Sunday, May 10, 2026

San Francisco's Emotional Infrastructure

San Francisco has a certain kind of emotional infrastructure. It takes generations to build.

I was lucky enough to attend the top school in Nepal. You had to sit for these nationwide entrance exams. It was built by the British, run by the British. Every year we would get two high school graduates from England who would come teach us. After a year of doing that, they would go attend college in England. It was a program. Just so happened, one of them would teach my particular class. In the sixth grade I asked the guy who had been in the country for a month, "So tell me, what is the difference between your country and my country?"

He took his sweet time to think about it. And he said, "I have been all over Kathmandu this past month. What has most astounded me is I did not see one person who was depressed!" Not one.

What he said made no sense to me. It is like the young fish asked: "What's water?"

Just like there is physical infrastructure (China has bullet trains, California does not) there is social infrastructure, and there is emotional infrastructure.

One out of three Americans lives alone. Loneliness is more injurious to health than smoking. It is basic biology. That is weak social infrastructure. A dysfunctional family, a broken family is exhibiting weak emotional infrastructure.

San Francisco has super strong emotional infrastructure for Founders. That takes generations to build. The first angel investors in Google was one of the Founders of Sun Microsystems who launched that company 15 years before Google. A lot of people have 100K, but only he would have written the check. That is emotional infrastructure.

It is not just knowledge and information. The books and the blogs and the YouTubes have the information. It is not just money. The money is in New York. And that emotional infrastructure is an in-person thing. You have to feel it. In person.

Video calls don't do it.

Nepal at the time had amazing social and emotional infrastructure. Then western consultants showed up. The people who melt your Himalayas want to teach you conservation.

Can San Francisco's emotional infrastructure be replicated? Sure. But it would require an in-person congregation of Founders.

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