’s technology and information labor markets, which has forced local employers to reach out beyond the usual sources.

The boom has also produced benefits across all five boroughs: Private-sector jobs in the outlying boroughs rose by 9 percent from mid-2008 to mid-2013, while private-sector jobs in Manhattan are up only 3 percent over the same stretch. This pattern is the reverse of the financial boom years, when Manhattan generated jobs at a much faster pace than the rest of the city.

Moreover, despite worries that the city has not yet spawned a Google or a Microsoft, New York’s strength as a digital city continues to grow. Based on data from the Conference Board, an analysis by the Progressive Policy Institute shows that ads for computer and mathematical jobs in New York rose by 6.8 percent in the first 11 months of 2013 compared with a year earlier, and compared with just 4.0 percent nationwide.

Instead, the true weakness in the city’s economy right now lies in the leisure and hospitality industry, which employs almost 400,000 workers in the city. The number of jobs has been rising, but real pay has fallen, perhaps because of continuing weakness in the financial and legal sector, which generates so much demand for hotels and restaurants. These real wage declines undercut gains in the rest of the local economy.

What lessons does this have for the new mayor? New York’s gains came, in part, from the aggressive efforts of the Bloomberg administration to stimulate the technology and information sector. These included funding tech incubators; the “Made in NY” marketing campaign to support small tech companies; the rapid extension of broadband access across the city; the city’s broad-reaching Open Data initiative, which makes city data available to the public and software developers; and the selection of Cornell and Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, to open a huge new campus on Roosevelt Island.

To achieve the laudable objectives laid out in his inaugural speech, most notably narrowing the income gap, Mr. de Blasio should continue these policies. The technology and information boom needs to be encouraged: It is creating jobs for all corners of the city and helping to reduce the excessive dependence on finance and real estate. That should make the city’s economy — and tax revenues — less volatile in the future.

In his inaugural address, Mr. de Blasio correctly pointed to the need for better education for all New York children. That, too, needs to be part of a continued tech-centric agenda: to improve schools and maintain the city’s tech advantage, the new mayor also must ramp up the attention to tech and related fields in the city’s schools.

The main path to reducing inequality and broadening the city’s prosperity will be better education and training to help New Yorkers prepare for the jobs of the future, and if Mr. de Blasio successfully addresses that issue, his legacy as a great mayor will be secure.

Michael Mandel is the chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute and president of South Mountain Economics, an economic analysis firm.

Bits Blog: In the Spirit of the Valley, It’s Silicon This and Silicon That

Bits Blog: Cory Booker’s Silicon Valley Friendships Started at Stanford

Bits Blog: Silicon Valley Luminaries Bet on Clinkle, a Payments Start-Up

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Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

Photo illustration by Bobby DohertyMichelle Crosby, an energetic 37-year-old lawyer in Boise, Idaho, applied for a loan last November from a local bank, Western Capital. She proposed to use the money, $10,000, to help start a new business, Wevorce, which could be described most reductively as an H&R Block for divorces. The bankers liked the idea, and Crosby was a strong candidate. They had even given her an earlier loan to open Wevorce’s first office. But after four weeks, the bank was stalling and Crosby had yet to receive a cent. At the height of her frustration, she received an e-mail from a small group of private investors in Mountain View, Calif. They invited her to an interview and, after listening to her story, promised her $100,000 in exchange for a 7 percent stake in Wevorce. Crosby accepted on the spot. The next day, she found a condo for rent, at $2,500 a month, in Mountain View, and left Boise, and her boyfriend, behind.

Michelle Crosby, of Wevorce, which mediates amicable and inexpensive divorces.

Haisha Chen is a 23-year-old Chinese-born University of Chicago graduate who goes by David so that Americans remember his name. With two friends, Teng Bao and Dafeng Guo, Chen created software that allows Internet users to build simple, elegant Web sites, designed with mobile devices in mind, in 15 minutes. They called their product Strikingly. Last July, to their parents’ alarm, the men bought one-way tickets to San Francisco — Chen from Shanghai, Guo from Hong Kong, Bao from Chicago. They rented a single bedroom in a cramped apartment in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond neighborhood, sleeping on two futons, one of which prevented the door from opening more than a few inches. They spent $1,600 a month on rent, food and all additional expenses combined. After four months, they got a call from Mountain View, offering $100,000 for a 7 percent stake. They moved immediately. “When I got here, I was very emotionally touched by all the great companies in this area,” Guo told me in an outburst of passion. “These were all the companies I had heard of since I was a kid. I felt like I should be here. Like I belong.”

Last year at Brown University, Walker Williams and Evan Stites-Clayton created Teespring, a crowdfunding Web site that sold custom-made apparel — “Kickstarter for T-shirts.” For six months they had mild success with fraternities and campus clubs but were only slightly profitable. Then something unexpected happened: a New Zealand man used Teespring to design a Sherlock Holmes T-shirt and sold it on a Facebook fan page with about 300,000 members; ultimately, 1,800 people bought the shirt. The man earned about $18,000; Teespring made $8,000. Soon other virtual communities — like the Twitter account for fans of the 1990s TV show “Boy Meets World,” and a Facebook page called “I Big Trucks, Mudding, Bon Fires . . . Country BOYS! :)” — began selling shirts, with staggering success. In November, Teespring earned $133,336; in January, $489,029. But the founders felt they could do better. “We don’t want this to be a $30-, $40-, $50 million business,” Williams told me. “We’re looking at the big picture here.” I asked Williams and Stites-Clayton to define “big picture.” They responded in unison: “A billion dollars.” When the investors called with their offer of $100,000, Williams and Stites-Clayton also moved to Mountain View.

The Mountain View investors are the partners of Y Combinator, an organization that can be likened to a sleep-away camp for start-up companies. Y.C. holds two three-month sessions every year. During that time, campers, or founders, have regular meetings with each of Y.C.’s counselors, or partners, at which they receive technical advice, emotional support and, most critical, lessons on the art of the sale. There is no campus, only a nondescript office building in Mountain View — on Pioneer Way, around the corner from Easy Street. Founders are advised to rent apartments nearby, so that they can run to the office in minutes should an important investor pay a visit.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 7, 2013

An earlier version of this article erroneously included a peak value for Loopt, a company that produces location tracking apps.  Its peak value is not known; but it was not $500 million, an unconfirmed figure reported on several tech Web sites. (As the article noted, the company was sold for $43.4 million in March 2012.) The article also referred incorrectly to Sam Altman, who founded Loopt. He is Y Combinator’s second youngest partner, not the youngest.

Disruptions: New Motto for Silicon Valley: First Security, Then Innovation

The Twitter account of The Associated Press was among many recently hacked.

At Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., are stark white posters with bright red statements like “Done is better than perfect” and “Move fast and break things.”

These disruptive philosophies embody the spirit not just of Facebook but of Silicon Valley. Yet today, when technology companies have become the prime targets of rogue governments and hackers, the ideologies that drive these companies to provoke could end up disrupting these companies.

Conversely, the signs sitting in security research firms across the country warn, “Carelessness causes security incidents.”

Although technology companies say they take security seriously, protecting their customers seems to come second to announcing new products. Take Twitter, where people’s accounts are frequently hacked. In the last few months alone, this has happened to Burger King, BBC, NPR, The Associated Press and a slew of celebrities and users. In that time, Twitter has proudly announced updates to features on its mobile and desktop apps, introduced a music Web site and redesigned its company blog. But it still hasn’t released two-factor authentication, a security tool used by the rest of the industry to deter hackers.

Although Twitter declined to comment, I’m sure most of the people on the site who have seen their accounts pilfered over the last several years would rather have two-factor authentication than a shiny new Twitter blog.

One solution is a bill crawling through Congress over the last two years, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known as Cispa. The bill would make it easy for tech companies to share information about computer security threats with government agencies, helping fortify against cyberattacks.

But privacy groups say that Cispa is not a solution to the problem, and that instead it hands the highly sensitive personal data we want protected to the government.

“It has to be the obligation of these tech companies to build in security from the very beginning before we start moving into solutions about bringing the government into the private sector,” said Leslie Harris, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group financed by a broad coalition of technology and telecommunication companies. “You want to see these very innovative companies step up and become the leaders in security solutions first.”

Cispa’s creators and defenders see it differently. They argue that companies are not simply fortifying against a child in his bedroom who is trying to get into their servers for fun. Today’s hackers hail from foreign governments like those in China, Syria and Estonia, and are adept at getting what they want.

Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who was one of the authors of Cispa, recently said that “our government, our industries and your personal information will be subjected to hundreds of thousands of attempts at hacking” in a single day. “We are in a stealthy cyber war in America. And we’re losing.”

He thinks the government can solve that problem.

Kelsey Knight, director of communications for Mr. Rogers, said in a phone interview that Cispa could stop “90 percent of the current security breaches” that happen today. “Then, in reverse, these companies would be able to share their threat of information and code back to the government and that will add to the list of zeros and ones that we can keep defending against together.”

Ms. Knight noted that start-ups cannot defend themselves against today’s advanced attacks because the cost can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. She said Cispa and other government groups can help.

One thing is clear: today’s tactics are not working.

During the State of the Union address this year, President Obama cited the need to protect “national security” and “privacy” while defending against cyber attacks. The president has also been meeting with chief executives to discuss ways to combat the threat of computer warfare and corporate espionage.

Cispa, now in the Senate, could take months, if not years, if it is to emerge at all from Congress. Until then, advocacy groups believe it falls to the start-ups to put more effort into security.

“The ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy is not a philosophy that has necessarily been good for our privacy,” Ms. Harris said. “I certainly believe that government and companies should be working together, but information sharing is just a very small part of the cyber security puzzle. It’s companies investing the resources to strengthen their own security first.”

Maybe it’s time for companies in Silicon Valley to replace those posters with ones that say, “Move slowly and protect your users.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Airport Exposes Class Divisions in Silicon Valley

Google, which is responsible for many of the jets that will use the new $82 million center, is helping bring badly needed cash to Mineta San Jose International Airport, just as the tech industry is creating jobs and wealth in Silicon Valley. But the tech boom is also sharpening income inequality and fueling a housing boom that is squeezing families out of many Silicon Valley communities.

Whether it is the possibility of private jets’ disturbing the sleep of San Jose homeowners, or the transformation of Palo Alto’s last mobile home park into luxury apartments, local developments throughout Silicon Valley highlight how the tech boom is leaving many behind. Local officials worry about the trend, which experts say will only accelerate, and its effects on the valley’s work force and diversity.

“We’re very focused on being a progressive and fair community in terms of those issues,” Gregory Scharff, mayor of Palo Alto, said of efforts to provide affordable housing while recognizing the “national treasure” that is Silicon Valley. “We actually innovate and create huge wealth for the United States. If you look at the companies that have just come out of Palo Alto, I would make you a bet that it would be one of the largest G.N.P.’s — it could be a country.”

In the past, the tech industry created middle-class jobs and lifted the overall economy of Silicon Valley. But as tech companies have shifted manufacturing and midlevel jobs overseas over the years, highly paid workers have increasingly clustered here. Per-capita incomes have been rising even as median incomes have decreased for five years in a row, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a private organization that co-publishes an annual report on the region.

“We’re getting more high earners, and they’re skewing the averages completely off,” said Russell Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture. “We are becoming a community where our teachers, our police, our firefighters, our nurses, they can’t live with us. They have to come in from other places. Healthy communities have all these people living together.”

Sales figures for single-family homes in Santa Clara and San Mateo, the two main counties in Silicon Valley, show median prices have risen about 30 percent in the past year while the inventory of available homes has fallen by roughly half, according to an analysis of local multiple listing service data by the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors. The median prices for March — $735,000 in Santa Clara and $925,000 in San Mateo — only hint at the current market’s frenzy.

Each property now typically attracts between 10 and 30 offers, eventually selling from 5 percent to 25 percent above the asking price, said Moise Nahouraii, the owner of Referral Realty in Cupertino. Jeff Barnett, a former president of the association and a regional vice president at Alain Pinel Realtors, said 30 percent to 40 percent of sales were paid in cash.

“Last year, the market came up,” Mr. Barnett said. “This year, it’s on fire; it’s just unreal.”

In Palo Alto, one of the hottest markets, the longtime owner of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park has moved to sell the property to a developer planning to build a complex with amenities that include a pool, a spa, a business center, a chef’s demonstration kitchen and a pet grooming station. A local ordinance would guarantee the park’s 400 residents — more than a quarter of whom are children and 85 percent are Hispanic — some compensation and possible relocation within Palo Alto.

But the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, a private group that provides free legal services on housing and other issues, is pressing the city to reject the conversion. With the waiting lists for affordable housing getting longer by the day, the group argues, the park’s residents will be forced to leave Palo Alto, away from jobs and schools.

One resident, Mary Kear, 55, grew up in Mountain View, where her father owned a hardware store and was a farmer, and where Google has its headquarters. Ms. Kear, who worked in sales for more than three decades and is now a part-time school custodian, said she had to move a dozen times over the years because of rising rents, eventually gravitating to the park eight years ago. She hoped the city would reject the conversion.

“But I’m also going to try to talk to the guy at Facebook,” she said in the living room of her tidy two-room trailer, adding that she had read that the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, had recently established a political action committee for immigration reform. “He’s trying to help immigrants, and immigrants are here.”

Bits Blog: Homegrown Efforts to Recruit Women in Silicon Valley

Peter DaSilva for The New York Time Margit Wennmachers, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says the wording of job descriptions can discourage women from applying.

Silicon Valley is not exactly known for its diversity. So when Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm, wanted to make sure its job postings were reaching the most diverse audience possible, its partners did what most people in Silicon Valley do when they spot a problem. They turned to software.

They used programs that analyze the language in job descriptions to catch phrases that might turn off certain types of applicants. Looking for a candidate who is “off the charts”? Chances are, not that many women will apply.

“That’s just not how women talk,” said Margit Wennmachers, a partner at the firm. “They say, ‘Must be highly competent.’ ”

It is an example of many homegrown efforts across the Valley to change the face of the tech industry. There have always been big organizations hosting conferences and networking events for women. But newer efforts are springing up from inside companies.

There are programs to teach girls to code, like Girls Who Code, for which companies like Twitter and Google lend office space and teachers. CodeChix, started by engineers at companies like VMware, hosts coding workshops that promise to be “non-alpha.”

The Club is an application-only group trying to provide an alternative to golf courses and men’s membership clubs by coaching women leaders in Silicon Valley. It was founded by Annie Rogaski, a partner at Kilpatrick Townsend, a Valley law firm.

Rachel Sklar, who started a group called Change the Ratio, is introducing an organization called The List where members who pay have access to other women for advice, financing and conference speaking gigs.

“It’s to achieve the function of the classic old boys’ club, which funnels very easy advice and access and opportunity,” Ms. Sklar said.

At Andreessen Horowitz, the firm asks real people, not just software, to review all job descriptions, too — so in addition to the hiring manager, people who are women, African American and from other minority groups in Silicon Valley have input.

The firm also has a partner in charge of diversity who helps acquire a broad set of candidates for the firm’s talent agency, which its 200 portfolio companies tap for engineering and leadership roles. Despite those efforts, all of the firm’s investing partners are men.

“There’s a huge talent war going on, so we are doing a lot of things to try to surface all kinds of diverse talent and bubble that up to our portfolio companies,” Ms. Wennmachers said.

“What I’d like to see is Marla Zuckerberg and Mary Jobs and Joann Bezos.”

Bits Blog: One on One: Jerry Weissman, Silicon Valley’s Storyteller

Jerry Weissman

Jerry Weissman may produce more revenue than almost any director in history. His big successes haven’t been plays or movies, though. For more than two decades, Mr. Weissman, a former television and stage director, has coached the executives of technology companies on the theater of the initial public offering.

Mr. Weissman’s company, Power Presentations, works with chief executives on the “roadshow,” a major step toward a stock offering. The presentations consist of speeches, slide shows and question-and-answer sessions with prospective investors. Getting that story right builds enthusiasm for a company’s shares, sending initial stock prices higher.

His clients have included Intuit, eBay, Cisco, Dolby, Netflix and most recently Trulia, the real estate Web site. His clients also include executives at established companies like Microsoft, where he helps with other kinds of presentations, like conference speeches and product marketing.

Mr. Weissman, who is based in Burlingame, Calif., has written several books on his craft, the most recent of which is “Winning Strategies for Power Presentations.” I caught up with him recently, in between client meetings.

How different is an I.P.O. pitch from a conference presentation?

I have worked on I.P.O.’s, private placements, product launches, board meetings, keynotes, conference talks and partner meetings. The goal is always the same: Tell a crisp, clean story; make sure your PowerPoint doesn’t become “death by PowerPoint” by cluttering things up or confusing the audience; show poise and confidence; and show you can handle tough questions.

If it’s that easy, how do you stay employed?

They’ve been selling stuff to a different audience, people who want to buy software or computers. They have to rotate the benefit of their product to a different audience. If the audience is potential investors, those people have only two interests: return on investment and risk management.

Most of my clients come at the task of telling their story like engineers, in a logical fashion. But they assign six slides to Tom, eight points from Dick and four items from Harry, and that creates a patchwork of ideas that don’t flow and ideas that don’t match each other. Then they see the audience squirm at what they’ve done, and that raises their discomfort level, which the audience feels. After that, it’s lost.

They need to merge the logic with the art, and that goes back 2,300 years, to Aristotle. Give things a beginning, a middle and an end.

How do you do that?

You set the context by defining who the audience is and what you want to achieve by talking to them. Then you let the ideas flow about what you can say, you brainstorm like crazy without throwing out anything. You distill that into four or five key ideas. Then you put it into a logical flow that is meaningful for what the audience wants.

How long have you been doing this?

It will be 25 years on Sept. 1.

What has changed?

My specialty is I.P.O.’s. The biggest change there is NetRoadshow, which is a Web site where people post a video of their pitch. That means they have to put something tight into the can. Then they go on the road, and if they’re good, it’s 90 percent audience questions about investing. If it’s not good, it’s all about how people didn’t understand what they were talking about. So, I train them to make a video, then I train them for a Q.&A. session that is tougher than anything they’ll face on the road.

The other change is that sometimes people just post slides on the Web, and get on the phone and talk. Either way, the new media means they have to learn to tell stories without making eye contact. It’s even more important that you have a clear story that flows. In the questions, you listen to make sure you understand the key issues. You paraphrase the question to level the playing field for the rest of the audience, and to make sure it addresses the question. And you pitch yourself, so you can end up saying “…and that’s why we are the best.”

How is the I.P.O. market doing?

It is smaller, compared with 10 years ago, but there is lots of other kinds of work. If I’m a bellwether, though, I’d say I have more companies knocking on my door for I.P.O. training this year than last, and more last year than the year before.

DealBook: Wallflowers of Silicon Valley Get Asked to Dance

TEDx Silicon ValleyNOT SOCIAL MEDIA Jeff Hammerbacher is a founder of Cloudera, which does large-scale data mining.

SAN FRANCISCO — After years of being wallflowers at Silicon Valley’s hottest tech conferences and Sean Parker’s after-parties, enterprise technology firms are now part of the “in” crowd.

The flameouts of social media stocks over the last year have left venture capital firms searching for a more measured approach to investing.

“Watching capital markets do what they just did — to Facebook, to Groupon, to Zynga — not a lot of people want to get over their skis,” said Hans Swildens, the managing director of Industry Ventures, who said he had not invested in consumer tech since 2010. “They want a nice ride down the hill.”

That means technology sectors — including mobile security, data analytics and storage companies and mobile payment systems — which previously elicited a shrug or a snooze, are suddenly finding millions of dollars of investments coming at them. Here’s a look at some of the more promising sectors.

SEALING THE LEAKS Increasingly, employees are taking sensitive corporate data home with them, frustrated with the limits of corporate technology and using their personal phones and tablets to work. That has created huge security and compliance headaches for chief information officers struggling to regain control over corporate data.

Enter the mobile security industry. Venture firms like Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners are backing companies that wrap extra security around employees’ personal iPhones and Android devices.

Lookout, a start-up, has already been valued at $1 billion. Its software offers spyware and malware protection, helps locate lost or stolen phones and alerts users when their phones have connected to unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

Okta, a start-up that helps employees at companies like LinkedIn and Pandora securely connect to their work applications from their personal devices, recently raised $25 million in fresh financing from Sequoia Capital.

The mobile security sector is also attracting merger deals. ZenPrise, a mobile security start-up, was acquired last week by Citrix, a maker of virtualization software. Investors expect similar acquisitions to follow.

STORING THE BYTES New storage methods will be critical to harnessing the gigabytes of data now pouring in from those mobile devices, as well as the Web, social networks and video. To accommodate the fire hose of information, companies have started revamping their data centers. Increasingly, they are moving away from expensive disk drives and slow backup solutions to the cheaper, high-speed flash memory used in iPhones and digital cameras.

“For 30 years, companies stored everything on spinning disks. Now they’re moving to a flash memory-based model,” said Joseph Ansanelli, a partner at Greylock Partners.

Investors are taking note. Fusion-io, a high-capacity flash memory company, had a successful public offering last year, then increased revenue by 82 percent, to $359 million, in its latest fiscal year. Its technology packs in storage capacity and speeds up database performance — a compelling proposition for Facebook, its largest customer, which now stores 2.7 billion “Likes” and 300 million photos a day, or roughly 105 terabytes of data each half-hour.

Flash storage sites like Pure Storage and Nimble Storage are now attracting millions in venture backing. Pure Storage emerged from stealth mode only a year ago and now serves a wide range of businesses, including Sierra Nevada Brewing and the city of Davenport, Iowa. In August, it raised $40 million, bringing its total funding to $95 million. A month later, Nimble Storage doubled its funding with $40 million in new capital from Sequoia, Accel and others.

CRUNCHING MOUNTAINS OF DATA Some of the hottest innovations are in large-scale data mining. With the right analytical tools, big data can be used to solve complex problems quickly.

“Companies now need to be able to do large-scale data mining and analysis in real time, as opposed to one guy in the I.T. department running a pricing analysis over the weekend,” said Rich Wong, a partner at Accel Partners.

Corporate demand for such high-powered analysis helped make Splunk, a data analytics company, one of 2012’s top-performing I.P.O.’s.

Investors searching for the next Splunk are now watching several start-ups. One front-runner is Cloudera, founded by alumni of Yahoo, Google, Oracle and Facebook. The firm incorporates Hadoop, an open-source software, to make complex data queries that help drug firms predict adverse drug side effects, or media companies target readers with relevant content.

DIGITAL WALLET It may not be the end of paper money just yet, but more and more commercial products are making mobile payments a huge business. In hindsight, eBay’s $1.5 billion acquisition 10 years ago of PayPal, the mobile payments company, was a bargain; PayPal is expected to generate $10 billion in payment volume this year. Square, the four-year-old mobile payments start-up run by a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, has caught up. In November, it said that it, too, was now processing $10 billion in payments a year.

Both are also vying for attention with Google and Intuit, which offer mobile payment services, and, more recently, with big retail chains like Best Buy and Walmart, which said in August that it were working on ways for customers to pay with smartphones.

Even with brutal competition, venture capitalists are still eagerly throwing money at a new crop of start-ups like Braintree, which helps e-commerce sites process credit card payments, and Stripe, which offers a similar service for software developers.

In the last two years, Braintree has raised nearly $70 million. And, this year, Stripe raised $40 million from venture firms and angels, including some of the PayPal founders, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin.

Smaller start-ups may have a harder time taking on PayPal and Square as those services become more ubiquitous. They will also have to compete on the security front, where even one hacker breach can lead to a lack of confidence among customers.

Enterprise technology firms are drawing interest, like Hotel Tonight, which finds last-minute hotel rooms in San Francisco.

MOBILE CONCIERGE Apps, with the proverbial “touch of a button,” have converted phones into urban remote controls, allowing customers to order meals, errands, car rides, concert tickets and even cocktails.

The darling of the space is Uber, an app that lets users order a car service with the touch of a screen. The three-year-old start-up has already raised $50 million from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief.

Though Uber has run into battles with municipal transportation authorities, other firms, including Cabulous, Taxi Magic and Hailo, are jumping into the space.

Similarly, GrubHub’s app offers mobile convenience for food delivery. Hotel Tonight’s app does the same for same-day hotel bookings. Every day at noon, spontaneous or stranded travelers can find heavily discounted rates for hotel rooms that night. The two-year-old mobile app has already raised more than $35 million in financing.

A younger start-up, WillCall, lets users buy concert and theater tickets. And Coaster even lets users order, pay and tip for cocktails at bars with their smartphones. Those two apps are only in San Francisco, but venture capitalists are optimistic that on-demand mobile services are no fad.

“Soon there will be a remote control for your life,” said Peter Fenton, a venture partner at Benchmark Capital. “The future has arrived.”

In Silicon Valley, Perks Now Begin at Home

Today, Evernote’s 250 employees — every full-time worker, from receptionist to top executive — have their homes cleaned twice a month, free.

It is the latest innovation from Silicon Valley: the employee perk is moving from the office to the home. Facebook gives new parents $4,000 in spending money. Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery. Genentech offers take-home dinners and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go to school.

These kinds of benefits are a departure from the upscale cafeteria meals, massages and other services intended to keep employees happy and productive while at work. And the goal is not just to reduce stress for employees, but for their families, too. If the companies succeed, the thinking goes, they will minimize distractions and sources of tension that can inhibit focus and creativity.

Now that technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, it seems that companies are trying to address the impact of home life on work.

There is, of course, the possibility that relieving people of chores at home will simply free them up to work more. But David Lewin, a compensation expert and management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he viewed the perks as part of a growing effort by American business to reward people with time and peace of mind instead of more traditional financial tools, like stock options and bonuses.

“They’re trying to get at people’s larger lives and sanity,” Mr. Lewin said. “You might call it the bang for the nonbuck.”

At Deloitte, the consulting firm, employees can get a backup care worker if an aging parent or grandparent needs help. The company subsidizes personal trainers and nutritionists, and offers round-the-clock counseling service for help with issues like marital strife and infertility. Deloitte executives, and other experts, said they believe that such benefits were likely to spread.

“The workplace was built on the assumption that there was somebody at home dealing with the home front,” said Anne Weisberg, a longtime human resources executive who helped write a book about new kinds of workplace policies.

Not only is that no longer the case, she said, but the work-life pressures seem to be building. “There’s a greater awareness that we’re pushing things to the limit and something’s got to give,” she said.

Hannah Valantine, a cardiologist, professor and associate dean at the Stanford School of Medicine, said the university’s experiment with helping out at home was part of a broader effort to support doctors, given their hyperkinetic pace of life.

“If you’re coming home at the end of the day exhausted and you have a pile of cleaning to do, it’s the kind of things that leads rapidly to burnout, and burned-out physicians don’t give the best care,” Dr. Valantine said. “We’re trying to send a very strong message that the institution cares about you and about your life.”

Some compensation experts argue these types of perks ultimately do little to attract employees and might obscure more fundamental problems at companies that have trouble retaining talent.

That is a challenge Stanford owns up to, given the brain drain suffered by academic hospitals, where relentless demands include treating patients, writing grants, doing research and traveling to conferences.

So 18 months ago, Stanford hired a consulting firm called Jump Associates to better understand why so many academic doctors feel burned out. The company videotaped them from the time they woke up, through the workday and until they and their families went to sleep.

In one video, a kidney specialist told a story that shocked the researchers: while she was on maternity leave, she bought a minivan to ferry the children of friends and neighbors to school and sports practices.

That way, the doctor explained, she would be able to ask for favors when she returned to work — and that, in theory, would enable her to juggle the dual demands of work and family.

In Silicon Valley, Perks Now Begin at Home

Today, Evernote’s 250 employees — every full-time worker, from receptionist to top executive — have their homes cleaned twice a month, free.

It is the latest innovation from Silicon Valley: the employee perk is moving from the office to the home. Facebook gives new parents $4,000 in spending money. Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery. Genentech offers take-home dinners and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go to school.

These kinds of benefits are a departure from the upscale cafeteria meals, massages and other services intended to keep employees happy and productive while at work. And the goal is not just to reduce stress for employees, but for their families, too. If the companies succeed, the thinking goes, they will minimize distractions and sources of tension that can inhibit focus and creativity.

Now that technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, it seems that companies are trying to address the impact of home life on work.

There is, of course, the possibility that relieving people of chores at home will simply free them up to work more. But David Lewin, a compensation expert and management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he viewed the perks as part of a growing effort by American business to reward people with time and peace of mind instead of more traditional financial tools, like stock options and bonuses.

“They’re trying to get at people’s larger lives and sanity,” Mr. Lewin said. “You might call it the bang for the nonbuck.”

At Deloitte, the consulting firm, employees can get a backup care worker if an aging parent or grandparent needs help. The company subsidizes personal trainers and nutritionists, and offers round-the-clock counseling service for help with issues like marital strife and infertility. Deloitte executives, and other experts, said they believe that such benefits were likely to spread.

“The workplace was built on the assumption that there was somebody at home dealing with the home front,” said Anne Weisberg, a longtime human resources executive who helped write a book about new kinds of workplace policies.

Not only is that no longer the case, she said, but the work-life pressures seem to be building. “There’s a greater awareness that we’re pushing things to the limit and something’s got to give,” she said.

Hannah Valantine, a cardiologist, professor and associate dean at the Stanford School of Medicine, said the university’s experiment with helping out at home was part of a broader effort to support doctors, given their hyperkinetic pace of life.

“If you’re coming home at the end of the day exhausted and you have a pile of cleaning to do, it’s the kind of things that leads rapidly to burnout, and burned-out physicians don’t give the best care,” Dr. Valantine said. “We’re trying to send a very strong message that the institution cares about you and about your life.”

Some compensation experts argue these types of perks ultimately do little to attract employees and might obscure more fundamental problems at companies that have trouble retaining talent.

That is a challenge Stanford owns up to, given the brain drain suffered by academic hospitals, where relentless demands include treating patients, writing grants, doing research and traveling to conferences.

So 18 months ago, Stanford hired a consulting firm called Jump Associates to better understand why so many academic doctors feel burned out. The company videotaped them from the time they woke up, through the workday and until they and their families went to sleep.

In one video, a kidney specialist told a story that shocked the researchers: while she was on maternity leave, she bought a minivan to ferry the children of friends and neighbors to school and sports practices.

That way, the doctor explained, she would be able to ask for favors when she returned to work — and that, in theory, would enable her to juggle the dual demands of work and family.

Disruptions: Let Silicon Valley Eat ... Ramen Noodles?

Nick Bilton/The New York Times Mark Zuckerberg spoke at a conference organized by TechCrunch in San Francisco on Sept. 11. He appears, very publicly and honestly, to focus on building a company, not on toys.

You don’t have to spend much time in Silicon Valley to start hearing that the people don’t care about money. People here are just trying to make the world a better place. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists eat ramen noodles for dinner and drive old, clunky Hondas to work. If they do make money, that’s just a tiny cherry on top of their altruistic Tofutti soy whip sundae.
That’s what people here would like the world to think. Let’s be realistic, these start-ups aren’t nonprofit organizations.

The 1,500-square-mile area of Silicon Valley has seen the greatest wealth creation in history. According to the National Venture Capital Association, start-ups here raised $3.2 billion in venture capital just from April to June.

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times David Sacks, the founder of Yammer, who sold his company to Microsoft this year for $1.2 billion.

The people making money from successful start-ups are spending it, too. Last month, RealtyTrac, a real estate analysis firm, reported that Silicon Valley led the nation in the number of homes sold for $1 million or more.

Let’s not forget the tone-deaf parties, like one for David Sacks, the founder of Yammer, who sold his company to Microsoft this year for $1.2 billion. He spent about $1.4 million on a 40th-birthday bash for himself. The theme was, “Let him eat cake.” Mr. Sacks asked guests not to share pictures of the event on social networks. Snoop Dogg, who was hired to sing at the party, shared pictures anyway of people in 18th-century French clothes.

At Facebook, the first 250 employees are on a highly secret list called TNR250, for The Nouveau Riche 250. They discuss things they plan to buy when they sell their hundreds of millions of dollars in stock: boats, planes, artwork, even an island. (To be fair, philanthropy is also discussed.)

But all of this is kept quiet and behind closed doors. Not shared publicly on social networks.

There are, of course, several reasons the Valley tries to keep its wealth so secret.

There’s the embarrassment left over from the dot-com crash, which began in 2000. True, the parties then would make today’s celebrations look like backyard barbecues with Betty Crocker cupcakes for birthday cake.

Still, some Valley denizens sense a shift has occurred as the wealth has become easy. “Today, being a venture capitalist is more about a lifestyle than it is about investing,” said Roger McNamee, a co-founder of the tech investment firm Elevation Partners. “They’re making a million bucks a year without generating much, if any, return. It’s like watching Fox News — these people are living in an alternate reality.”

This trend extends beyond the new fee-hungry venture capitalists. “Just as venture capital has become a lifestyle, you now have a generation where being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle,” he said. This is evident in the ease with which “entrepreneurs” are given millions of dollars to create companies that differ only slightly from other successful start-ups — like Instagram for video, or Twitter for cats.

But one of the biggest reasons people here try to pretend they don’t care about the money is that some of the most successful people actually don’t.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, was never driven by money. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, appears, very publicly and honestly, to focus on building a company, not a six-car garage full of toys.

“Steve Jobs was very clear: he said, ‘Change the world, and the world will take good care of you,’ and people like Zuckerberg have absolutely followed that calling,” Mr. McNamee said. “But I think that you get one entrepreneur in 10 or 100 who is actually like that. For every Mark Zuckerberg, there are 10 guys pretending to be Mark Zuckerberg.”

The Valley doesn’t need to act as if it’s not interested in money — spending responsibly is a good thing. Focusing on making worthwhile start-ups grow is even better. We already have enough people pretending to be the Sun King.

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 16, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the date of the dot-com crash. It began in 2000, not the late 1990s.

Bits Blog: Silicon Valley Sounds Off on Failed Cybersecurity Legislation

A cybersecurity bill that would have set security standards for the computer networks that govern the nation’s critical infrastructure was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate on Thursday.

John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, and other Republicans opposed the bill on the grounds that the standards would have been too onerous for corporations. In the weeks leading up to the Senate vote, a compromise was struck to make those standards optional. But on Thursday, following the filibuster, the Senate voted 52 to 46 to end debate on the bill, which fell eight votes short of the 60 it would have needed to pass.

In Silicon Valley, “regulation” is often treated like a four-letter word. But the Valley seems to have made an exception for cybersecurity, where a sort of Wild Wild West has taken hold. Criminals, “hacktivists” and government agents are able to have their way with few effective security technologies and regulations to stop them.

We contacted three Silicon Valley security experts to get their take on the bill, the cyber threat and the potential, as some have warned, for a 9/11-style cyberattack. They are Rob Rachwald,  director of security strategy at Imperva, a network security firm; Roger Thornton, the chief technology officer of AlienVault, a threat detection service; and Mark Seward, a senior security director at Splunk, a data security firm.

What was your take on the bill? Should it have passed?

Mark Seward: The bill went through a metamorphosis over time. At one point it had real teeth for industry. Then, there was compromise to remove that. The fact is, it’s needed.

Rob Rachwald: It wasn’t going to make any difference. The bill lost its teeth when it dropped the security mandate clause. The problem is that it was all sticks and no carrots. It included security mandates but it did not say, ‘We’re going to invest more in law enforcement, or create a central exchange where you can see where threats are coming from.’ It just said, ‘We’re going to impose a bunch of stuff on you.’ And then, ‘Actually, we’re going to make that voluntary.’ It lost its teeth. It became an empty suit.

What was the opportunity lost?

Mr. Seward: This is a huge setback. Frankly, every day we don’t pass legislation is a huge setback. It’s  the difference between whether we want to be a third world country or a first world country. I’ve traveled abroad and experienced power outages firsthand. The resilience of our infrastructure’s ability to resist an attack is the mark of a first world country. Not being able to trust that water is going to come out of the tap, or that when I light my stove natural gas is going to come out, is a real problem in a first world country. A cyberattack could literally mean that the things we most take for granted won’t be available.

Mr. Rachwald: After the standards became voluntary, it was a wash. The real opportunity loss was the fact that, at least initially, they wanted to build a centralized exchange between the public and private sectors for threat information. They weren’t clear how they were going to do it, but the fact they wanted to do it was important. If nytimes.com gets hacked by someone with ‘IP address 123’ it might look like an isolated incident. But if law enforcement could see that there was an attack from that IP address against multiple news sites, it would indicate that something much bigger was happening. That was the real opportunity missed here.

Roger Thornton: The fact is, intellectual property is being stolen from the industrial base at outrageous rates. Companies are getting broken into all the time. But the idea that there’s some kind of regulation — some sweeping mission to Mars — that is going to solve the whole thing overnight, well, that’s just not going to happen.

This regulation wouldn’t dramatically change the business of cybersecurity in my opinion. It would only build awareness — which is good. Maybe if it had passed 10 years ago, we might have avoided these problems. But now, it’s a different story.

Last week, Shawn Henry, the F.B.I.’s former top cybercop, warned of a 9/11-style cyberattack and said the public won’t take the threat seriously until they experience it firsthand. Is that fear-mongering? When do you think we will witness such an attack?

Mr. Seward: It’s my understanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s incident response team discovered that oil rigs are already under attack. But the fact that I can sit here and imagine scenarios where a key component, like water, might not be available to nuclear reactors is disconcerting. There are plenty of scenarios where the point at which two different parts of critical infrastructure intersect — like oil and gas pipelines, nuclear plants and water treatment facilities — could be jeopardized. All those things are interconnected. Our ability to have the society we have depends on the interconnection of those systems. An attack could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Or it could happen 10 years from now. There’s no predicting.

Mr. Rachwald: It’s always quote-unquote imminent. The point is, this legislation would have forced people to think about the threat much more seriously than they will otherwise.

In Silicon Valley, Showing Off Their Louboutins

LAST winter, Chanel flew planeloads of style setters to Las Vegas for a party celebrating Numéros Privés, an exhibition showcasing the brand at the Wynn hotel. There, guests including Diane Kruger, Jessica Alba and Rachel Zoe mingled inside a giant red-lighted replica of a black Chanel 2.55 handbag.

But when it came time for dinner, Chanel’s president, John Galantic, didn’t sit at a table with actresses, but one with Silicon Valley tech executives, like Marissa Mayer (wearing a gray beaded Chanel cocktail dress) and Alison Pincus (in a classic black Chanel shift).

Silicon Valley has long been known for semiconductors and social networks, not stilettos and socialites. But in a place where the most highly prized style is to appear to ignore style altogether and the hottest accessory is the newest phone, a growing group of women is bucking convention not only by being women in a male-dominated industry, but also by unabashedly embracing fashion.

Despite the geek stereotypes of hoodie sweatshirts, flip-flops and thick glasses, it makes perfect sense, these women say, for people interested in technology to be intrigued by fashion.

“Designing software and products isn’t all that different from the design of clothes,” Ms. Mayer, 37, the new chief executive of Yahoo, said in an interview last February. She once paid $60,000 at an auction for lunch with Oscar de la Renta. “Like components of software,” she said, “fashion designers learned how to do this shoulder, put pleats on the skirt that way.”

Ms. Mayer, who for years was responsible for the design of Google’s search engine, proved her point when she asked Naeem Khan to make the dress for her wedding to Zachary Bogue, a financier, in 2009. She gave the designer a spec (a set of requirements that engineers write for new products) for the gown, including scalloped trim, an A-line skirt and lace, preferably with snowflakes.

“A side zip was eliminated because it would get caught on the lace and embroidery, so we realized that wasn’t feasible from an engineering perspective,” Ms. Mayer said.

Not every fashionable techie is so collaborative, but designers are nonetheless eager to explore a client base with not only money to burn but also a forward-looking ethos.

“Definitely my New York clients want to penetrate the valley,” said Allison Speer, founder of Allison Speer Public Relations, who helps introduce designers to customers in Northern California. “When we opened Bottega Veneta, they said: ‘We don’t want the social girls who do everything. We want the up-and-coming tech girls.’ ”

Alice & Olivia recently opened a San Francisco store and started a career line of peplum blouses, blazers and cropped pants to cater to women in tech, said Stacey Bendet Eisner, the brand’s designer.

“Women in the tech world aren’t confined to wearing a standard black suit, so they can have more fun with their day clothes,” Ms. Bendet Eisner said. “They also want an element of sophistication to their clothes because they want to be taken seriously. Hollywood women are more focused on sex appeal.”

FOR the men who have so long dominated Silicon Valley, the casualness of their clothing has seemed to bear an inverse proportion to the magnitude of their innovations. But despite Steve Jobs’s baggy dad jeans, his black turtlenecks were made by Issey Miyake. And Mark Zuckerberg’s signature hoodies and shower sandals are nothing if not a style statement.

As the area ages and settles, however, more of its denizens are starting to think about dressing for the office rather than the dorm room. And while some women here still worry that they will not be considered serious technologists if they care about clothes, as Katrina Garnett was in 1998, when she wore a slinky black Hervé Léger bandage dress in ads for her business software company, many are confident enough to dress the way they want to.

Bits Blog: Silicon Valley Sounds Off on Failed Cybersecurity Legislation

A cybersecurity bill that would have set security standards for the computer networks that govern the nation’s critical infrastructure was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate on Thursday.

John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, and other Republicans opposed the bill on the grounds that the standards would have been too onerous for corporations. In the weeks leading up to the Senate vote, a compromise was struck to make those standards optional. But on Thursday, following the filibuster, the Senate voted 52 to 46 to end debate on the bill, which fell eight votes short of the 60 it would have needed to pass.

In Silicon Valley, “regulation” is often treated like a four-letter word. But the Valley seems to have made an exception for cybersecurity, where a sort of Wild Wild West has taken hold. Criminals, “hacktivists” and government agents are able to have their way with few effective security technologies and regulations to stop them.

We contacted three Silicon Valley security experts to get their take on the bill, the cyber threat and the potential, as some have warned, for a 9/11-style cyberattack. They are Rob Rachwald,  director of security strategy at Imperva, a network security firm; Roger Thornton, the chief technology officer of AlienVault, a threat detection service; and Mark Seward, a senior security director at Splunk, a data security firm.

What was your take on the bill? Should it have passed?

Mark Seward: The bill went through a metamorphosis over time. At one point it had real teeth for industry. Then, there was compromise to remove that. The fact is, it’s needed.

Rob Rachwald: It wasn’t going to make any difference. The bill lost its teeth when it dropped the security mandate clause. The problem is that it was all sticks and no carrots. It included security mandates but it did not say, ‘We’re going to invest more in law enforcement, or create a central exchange where you can see where threats are coming from.’ It just said, ‘We’re going to impose a bunch of stuff on you.’ And then, ‘Actually, we’re going to make that voluntary.’ It lost its teeth. It became an empty suit.

What was the opportunity lost?

Mr. Seward: This is a huge setback. Frankly, every day we don’t pass legislation is a huge setback. It’s  the difference between whether we want to be a third world country or a first world country. I’ve traveled abroad and experienced power outages firsthand. The resilience of our infrastructure’s ability to resist an attack is the mark of a first world country. Not being able to trust that water is going to come out of the tap, or that when I light my stove natural gas is going to come out, is a real problem in a first world country. A cyberattack could literally mean that the things we most take for granted won’t be available.

Mr. Rachwald: After the standards became voluntary, it was a wash. The real opportunity loss was the fact that, at least initially, they wanted to build a centralized exchange between the public and private sectors for threat information. They weren’t clear how they were going to do it, but the fact they wanted to do it was important. If nytimes.com gets hacked by someone with ‘IP address 123’ it might look like an isolated incident. But if law enforcement could see that there was an attack from that IP address against multiple news sites, it would indicate that something much bigger was happening. That was the real opportunity missed here.

Roger Thornton: The fact is, intellectual property is being stolen from the industrial base at outrageous rates. Companies are getting broken into all the time. But the idea that there’s some kind of regulation — some sweeping mission to Mars — that is going to solve the whole thing overnight, well, that’s just not going to happen.

This regulation wouldn’t dramatically change the business of cybersecurity in my opinion. It would only build awareness — which is good. Maybe if it had passed 10 years ago, we might have avoided these problems. But now, it’s a different story.

Last week, Shawn Henry, the F.B.I.’s former top cybercop, warned of a 9/11-style cyberattack and said the public won’t take the threat seriously until they experience it firsthand. Is that fear-mongering? When do you think we will witness such an attack?

Mr. Seward: It’s my understanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s incident response team discovered that oil rigs are already under attack. But the fact that I can sit here and imagine scenarios where a key component, like water, might not be available to nuclear reactors is disconcerting. There are plenty of scenarios where the point at which two different parts of critical infrastructure intersect — like oil and gas pipelines, nuclear plants and water treatment facilities — could be jeopardized. All those things are interconnected. Our ability to have the society we have depends on the interconnection of those systems. An attack could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Or it could happen 10 years from now. There’s no predicting.

Mr. Rachwald: It’s always quote-unquote imminent. The point is, this legislation would have forced people to think about the threat much more seriously than they will otherwise.

In Silicon Valley, Showing Off Their Louboutins

LAST winter, Chanel flew planeloads of style setters to Las Vegas for a party celebrating Numéros Privés, an exhibition showcasing the brand at the Wynn hotel. There, guests including Diane Kruger, Jessica Alba and Rachel Zoe mingled inside a giant red-lighted replica of a black Chanel 2.55 handbag.

But when it came time for dinner, Chanel’s president, John Galantic, didn’t sit at a table with actresses, but one with Silicon Valley tech executives, like Marissa Mayer (wearing a gray beaded Chanel cocktail dress) and Alison Pincus (in a classic black Chanel shift).

Silicon Valley has long been known for semiconductors and social networks, not stilettos and socialites. But in a place where the most highly prized style is to appear to ignore style altogether and the hottest accessory is the newest phone, a growing group of women is bucking convention not only by being women in a male-dominated industry, but also by unabashedly embracing fashion.

Despite the geek stereotypes of hoodie sweatshirts, flip-flops and thick glasses, it makes perfect sense, these women say, for people interested in technology to be intrigued by fashion.

“Designing software and products isn’t all that different from the design of clothes,” Ms. Mayer, 37, the new chief executive of Yahoo, said in an interview last February. She once paid $60,000 at an auction for lunch with Oscar de la Renta. “Like components of software,” she said, “fashion designers learned how to do this shoulder, put pleats on the skirt that way.”

Ms. Mayer, who for years was responsible for the design of Google’s search engine, proved her point when she asked Naeem Khan to make the dress for her wedding to Zachary Bogue, a financier, in 2009. She gave the designer a spec (a set of requirements that engineers write for new products) for the gown, including scalloped trim, an A-line skirt and lace, preferably with snowflakes.

“A side zip was eliminated because it would get caught on the lace and embroidery, so we realized that wasn’t feasible from an engineering perspective,” Ms. Mayer said.

Not every fashionable techie is so collaborative, but designers are nonetheless eager to explore a client base with not only money to burn but also a forward-looking ethos.

“Definitely my New York clients want to penetrate the valley,” said Allison Speer, founder of Allison Speer Public Relations, who helps introduce designers to customers in Northern California. “When we opened Bottega Veneta, they said: ‘We don’t want the social girls who do everything. We want the up-and-coming tech girls.’ ”

Alice & Olivia recently opened a San Francisco store and started a career line of peplum blouses, blazers and cropped pants to cater to women in tech, said Stacey Bendet Eisner, the brand’s designer.

“Women in the tech world aren’t confined to wearing a standard black suit, so they can have more fun with their day clothes,” Ms. Bendet Eisner said. “They also want an element of sophistication to their clothes because they want to be taken seriously. Hollywood women are more focused on sex appeal.”

FOR the men who have so long dominated Silicon Valley, the casualness of their clothing has seemed to bear an inverse proportion to the magnitude of their innovations. But despite Steve Jobs’s baggy dad jeans, his black turtlenecks were made by Issey Miyake. And Mark Zuckerberg’s signature hoodies and shower sandals are nothing if not a style statement.

As the area ages and settles, however, more of its denizens are starting to think about dressing for the office rather than the dorm room. And while some women here still worry that they will not be considered serious technologists if they care about clothes, as Katrina Garnett was in 1998, when she wore a slinky black Hervé Léger bandage dress in ads for her business software company, many are confident enough to dress the way they want to.

Disruptions: Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley's Bubble

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA party to celebrate AirBnB’s new headquarters. A select group of people in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble.

It is still up for debate whether there is a bubble in Silicon Valley.

One thing I know for sure: much of Silicon Valley is enveloped in a bubble.

I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley.

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw a lavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

This is a company town, like Los Angeles and the movies, or Washington and politics. Everything revolves around the tech industry; there is often nowhere to hide.

Like other tech reporters I have spoken with, I often hear pitches for people’s start-ups in the most bizarre places: waiting in line at coffee shops or on the beach. “Hey! You’re Nick Bilton from The Times!” I once heard someone yell when I was standing at a bathroom urinal. “I’m an entrepreneur — can I show you my new iPhone application?”

Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?”

This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.

There is also a bizarre micro-celebrity culture here. People who are famous within the Valley but wouldn’t be noticed anywhere else in the world, even if they were spray-painted fluorescent yellow, create copycat start-ups, with only slight modifications on a previous success — a diminutive variation of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

But there is another side to the Valley. One where people are building truly innovative companies. Where founders aren’t driven by seeing their name on tech blogs or tweeting a picture of themselves with their new investors, M.C. Hammer or Ashton Kutcher.

There are truly excited inventors, designers and programmers here, some of the brightest people in the United States, who are trying to build something that will fix a problem in the world. This is why I love working in Silicon Valley.

Where else in the world would people try to make a better and more efficient taxi service, thermostat or tool for revolt? Where else would they reinvent education, the Boy Scouts and even government? And there are those who are helping the economy, creating services that enable people to find new forms of income.

Once you are able to navigate through the sludge of pandering and ostentation, you can see there is truly magical work taking place.

Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of creators here who believe that everything is broken and that technology, creativity and guts can actually fix it.

Silicon Valley Worries About Addiction to Devices

In a place where technology is seen as an all-powerful answer, it is increasingly being seen as too powerful, even addictive.

The concern, voiced in conferences and in recent interviews with many top executives of technology companies, is that the lure of constant stimulation — the pervasive demand of pings, rings and updates — is creating a profound physical craving that can hurt productivity and personal interactions.

“If you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it’ll boil to death — it’s a nice analogy,” said Mr. Crabb, who oversees learning and development at Facebook. People “need to notice the effect that time online has on your performance and relationships.”

The insight may not sound revelatory to anyone who has joked about the “crackberry” lifestyle or followed the work of researchers who are exploring whether interactive technology has addictive properties.

But hearing it from leaders at many of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies, who profit from people spending more time online, can sound like auto executives selling muscle cars while warning about the dangers of fast acceleration.

“We’re done with this honeymoon phase and now we’re in this phase that says, ‘Wow, what have we done?’ ” said Soren Gordhamer, who organizes Wisdom 2.0, an annual conference he started in 2010 about the pursuit of balance in the digital age. “It doesn’t mean what we’ve done is bad. There’s no blame. But there is a turning of the page.”

At the Wisdom 2.0 conference in February, founders from Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Zynga and PayPal, and executives and managers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco and others listened to or participated in conversations with experts in yoga and mindfulness. In at least one session, they debated whether technology firms had a responsibility to consider their collective power to lure consumers to games or activities that waste time or distract them.

The actual science of whether such games and apps are addictive is embryonic. But the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, widely viewed as the authority on mental illnesses, plans next year to include “Internet use disorder” in its appendix, an indication researchers believe something is going on but that requires further study to be deemed an official condition.

Some people disagree there is a problem, even if they agree that the online activities tap into deep neurological mechanisms. Eric Schiermeyer, a co-founder of Zynga, an online game company and maker of huge hits like FarmVille, has said he has helped addict millions of people to dopamine, a neurochemical that has been shown to be released by pleasurable activities, including video game playing, but also is understood to play a major role in the cycle of addiction.

But what he said he believed was that people already craved dopamine and that Silicon Valley was no more responsible for creating irresistible technologies than, say, fast-food restaurants were responsible for making food with such wide appeal.

“They’d say: ‘Do we have any responsibility for the fact people are getting fat?’ Most people would say ‘no,’ ” said Mr. Schiermeyer. He added: “Given that we’re human, we already want dopamine.”

Along those lines, Scott Kriens, chairman of Juniper Networks, one of the biggest Internet infrastructure companies, said the powerful lure of devices mostly reflected primitive human longings to connect and interact, but that those desires needed to be managed so they did not overwhelm people’s lives.

Disruptions: Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley's Bubble

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA party to celebrate AirBnB’s new headquarters. A select group of people in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble.

It is still up for debate whether there is a bubble in Silicon Valley.

One thing I know for sure: much of Silicon Valley is enveloped in a bubble.

I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley.

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw a lavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

This is a company town, like Los Angeles and the movies, or Washington and politics. Everything revolves around the tech industry; there is often nowhere to hide.

Like other tech reporters I have spoken with, I often hear pitches for people’s start-ups in the most bizarre places: waiting in line at coffee shops or on the beach. “Hey! You’re Nick Bilton from The Times!” I once heard someone yell when I was standing at a bathroom urinal. “I’m an entrepreneur — can I show you my new iPhone application?”

Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?”

This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.

There is also a bizarre micro-celebrity culture here. People who are famous within the Valley but wouldn’t be noticed anywhere else in the world, even if they were spray-painted fluorescent yellow, create copycat start-ups, with only slight modifications on a previous success — a diminutive variation of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

But there is another side to the Valley. One where people are building truly innovative companies. Where founders aren’t driven by seeing their name on tech blogs or tweeting a picture of themselves with their new investors, M.C. Hammer or Ashton Kutcher.

There are truly excited inventors, designers and programmers here, some of the brightest people in the United States, who are trying to build something that will fix a problem in the world. This is why I love working in Silicon Valley.

Where else in the world would people try to make a better and more efficient taxi service, thermostat or tool for revolt? Where else would they reinvent education, the Boy Scouts and even government? And there are those who are helping the economy, creating services that enable people to find new forms of income.

Once you are able to navigate through the sludge of pandering and ostentation, you can see there is truly magical work taking place.

Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of creators here who believe that everything is broken and that technology, creativity and guts can actually fix it.