A slew of factors goes into investments and status in Silicon Valley. Lately, an intangible one has pulled ahead as a predictor of success or failure: “signal.”
If your behaviors are deemed high-signal: Congratulations, you’re coming across as a winner and rewards may follow. If your actions are seen as anti-signal: Sorry, you’re radiating cringey energy that may hamper your chances.
Both terms are ubiquitous in social media posts, blogs and public comments from those in the industry. Chris Lehane, the chief global affairs officer of OpenAI, which recently bought the popular tech podcast TBPN, told Puck that the show had “a high-signal, Silicon Valley ‘opinion-elite’ audience.” A blog post by a division of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said it offered founders access to a “high-signal talent ecosystem.”
Those in the know warn of anti-signal moves: Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has said that going to dinners hosted by venture capitalists “tends to be a big anti-signal.” Other anti-signal moves, according to social media users, include being on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, putting an “open to work” badge on your LinkedIn and even taking venture capital funds.
How it’s pronounced
/sig-nᵊl/
The concept “probably comes up in every single conversation I have when I talk to a portfolio company about either fund-raising or hiring,” said Yoni Rechtman, a partner at Slow Ventures, a venture capital firm, partly because image has lately become all the more important in tech.
“I think 10 years ago, there was a lot more belief that reality would drive perception,” he said. “Today that has inverted, where perception drives reality.” Many in tech, he added, are “quite literally just trying to affect the aesthetics of success,” trying to look like a winner to become one.
What will qualify as high-signal or anti-signal behavior is not always apparent to the untrained eye. That’s part of the point: The most competitive tech spaces are teeming with complex social cues — and knowing how to act is seen as predictive of success.
“Part of being a good founder is that you learn the game,” said Andrew Yeung, who runs a company that throws tech events. “You never want to show that you’re desperate for a job or capital.” Instead, he offered, you should convey that you are a “highly regarded by everyone in the market, and that you are a scarce asset.”
Putting together a pitch deck ahead of a meeting with investors? That can seem anti-signal, Mr. Yeung said. It shows you want it too badly. Spending all your time going to founder events? Also anti-signal. You should be shipping code instead of networking so much. All this reflects the “consensus thinking of Silicon Valley investing,” he said, acknowledging the harshness of the culture.
Of course, the idea of “signal and noise” — the apparent linguistic progenitor of the current usage — is not brand-new. But separating signal from the rest has become more urgent in a world of so much A.I.-generated slop, Mr. Yeung suggested. He added that an overreliance on A.I. can be seen as anti-signal.
It indicates that you don’t have good judgment or taste, or at least the savvy to mask that you’ve used the technology. Even the word signal, which Mr. Yeung said came up often in A.I.-generated writing, was starting to look a bit uncool. The latest anti-signal behavior, he suggested, may be “using ‘signal’ and ‘anti-signal’ in public.”
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