The fact that nine out of every 10 startups fails doesn't keep people from descending on the San Francisco Bay Area with dreams of getting rich while changing the world. Everyone wants to be the Uber of something, convinced that the world needs an app to help people express their emotions or an online store selling party favors that glow in the dark.
Laura Morton dove headlong into this crazy world and emerged with Wild West Tech. Her ongoing series takes you into the networking parties, hackathons and grubby crash pads where techies tap tap tap away at their laptops. "Most of the people I meet feel they’re at a unique place in history and can do some cool stuff that they hope will influence the world for the better,” Morton says. “Some of them—not all—are also excited about the prospect of possibly striking it rich.”
Morton moved to San Francisco from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a decade ago, drawn by its diversity and the idea that "you could be whoever you wanted to be." The second tech boom was taking off—you could still get a first-name-only Twitter handle---and everyone she met was working for a startup of some kind. She was fascinated, but didn't think of doing anything about it until 2011, when a friend became a millionaire in LinkedIn’s $9 billion IPO. “It really changed him, not for the better," she says. "That’s when I started to realize this was a strange moment in time where very young people were making massive fortunes pretty much overnight.”
A $4,750 Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund grant got her going. Morton started attending networking parties and silent discos and massive “cuddle parties” where 20-somethings flirted over free beer and canoodled with giant teddy bears. Eventually people invited her into the messy apartments and hip co-working spaces.
Watching people type code or crunch data for hours on end is pretty boring. Getting a compelling photo is tough. Morton occasionally spent hours waiting for a revealing expression, gesture or move. Her patience allowed her to capture moments others might miss, like the woman so engrossed in her VR headset she didn't realize everyone had left the room. "I'm always searching out funny, quirky little moments,” Morton says.
These small moments are what makes Wild West Tech so interesting. Morton reveals the tedium of a life in tech, the daily experiences of people who create many of the apps and gadgets you use. It's easy to think of Silicon Valley as a caricature of itself, but the reality is often much more average and much more interesting than what you might see on HBO. "Any economic boom is by definition going to be a little bit crazy and ridiculous, but that's what makes it so much fun to photograph," she says. "The daily experience for most people in the roaring 20s certainly wasn't going to Gatsby style parties, but that's what people today think of and remember."
