If You Can Make It in Silicon Valley, You Can Make It . . . in Silicon Valley Again

"Apparently none of these friends got the word that Silicon Valley's best days are behind it. So fervently do they believe in their collective imagination and potential that they routinely invest in one another's endeavors -- $50,000 or $100,000 or $200,000 a pop, creating an informal high-tech investors' club that serves as a kind of market index of Internet startups. None have to work another day in their lives, yet they still routinely work 60 to 70 hours a week -- except those who sheepishly confess to working 80.
Asked why they still work so hard, Mark Pincus, who is feverishly working out the details of his fourth Internet startup after two bona fide hits in the 1990's, draws a comparison to Hollywood. ''People have egos, they have their insecurities, they're concerned about their current standing in the world,'' Pincus told me. ''Everyone's watching everyone else. Like Hollywood, there's this pecking order, and everyone is fundamentally aware of where they stand in the pecking order. They may pretend like they don't, but they know it.'' "

[New York Times]