# Before the Trillions, There Was Once Joy in Silicon Valley

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520/before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520/before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley.md
Podcast: [Talk Cocktail](https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520)
Published: 2026-07-11T15:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://jeffschechtman.substack.com/p/before-the-trillions-there-was-once
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/206338000/ffa9296653f67ede462a204ce4d8e297.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/talk-cocktail-15520/episodes/before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley
Duration seconds: 2377

## Resource

A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls “enlightened AI.” Recently, on WhoWhatWhy podcast , Matthew Stepka — early internet-café founder, McKinsey alum, nine-year Google veteran who shepherded many of the company’s mission projects including the first self-driving cars, and now an investor in what he calls “enlightened AI” — walks us back through the Valley’s reinventions and asks what each one cost. Before the trillion-dollar IPOs, before the data centers and the doom, before “Silicon Valley” became shorthand for unaccountable power and unimaginable wealth, there was a teenager with an Atari — a gift from his NASA-engineer father — certain he could build any world he could imagine. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

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## Transcript

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