After the brutal bust of 2001, we didn’t expect new masses of multimillionaires to reappear around here quite so fast. But they did—and this time, no recession will send them packing. A 2008 field guide to a new, super-driven kind of upper class—whose motives and morés, like it or not, are now part of our DNA.

1. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
Sold second Internet-ad startup to Yahoo! last year for $300M;
his self-help memoir, The Dream, is due out this summer
BOOM 2.0 POSTER CHILD: Gurbaksh “G” Chahal, age 26, embodies the new and seemingly invulnerable Bay Area megawealth. He was inspired by the instant billion-
dollar companies springing up in the mid-’90s around his hometown of San Jose, where his family moved from India when he was three. He started his first company
at age 16 and sold it two years later for $40 million; his second startup, BlueLithium, went for $300 million in 2007. He now has $100 million invested, and he just
bought this penthouse at the Infinity San Francisco for $7.5 million. On why he won’t rest on his riches: “I love creating things out of nothing.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY CODY PICKENS. SHOT ON LOCATION AT GURBAKSH CHAHAL’S PENTHOUSE IN THE INFINITY SAN FRANCISCO.
GROOMINGBYSHERRIELONG/KOKOREPRESENTS

2. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
99
THE
SEVEN-
YEAR RICHAfter the brutal bust of 2001, we didn’t expect new masses of multimillionaires
to reappear around here quite so fast. But they did—and this time, no recession
will send them packing. A 2008 field guide to a new, super-driven kind of upper
class—whose motives and morés, like it or not, are now part of our DNA.
BY RICK WARTZMAN
PLUS: WHO GOT RICH, HOW MANY GOT RICH, WHAT THEY SPEND EACH YEAR, WHEN NEW MONEY CROSSES OLD, AND WILL THEY EVER GIVE IT AWAY?

3. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
100
I: THE PENTHOUSE VIEW
On a recent Friday morning, at the end of a
week in which the dollar has continued to
sink, stocks have fallen deeper into negative
territory, and a widely watched measure of
leading economic indicators has slipped, I
find myself south of Market, headed clear in
the other direction: straight up, higher and
higher, into a realm where concerns over
whether we’re actually in a recession seem
too mundane to matter.
I am riding the elevator at One Rincon
Hill, the 64-story residential development
located on the former site of the Bank of
America clock tower, eager to soak in a
panorama of the city and try to make sense
of a gnawing question: If the economy is
tanking so badly, how come all of these
seven-figure condos are being snapped up
so quickly?
Ann Dykstra, the building’s sales manager,
confides that she’s been wondering the same
thing. “I get up and read the paper and
think, ‘Oh my goodness.’ But then I get to
work”—and, well, the last of the contracts
for the all-but-sold-out building just keep
rolling in: $1.3 million for a 1,300-square-
foot, two-bedroom spread on the 16th floor,
$2.2 million for a three-bedroom, three-
bath pad on the 29th. (The condo fees, on
top of those prices, average about $850 per
month.)
When the sales center opened at One
Rincon in the summer of 2006, 90 percent
of the 376 units were bought up in just
10 days. Since then, a dozen or so have
come back on the market—but every time,
Dykstra says, they’ve resold for more than
they fetched before. “It’s just remarkable.
We’re raising prices, not lowering them.”
Of the last 15 people to make a purchase,
she points out, about a third paid cash.
Last fall, Jim Meehan scored a two-
bedroom condo on the 59th floor, over-
looking AT&T Park, after the original pur-
chaser backed out. The Google software
programmer, who plunked down “way
upwards of $1 million” for his unit, real-
izes that he paid more than the previous
owner. “But what’s the point of fighting
about it?” he asks. “You expect the price
to go up.”
Nor does Dykstra anticipate the situation
changing much when the 292 condos in the
52-story second tower, scheduled for com-
pletion in 2010, go up for sale. They’re
Made $15M in ‘04 from sale of his genetics-mapping software firm;
now raising angel funding for ethanol startup
Except for page 98, personal financial details in photos are composites drawn from real life. They do not apply to the people pictured.

4. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
101
bound to be more expensive still—perhaps
by as much as 20 percent, she says.
Dykstra and I arrive at an empty condo
on the 27th floor, so I can see for myself
how residents at this rarefied level are going
to live. We yank off our shoes, so as not to
scuff the dark-stained oak floors inside.
Just 837 square feet, this unit is among the
smaller ones in the property—but like all
the others, it comes complete with Bosch
and Sub-Zero appliances, custom Italian
cabinetry, and access to other top-of-the-line
amenities, such as valet parking, concierge
service, a swimming pool, a spa, and a
fitness center.
Dykstra is confident that she’ll be able to
get more than $1 million for the place, no
problem. It’s one of the few remaining units
for sale, and it has a lofty enough perch to
offer a stunning vista of the San Francisco
skyline. “This is a view,” Dykstra says, “that
people seem willing to pay anything for.”
And because they can, they are.
II: 50,000 MULTIMILLIONAIRES
AND COUNTING
When it comes to wealth, the Bay Area has
long been characterized by bouts of boom
and bust: Folks make a mint overnight,
only to see it vanish just as rapidly. This
was the story with semiconductors in the
1960s. For many, the same dramatic rise
and fall was repeated during the ’70s and
’80s in computer hardware. Then there
was what Internet pioneer Halsey Minor,
cofounder of CNET Networks, has called
“the mother of all cycles”—the dot-com
Like most people, the wealthy don’t
always answer toll-free calls from
fortune-seeking financial companies—
or tell the full truth on their tax returns.
Yet survey takers insist on trying to
count their money, anyway. That’s why
we can conclude that after a five-
year, 25 percent rise, the number
of millionaire households in the Bay
Area—not including home values—is
290,000, slightly more than all the
households in San Mateo County.
Here’s what else we think we know.
1
At least 50,000 Bay Area households
now have at least $2 million to play
with—that’s a higher concentration of
liquid wealth in than any other metropolis
except Washington, D.C. HOW TO PICTURE
THAT: The entire crowd of participants in
Bay to Breakers comprising only local
multimillionaires and their families.
2
In the past five years alone, Bay
Area households with a net worth
of $5 million or more jumped 25
percent (or 5,000). HOW TO PICTURE
THAT: A month’s worth of seatings at
Epic Roasthouse filled solely with the
newly really rich.
3
In the decade or so since 1997,
local households with a net worth
of $5 million or more must have
jumped by—well, no one actually knows
by how much. But the increase nation-
ally was around 500 percent. HOW TO
PICTURE THAT: Just drive through Linden-
wood in Menlo Park and check out where
all the 1940s homes were torn down and
rebuilt at double the size.
4
By 2004, the top 1 percent of
income earners across the nation
were bringing in a record average
of $850,000. In the Bay Area, where
incomes are much higher, the top 25,000
households probably averaged more than
$1 million—after taxes. HOW TO PICTURE
THAT: You pay your usual bills, put a bunch
away in stocks and bonds, and still have
enough left to send 50 friends to JazzFest
in New Orleans on your dime.
5
The top one-hundredth of earners
now grab 4 percent of the total
national income, quadruple the
percentage of what it was in the Reagan
’80s. HOW TO PICTURE THAT: You know
the young couple who took that house on
Broadway off the hands of an old-money
family worth about $50 million? Well, the
new-money kids are worth $400 million.
And they’re knocking that sucker down. ■
BRUCE KELLEY
SOURCES: CLARITAS, CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET
OFFICE, SPECTREM GROUP, AND TNS FINANCIAL
SERVICES.
FIVE WAYS
TO PICTURE
THE WEALTH
PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS BROENING

5. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
102
explosion of the late ’90s and the cata-
strophic crash of 2001.
But what the scene from the 27th floor
at One Rincon suggests is that this time, an
unprecedented number of the Bay Area’s
wealthy may escape the usual roller-coaster
ride. These people are rich now, and they’ll
be rich when the latest economic downturn
has run its course. In fact, many of them
may take advantage of this slack period
to become even more prosperous, as they
gobble up equities and other assets on the
cheap.
To be sure, plenty of fortunes will disap-
pear in a puff of smoke, just as they always
have; that’s the nature of the area. Yet what
seems to have happened since the dot-com
crash is that those who have made it big
now have a much less tenuous hold on their
money. “There was a tech boom. There was
a tech crash. But fundamentally…the wealth
here has steadily grown, year in and year
out,” says Deborah Shore, who runs Wach-
ovia’s western wealth-management division
out of San Francisco. Adds Warren Hellman,
one of San Francisco’s best-known finan-
ciers: There’s now “a base of wealth with
a certain stability” that was absent before.
The sheer size of that base is staggering.
One research outfit, TNS Financial Services,
estimates that more than 265,000 house-
holds in the Bay Area—or greater than 10
percent—now boast a net worth of $1 mil-
lion or more. (This doesn’t include home
values.) A full 1 percent, the company fig-
ures, enjoy a net worth of $5 million or more.
Another research firm, Claritas, counts more
than 50,000 households in the region with
RENTING
THE
(REALLY)
RICH LIFE
They’ve been raking in about
$500,000 a year for a decade,
and they now have a $2 million
kitty—but deep down, they know
there’s a vaguely condescend-
ing term for couples like them.
They’re not ultrawealthy. They’re
merely wealthy, and they’re trou-
bled by it. There is some hope,
though: Many touchstones of the
life they seek—a private jet, a car
priced like a jet—are now available
to them, sort of, via a frugal idea
known as fractional ownership.
Call it opulence on the cheap.
$3 million wine-country home
(Your cost: $300,000)
The Orchard at Napa’s Carneros Inn
is one of a handful of spots offering a
new kind of deal in which you become
a partial co-owner of your own wine-
country property. Just buy one-tenth
of a resort-style cottage and use it to
your heart’s content—assuming your
heart is content with 36 days a year.
People can even get a pied-à-terre in
San Francisco this way. Says Todd
Chapman, executive vice president of
JMA Ventures, which sells ownership
in luxury apartments near Ghirardelli
Square, “As the economy transitions, if
someone’s considering a $2–3 million
second home here in town, they may
ask themselves, ‘How many days will
I really spend there?’”
$8.3 million Hawker
400XP plane
(Your cost: $400,000)
If you bought your own plane, you prob-
ably wouldn’t need the damn thing
every weekend. Instead, you can nab
one-sixteenth of a plane from NetJets,
which gets you about 50 hours of flight
time a year. Or try local company XOJet,
which charges $4,100 per hour to call
for one of its eight-passenger Citation
Xs, the fastest business jet in the air, as
if it were a taxi.
$250,000 Bentley
(Your cost: $11,000)
An annual membership at Club Sport-
iva in SoMa nets you about 40 days
of driving time a year. You pick out
whichever outrageously expensive car
you feel would impress the valet at
Perbacco that evening, from a Bentley
Arnage to a Maserati coupe, and hop
in. Club Sportiva CEO Torbin Fuller
says a number of his clients enjoy frac-
tional ownership of vacation homes
and jets, too. “We meet them in the
hangar with a Lamborghini,” he says. ■
HENRY JONES

6. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
103
$2 million or more in liquid assets—that is,
money in checking and savings accounts,
stocks, and other investments that are easily
redeemable. (Homes and pensions aren’t
included.)
That amounts to about 2 percent of all
households here having a couple mil at their
disposal—a statistic that makes for a greater
density of wealth than exists in New York,
Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas,
Boston, Atlanta, Houston, or Seattle. (By this
yardstick, only the Washington, D.C., area
trumps San Francisco and its surroundings.)
Climb up the ladder, and the trend is
even more pronounced. Forbes lists 47 Bay
Area residents among the world’s 1,125 bil-
lionaires. The roster includes examples of
new money, like Google’s Sergey Brin and
Larry Page; old money, such as Oracle’s
Larry Ellison; and really old money, like
William Randolph Hearst III. But even
more striking is the magazine’s separate cat-
alog of “billionaire cities” around the globe.
There, San Francisco ranks eighth; 19 of its
residents have an average net worth of $3.1
billion apiece. What’s more, look at every
other city on the list: Moscow, New York,
London, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Los Ange-
les, Mumbai, Dallas, and Tokyo. They’re all
larger—in most cases, much, much larger.
For instance, Los Angeles, with 24 billion-
aires, has a population five times greater
than San Francisco’s.
III: NEW RIVERS OF MONEY
That all these people, whether millionaires
or billionaires, appear better positioned
than ever to hang on to their riches reflects
several things. Perhaps most important,
the Bay Area sits at the confluence of three
widely acknowledged trends that have
created—and will continue to create—a
colossal amount of wealth in the 21st cen-
tury. Even if one of these engines falters,
the other two can continue to churn.
For starters, there’s globalization. Picture,
for example, the scores of U.S.-educated Chi-
nese nationals who return to their native
country and, in the words of a study by the
Bay Area Economic Forum, wind up shut-
tling between the local region and greater
China “to build and run companies…creating
wealth for founders and investors…on both
sides of the Pacific.”
Next up is the proliferation of high-octane
financial instruments. One database I scoured
PHOTOGRAPH BY JULIA GALDO
Employee #51 cashed out $2M in recent IPO; worth
$17M–23M, depending on stock price

7. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
104
Has gone through six running part-
ners on morning Cañada Road
jogs because he talks so much
Joined NetJets, but pays
exorbitant carbon-offset fees
Volunteers his middle-aged rock
band (semi-ironic name: Big
Brains) for unpaid gigs at friends’
birthday parties
Heaven on earth: Sunken
Diamond with VC pals and sons
Still angry at: the guy who
overcharged him when instal-
ling Sonos music streaming
throughout the house
Only clothing splurge: a $250
Bamboo tee
Once yelled, “Bottom line: Kick
it!” at his five-year-old daughter’s
pee-wee soccer game
Building half-court b-ball gym in
Woodside home to turn son into
a three-point shooter; son is eight
Never tires of telling people
about: that night at the Aspen
Institute when he tried to
persuade Michael Eisner to
become a libertarian
Now calls himself: a green VC
Suburban real-
estate assassin
Earns a $120,000 commis-
sion on each of 10 $4 mil-
lion homes every year, plus
$450,000 on one big score
in the $15 million range.
Terminator Mom, too. Spouse
is a partner at a name law firm.
“Retired” tech exec
turned adventurer
Escaped the crash with $60
million from enterprise-software
startup IPO. Now plans skiing,
scuba, trekking, and other adven-
ture trips with his wife around
corporate board meetings and
daughter’s art studies abroad.
COMMON
SPECIES
OF NEW
MONEY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
MARK MATCHO
The ADD Valley VC
Eighties Wall Street kid who
showed up late to the dot-com
boom after Wharton b-school
stint; three Web 2.0 wins (and
one from biotech) took him
from firm non-factor into the
multimillion stratosphere.
Accepts consulting gigs—on
condition that he never has to
be reachable by cell phone
Owns 5,000-square-foot rambler
in Los Altos Hills, redecorated half
a dozen times (with different
decorators)
Wife gave up therapy practice
years ago, now writing a book
on the trials of raising privileged
adolescent girls
Growing their wine collection;
owns every single type of Riedel
glass
New fave gadgets: a dive
computer and a retractable
garden hose
When traveling, takes his black
lab to “the ranch,” where it’s
trained to have a soft mouth in
time for pigeon-hunting season
Six-carat sapphire (replacement)
wedding ring is all the flash she
needs
Mantra: “Love what you do or
stop doing it”—and really means it
Voted for Bush in ’04 and
now regrets it; she still hasn’t
forgiven him
On the wait list for a Mercedes
S400 BlueHybrid
Likes to remind her kids she was
valedictorian in high school
Ten-year-old son doesn’t know
it yet, but he’ll be going to the
Olympics for water polo
Has her kids tested annually
for Lyme disease
Buys her Jil Sander suits and
Barbara Tfank jackets only at
Susan of Burlingame
Before getting into real estate,
was top salesperson at Eli Lilly,
which is famous for hiring former
cheerleaders (her one extra-
curricular)
Would never miss a 5 a.m. spin
class, if only the gym offered it
Religious about her only
indulgence: weekly facials
Dreams of opening a children’s
clothing boutique; would call it the
Starter Store
Her kids love to visit friends’
homes, where they can secretly
eat snacks loaded with trans fats
Reported by the editors

8. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
105
indicates that the Bay Area is now
home to about 75 active private-
equity firms and some 400 hedge
funds—tributaries of what Robert
Frank, author of the best-selling
book Richistan, describes as a “river
of money” that flows from country
to country and “has supercharged
the process of getting rich.” McKin-
sey & Co. says that financial services
account for 1 of every 14 private-
sector jobs in San Francisco—one
of the highest concentrations of any
city in the country.
The third factor is technology.
Late last year, Google alone was
reported, over its history, to have
handed out stock grants and options
worth more than $5 million to each
of 1,000 different employees (though
the Internet behemoth’s share price
has declined since then). And the odds
are awfully good that this region
will spawn the next Google. The Bay
Area Council Economic Institute
recently found that in 2006, local
companies attracted $9.5 billion in
venture capital—an astounding
$1,370 per resident. In second place
was Singapore, at just $180 per capita.
The figure for New York: $107.
Increasingly, this VC money is
smart money—or at least smarter
money. Investment firms are insist-
ing on solid business plans, not the
half-baked schemes they would have
thrown millions at previously. This
raises the odds that they’re going to
back a winner. In addition, within
the high-tech arena itself, dot-com
mania is giving way to a healthier
mix of investments in biotechnology,
green technology, nanotechnology,
and other subsectors, reducing the
chances that the bottom can fall out
at the same time for so many people,
as it did earlier in this decade.
Home prices aren’t going to cra-
ter for the really rich, either. That’s
because, even amid the mortgage
meltdown, a sufficient amount of
demand is still chasing a very finite
Web 2.0
savant
Berkeley dropout who made
$2.7 million when Yahoo!
bought his open-source tech
startup. Now incubating an
application for the Facebook
platform. Already brainstorming
widget ideas for next company.
Hedge-fund
phenom
After slogging away as a
consultant at Bain & Co., now
pulls down $2 million a year,
most of which he puts back
into the fund—which annualizes
about 20 percent. Net worth:
around $12M.
Pacific Heights
supermom
Rising-star lawyer before
marrying investment banker.
Now channels energy into
household, school auctions,
bold-name charity boards, and
resettling her elderly parents.
Rents in Cow Hollow, owns in
Breckenridge
Keeps Etchells sailboat at Saint
Francis Yacht Club
Collects Porsches—five so far
Built an Excel spreadsheet for girls
he’s dating; anyone who’s lasted
longer than a month qualifies for
a weekend in St. Barts
Hasn’t thought of marriage, but
likes going to friends’ “bachelor
weeks” in New Orleans and Dubai
Keeps his company’s car service
on call, often lets his plebeian
buddies borrow the account
number
Wears sportswear as dresswear
(fleece vest or Polartec jacket),
with plaid button-downs made
by his tailor in Hong Kong
Owns $1,368 Tag Carrera watch
Gave his inner-city teacher friend
(from prep school) money for a
down payment on a house
Looks forward to being upgraded
to AmEx Black
His big dream: owning a Belgian
beer bar
Day revolves around: park dates
with other moms (not to be con-
fused with dreaded “Ladies Who
Lunch”)
Gets best neighborhood gossip
from the nanny, but forgets the
nanny is telling other nannies
about her
Keeps a second home in St.
Helena, so her kids know what
it’s like to have a real backyard
Lululemon all day long, Tory Burch
when she has to wear real clothes
Has own Pilates reformer in the
basement; husband still doesn’t
know what it is
Occasional lunches with former
colleagues rile her up so much
that she snaps at the kids
Blings out in a “Rocks with Soul”
diamond-studded peace-sign
necklace
Spring break, Deer Valley; summer
vacation, Cape Cod
Stashes Wall Street Journal and
a copy of Unaccustomed Earth in
her oversize Birkin
Boob lift (not job)
Works 3 p.m. to 3 a.m.; has yet
to make it to an investor meeting
on time
Considers old money: guys who
work for Yahoo! and Apple
Facebook groups: “Enough with
the poking…let’s just have sex”
and “ST@B!-Startup at Berkeley”
Red Bull by day, Adderall by night
(for programming till dawn);
codeine and cocktails for fun
In winter, rents out chunk of the
Maldives Islands; in spring, heads
to Austin for South by Southwest
Fantasy: being a pro athlete;
reality: never goes to the gym
more than once a week
Always has keys to his BMW M3
in hand, but never a quarter for
the meter (happy to pay parking
tickets instead)
Met his latest investor at a party
at the Grotto, the PayPal Mafia’s
mansion on Pacific Avenue
Donated $200 to Obama, but
didn’t think about charities until
his accountant mentioned the
words tax deduction

9. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
106
IV: NO MORE KOOL-AID
Talk to Bay Area financial advisers, and
they’ll tell you that the wealthy have become
smarter about how they invest their dough.
People, they say, are much quicker to cash
out these days if their company goes public.
No longer do they leave $300 million on
the table in hopes of seeing it soar to $600
million—only to watch it shrivel to $15 mil-
lion or, God forbid, all the way to zero.
Some entrepreneurs are even pressing
to take a significant chunk of the financing
that they raise and put it in their own pock-
ets, not into their companies—something
unheard-of in the VC universe six or seven
years ago.
People “learned from the bubble,” says
Jane Williams, the chief executive of Sand
THE OLD
GUARD
STRIKES
BACK
When architect Lewis W. Butler submitted
a proposal to the department of building
inspection for a remodel of a 31-year-old
hedge-fund bachelor’s Normandie Terrace
home (see rendering above), he knew
there’d be trouble. Not just because it
involved a near total overhaul, but because
the house was going to be enormous and
conspicuously modern—and this was
Pacific Heights.
Contemporary designs have been
popping up all over Pac Heights lately, and
the people planning them—typically young
guys newly rich from tech or finance—are
not receiving a warm welcome. And
several bitter legal battles over a resident’s
rights to go modern have already been
waged—including the house on the 2600
block of Jackson Street designed for TiVo
exec Mark Perry (winner: modern) and an
apartment building on the 2600 block of
Pacific (winner: old). But if those were the
opening act, the house on Normandie is
shaping up to be the main event.
Butler’s initial plan was for a six-story
glass creation, with two levels down the
side of the hill to circumvent height
restrictions, plus a garage entrance four
stories below on Vallejo Street (an elevator
would link the floors). In addition to their
aesthetic concerns, neighbors feared that
the construction might damage the hill’s
stability. “I’ve never seen anything like this,”
says Stephen Williams, the lawyer
representing at least 30 neighbors who
oppose the project. “I mean, you’d be able
to see the house from Berkeley.”
Butler’s first two proposals have already
been rejected, and he’s now at work on a
third. In the meantime, the neighbors have
pursued an old-fashioned letter-writing
campaign, in which they appear
simultaneously dignified and apoplectic,
variously describing the project as
“atrocious,” “real estate rape,” “immoral,”
and the client’s “glass monument to
himself.” One 18-year-old even joined the
fray, pleading that his love for his home
and neighborhood “should outweigh the
selfish concerns of one person who has
never even lived here.”
Butler has other young clients whose
sense of design may also outrage certain
locals. “They have ambitious plans for
beautiful, contemporary houses,” he says,
“but when they pursue them here, they
immediately hit a brick wall of the older
generation.” ■ HENRY JONES
supply of high-end housing. In the fourth
quarter of 2007, according to DataQuick
Information Systems, 17 of the 20 most
expensive zip codes in the region saw a
year-over-year increase in their median
home price.
Add to all this a full generation or two
of the would-be well-to-do: engineers and
MBAs, fresh out of Stanford and Berkeley,
who were exposed at a young age to a cul-
ture of entrepreneurship and the incredible
riches that can go along with it—and who
are now determined (for better or worse) to
grab the golden ring themselves. Toss in the
Bay Area’s relentless fervor for innovation,
and you can start to see how the region’s
notorious penchant for boom and bust is
giving way to something else: a spectacu-
larly large and permanent “overclass.”

10. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
107
Hill Advisors, a wealth-management firm in
Palo Alto, where I hung out for a couple of
days to better understand the current psy-
chology of the rich. Jim McCaffrey, Sand
Hill’s president, puts it like this: “Unless
you’re really kind of numb, you’re going
to do something different” the second time
around.
Take Steve Larsen, the cofounder and
chief executive officer of Krugle, a Menlo
Park startup that provides a search engine
for software developers. He’s hugely enthusi-
astic about the company, which was launched
in 2006, and thinks it has the potential to do
very well, both technologically and financially.
Still, he’s the first to concede that “you need
to temper your belief and enthusiasm” by
making the right investment decisions.
Larsen earned this insight the hard way.
In the late ’90s, he was a founding executive
at Net Perceptions, whose software enabled
e-commerce companies to learn about indi-
vidual customer preferences and make per-
sonalized product recommendations. At one
point, when Net Perceptions’ stock reached
$34 per share, Larsen exercised a bunch of
options. But he didn’t wind up liquidating
the shares and diversifying his holdings,
partly out of loyalty to the company and
his colleagues (“You don’t want to send the
wrong signal to the market”), and partly
because he believed that the stock would
keep going up and up and up. For a while,
it did—that is, until it didn’t. By the time
Larsen had unloaded his stake, Net Percep-
tions stock had tumbled to just $1 or $2 a
share. For “too long,” he says, “we were
drinking our own Kool-Aid.”
Even so, Larsen wound up with a wind-
fall of “a couple million” dollars, which
could have salved his wounds somewhat.
“And then,” he recalls, “I got a multimillion-
dollar tax bill.” The IRS had valued the stock
at the original exercise price of $34, blind-
siding Larsen and leaving him in the hole.
“That happened to a lot of people,” he says.
Thankfully, he had already made some
decent money at Citysearch, another com-
pany he’d helped lead.
More cautious now, Larsen has resolved
that if Krugle goes public one day, he’s not
going to cling to as much of it as he once
might have. “I would diversify a little bit
more than I’ve done in the past,” he says.
Actually, he’s already diversified. Larsen
is an investor in EB Exchange Funds, a
San Francisco firm that emblematizes the
PHOTOGRAPH BY DREW ALTIZER
Second-generation commercial developer; just scored
$3M with an office high-rise on Mission

11. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
108
“let’s not do that again” philosophy. EB
Exchange enables select entrepreneurs to
pool their pre-IPO stock, then share in the
proceeds from all of the companies’ public
offerings, mergers, and acquisitions—while
also spreading the risk of possible failure. It
was started in 1999 by Larry Albukerk, who
founded a venture capital–backed company
twice in his own career; based on that expe-
rience, he knows all too well the potential
folly of having “all your eggs in one basket.”
Bent on remedying that, he set up his first
fund with 11 participating companies and
dubbed it Eleven Baskets LP.
Albukerk says that not everybody gets
the concept behind EB Exchange. Entrepre-
neurs in their 20s still tend to feel invinci-
ble, just like in the old days. “It’s the young
guys who say, ‘Why do I want to diversify?
I’m going to the moon,’” Albukerk explains.
But those who are more seasoned instantly
see the wisdom in what he has assembled.
“Ours is really a product,” says David Lipa,
an EB Exchange vice president, “built on
the misfortune that so many had during
the bust.”
IV: ANYTHING BUT BORING
For all that has changed since the bust,
much about the Bay Area’s entrepreneurial
culture has stayed the same: the unremit-
ting focus on what’s next, and the notion
that failure is expected—even rewarded
(better to go for it and blow it than not to
try at all).
But perhaps the region’s greatest edge
stems from an odd tendency among the rich
here: They’re apt to keep on striving, even
after they’ve pocketed their millions. One
wealth counselor, who has clients on both
coasts, says the difference is glaring. In New
York, there’s a lot of “leisure wealth,” or
dilettante wealth. But out here, it’s a bunch
of “serial entrepreneurs. People just don’t
relax,” she says.
In a small conference room at Sand
Hill Advisors, I met one of these rest-
less souls.
Clint Ostrander, who had come in to
review his portfolio, is a classic Valley guy,
almost to the point of cliché. (If you recog-
nize the last name, it’s because his son, T.C.,
played quarterback at Stanford last season.)
He started as an entrepreneur and is now
an angel investor, sifting through about 15
business plans a year—in biotech, medical
Made $5M when spam-blocking company sold to Cisco four years
ago; chief engineer’s salary at new startup: $170K

12. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
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devices, real-estate development, national
security, and more.
In all, about a quarter of Ostrander’s
money is wrapped up in these deals. The
risk is high: Three of the companies he
had invested in went belly-up last year.
But the payoff can also be fantastic. Over-
all, Ostrander says, the annual return on
his private-equity portfolio has averaged
20 percent or more since he started it
in 2001, thanks mainly to a real-estate
investment trust that has performed
particularly well.
Ostrander’s early business ventures reflect
the same gutsiness. The 60-year-old began
his career as a Stanford medical researcher,
detecting disease by monitoring the gases
found in the breath of premature infants.
In the early ’80s, he struck out on his own,
BEYONDPERSONAL SHOPPERS
Your personal
PHYSICIAN
Typical cost: For a family of four, $25,000
per year for 24/7 access to their doctor—
including, sometimes, his cell-phone number
Rich moment: During a phone call with a
patient, one doctor became concerned and
hopped in his car to check on the man in
person. Turns out he was quite ill, so the
doc drove him straight to the hospital.
One to try: MD2 (staff of two doctors),
2001 Union St.. Ste. 570, S.F., 415-694-
7500, md2.com
Your personal
CELLAR MASTER
Typical cost: For $162,000 for six months,
this person will appraise, organize, add to,
or sell off your wine collection.
Rich moment: After the death of an important
collector, one appraiser catalogued every-
thing for estate purposes, but then created,
gratis, a commemorative book about the
collection for the man’s family.
One to try: Heritage Inventory and
Appraisal Services, 707-320-2388,
heritageinventory.com
Your personal
MONEY SHRINK
Typical cost: For $5,000 per consultation
(which can last many hours), someone will
help you deal with your feelings about
having money.
Rich moment: One psychologist helped a
couple worth hundreds of millions of dollars
talk openly with their adult sons about their
inheritance for the very first time. The couple
wanted to give away the bulk of their assets
and were worried that the plan wouldn’t sit
well with the boys. It did: They were quite
content with a small trust fund, a house, and
the promise of lifetime healthcare for each.
One to try: Dennis Jaffe at Relative
Solutions, 764 Ashbury St., S.F., 415-
665-8699, djaffe@relative-solutions.com
Your personal
ART BUYER
Typical cost: 10 percent of the value of the
artwork, plus $300 an hour.
Rich moment: On his way to the Maastricht
Art Fair, near Amsterdam, one buyer stopped
off in Paris, where he stumbled upon a very
rare, pristine Odilon Redon print for a client
who collected the artist’s work.
One to try: Steven Platzman at Addison
Fine Arts, 2461 Buchanan St., S.F., 415-
776-3206, platzman@addisonfinearts.com
Your personal
TRAVEL FIXER
Typical cost: Up to $10,000 per person per
day to make “special arrangements” for trips
to the most obscure destinations and the
most luxurious accommodations.
Rich moment: One service was asked to
reserve a full floor of rooms in hotels in two
different cities, so the client and his friends
could choose the city with the best weather.
After the client made his decision, he paid
for all the rooms sitting empty.
One to try: Geographic Expeditions, 1008
General Kennedy Ave., S.F., 415-922-0448,
geoex.com
Your personal
PHILANTHROPIST
Typical cost: For 3 to 10 percent of the
money you plan to give away, this person will
help you figure out how and where to do it.
Rich moment: One charity adviser, retained
by a local couple who wanted to donate to a
green cause, arranged a meeting with one of
Gavin Newsom’s staff. The result: two grants
of $200,000 to help start the city’s tidal and
wave power projects.
One to try: Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisors, 101 2nd St. 24th Fl., S.F.,
415-543-0733, rockpa.org
Your personal
PERSONAL ASSISTANT
TYPICAL COST: $75,000 a year.
RICH MOMENTS: One recent night, a local
rock star woke up at 3 a.m. feeling cold. But
instead of getting out of bed and walking
to the nearby closet, he called his personal
assistant, who lived half an hour away, and
asked him to come do it for him. Then there’s
the PA who was asked to buy favors for her
employer’s party—not chocolates or scented
candles, but dildos and vibrators. ■
JOANNE FURIO
THESE EAGER, ENTREPRENEURIAL SOULS ARE HERE TO HELP
WHEN THE WEALTHY WANT TO DELEGATE.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ODELL HUSSEY

13. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
110
looking for a way to commercialize his
know-how. While juggling his day job as
a biotech executive, Ostrander formed
Trace Analytical. From his 10-by-12-foot
garage—where else?—he began assembling
gas-monitoring equipment with a couple of
contract employees. Over time, he found his
key customers: computer-chip makers who
were anxious to uncover molecular contami-
nants in the high-purity gases used in fabri-
cating silicon wafers.
In 1997, Ostrander sold Trace Analytical
to an Italian multinational for more than
$10 million. He stayed on under contract
for four years, then cut his ties completely.
That left him with “a boatload of money,”
he says, before correcting himself. “Not a
ridiculous amount of money, but comfort
money.”
For a while, he invested in stocks, but
that was too passive and boring. “Playing
golf forever isn’t actually that much fun,”
he says. “At the end of the year, you look
back and think, ‘What have I done?’” When
the market swooned in 2000, Ostrander also
found that he was at the mercy of the bears.
“I saw about 25 percent of my portfolio
vaporize,” he says.
Yet even when the market was going up,
following stocks was nerve-racking. This was
especially true for someone like Ostrander—
and I suspect it’s the same for many in the
Valley—who is so technologically inclined.
“I don’t understand emotionally driven
things,” he says. By being an angel, he adds,
“I’ve started having fun again”—and, only
semi-coincidentally, getting richer along
the way.
A SILICON VALLEY MONEY
MANAGER DISHES (ANONY-
MOUSLY, OF COURSE) ON
THE HABITS AND HANGUPS
OF HIS CLIENTELE.
“
San Francisco money
is old money. It’s a little
bit sleepy and very char-
itably inclined. The wealth down
here is a bit more in your face. Lots
of toys, big homes, and generally
not that charitable. The new money
is just trying to figure out what to
do with it all.
”
“
The amount of
wealth down here
and the concentration of
it in just two or three zip codes is
beyond what anybody understands.
I don’t think people get it.
”
“
The coming reces-
sion isn’t going to
affect them in the least.
They’re just bulletproof. A lot of cli-
ents have massive bond portfolios.
If you’re a guy with $50 million, and
you’re coaching high school football,
you would have at least $5 million
on a municipal bond portfolio, and
every year it would be creating
$250,000 tax-free, come hell or
high water.
”
“
If you’re the average
wealthy venture capi-
talist, and you worked
during the bubble, you should have
at least 10 or 15 million bucks,
even if you just showed up. Com-
plete idiot, you just showed up. Your
average VC makes two or three
million in salary. That’s your bullet-
proof salary. Every few years, you’ll
hit a company and you’ll get a piece
of the profits.
”
“
The only people VCs
are more impressed
with than themselves
are elite athletes. You know, you go
to a Stanford basketball game, you
look at the front row…that’s what
they spend their money on. Those
seats are a million bucks a row.
”HENRY JONES
INSIDER
SHARING

14. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
111
VI: “SHOW ME THE UPSIDE!”
One evening after work, David Lipa and I
got together in San Francisco’s financial
district for a few beers.
I wanted to better understand the new
investment world that the 23-year-old EB
Exchange vice president is part of. This bur-
geoning group, historian Kevin Starr had
told me, “wants San Francisco to be a big-time
city because they see themselves as big-time,
as wealth creators, as masters of the universe.”
The discussion, though, quickly turned in
a different direction. Between swigs, David
unloaded, painting a picture of narcissism
and hedonism that, he says, is easily masked
by the Bay Area’s geeky persona. “People
are like, ‘My intelligence is more important
than my bank account. I care about the
environment. Look, I drive a Prius.’” But in
actuality, he says, “this place is as acrimoni-
ous as anywhere else; family structure is just
as decayed as anywhere else.”
Without a doubt, money can be corrosive.
There’s a real challenge in “raising children
with middle-class values in an upper-class
lifestyle,” says Kristi Kuechler, senior man-
aging director at the Institute for Private
Investors, an educational and networking
group for the wealthy. “At what point do
you not fly first class or on your private jet?
How do you make them do chores?” Dur-
ing David’s teen years on the peninsula,
at the peak of the dot-com era, such inno-
cuous questions were the least of it. Sick-
ness and self-gratification, he says, swirled
around him: “rock-star lines of cocaine”;
all-nighters stoked by Adderall; anorexia
and bulimia among the girls; rampant
misogyny among the boys. Once, he says,
he turned down $5,000 to take the SAT for
a second-rate student whose parents were
willing to do practically anything to get him
a good score.
Richard Walker, a geography professor
and the chairman of UC Berkeley’s Califor-
nia Studies Center, isn’t surprised by any
of this. A certain number of people have
always gotten rich in Silicon Valley, he
says. But in the 1990s, a transformation
occurred: “A nerd paradise blossomed into
an unbelievable volcano of money.” Where
the technological wizardry used to be what
everyone concentrated on, “it became more
about wheeling and dealing.”
After David and his buddies graduated
from the best colleges—he’s a Stanford
PHOTOGRAPH BY CODY PICKENS. SHOT ON LOCATION AT SPRING DOWN EQUESTRIAN CENTER, PORTOLA VALLEY.
Father sold artisanal yogurt company to Nestlé in 2002 for
$150M; she gets $43K per month from her trust fund

15. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
112
alum—most of them went to work at
either big-name financial houses or white-
shoe law firms. But within a few years,
they all quit when it dawned on them that
they’d have to work their tails off for the
next decade or more—and then what?
Maybe they’d be bringing home $1 million
annually?
“We all said, ‘Ha! Show me the upside!’”
David recalls. And so they became entre-
preneurs. “There’s a sense among us,” he
says, “that if you haven’t taken a leap of
some kind, you’re not the real deal. You
don’t really belong here.”
Even when David isn’t making money,
he’s writing about it. The novel he just
finished—his first—is set in the opulent
universe of his childhood. Called Limited
Partnership, it opens with a passage about
FORGET ABOUT THE PRIVATE PLANES AND THE $5,000
BOTTLES OF WINE. THESE ARE THE YEARLY BASICS,
FOR A FAMILY OF FOUR, THAT PEOPLE OF MEANS NOW
WANT—EXPECT—TO HAVE. NO WONDER THEY DON’T REST
UNTIL THEY’VE GOT $10M IN THE BANK. ■ JESSICA KELMON
WHERE IT ALL GOES
Mortgage on a $4.5M
home in Pacific Heights
or Orinda:
Property taxes and
utilities:
Mortgage on a $1.5M
vacation home in
Lake Tahoe:
Property taxes and
utilities:
One major home project
(landscaping, room
renovation, new deck):
New furniture and
housewares:
One full-time nanny:
Housecleaner,
twice a week:
Part-time personal
assistant:
Home repairs
and upkeep:
Private-school tuition
for two kids:
Additional donations to
schools:
Weekly tutoring for kids:
Summer camp:
Activities/lessons for kids:
Birthday parties for kids:
Clothing for her:
For him:
For kids:
Jewelry:
Groceries:
$63,450
$91,875
$20,000
$100,000
$30,000
$8,000
$50,000
$189,000
$20,000
$50,000
$65,000
$40,000
$6,750
$10,000
$14,000
$3,000
$40,000
$15,000
$12,000
$15,000
$12,000
Takeout:
Restaurants:
Wine:
Fitness (club
memberships, plus private
sessions):
Private golf or
country club:
Haircut and color every six
weeks (for a woman):
Monthly massage and
facial (for a woman):
Medical expenses/
uninsured specialists:
Four dinner parties
for eight:
Spouse’s birthday party:
Two international trips,
plus six weekend trips:
New car:
Upgrades for computers
and other electronics:
Warriors season tickets:
S.F. Opera season tickets:
Charitable contributions:
Gifts and tips:
Accounting and tax fees:
Car insurance (three cars):
Gas:
Car maintenance:
$2M life-insurance policy:
Financial adviser services:
Attorney fees:
$4,000
$7,500
$10,000
$23,000
$5,700
$22,360
$18,000
$10,000
$4,000
$17,800
$5,760
$4,000
$16,500
$20,000
$4,500
$10,000
$4,700
$8,430
$75,000
Annual total: $1,253,525
$22,000
$12,000
$75,000
$13,200
$5,000
SOURCES: LOCAL WEALTH MANAGERS, CONCIERGE AND STAFFING SERVICES, INSURANCE COMPANIES, HOME DECOR
AND RETAIL PROFESSIONALS, REALTORS, SPAS, AND MORE. ANNUAL TOTAL DOES NOT INCLUDE INCOME TAXES.

16. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
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how the protagonist’s father and his col-
league “got new money” by buying up land:
Soon they got much more of it investing
in the companies that bought the land—
Oracle, Google, and Intel among them.
With electric eyes they stuffed gold into the
most lucrative balance sheets of a thousand
years; they earned 1000x returns; they
donned jeans and black polo shirts; they
jogged marathons in the hills; they ate
organic, grass-fed plums; they became
venture capitalists.
David takes his writing seriously, and he
hopes to be published one day. But he has
no intention of becoming a starving artist to
get there. Not even close. “The dream,” he
says, “is to be in the billionaires’ club. That’s
what everyone dreams of.”
VII: IT’S IN THEIR BLOOD
Actually, for some, the goal is a bit more
modest, though no less passionately desired.
The Bay Area is filled with people like
David’s 40-year-old techie brother, Bill,
and his 42-year-old wife, Gia, who made
a million or so, bought a house, and are
still striving to hit it big. I joined the cou-
ple for dinner at the Village Pub in Wood-
side. The pan-roasted chicken with Meyer
lemons was terrific. But the best dish came
from Gia, who talked openly about what
people in Silicon Valley consider real
success.
“You’re still a working grunt until you’ve
got about $10 million,” says Gia, who has
worked for several Valley companies and
has channeled her fascination with wealth
and culture into a blog called The Digerati
Life. “That’s the magic number. You don’t
really relax until you get to that point.” An
eight-figure net worth may sound like a lot,
but as Gia talks about what it would mean
in practical terms—a $3 million house in
Atherton, private schools for the kids at
$25,000 or more a pop, a couple hundred
thousand bucks to cover general expenses
and not have to work—it begins to sound
downright reasonable. (See “Where It All
Goes,” page 112.)
Bill and Gia met as young programmers
at Oracle, but they didn’t stay there long.
Bill left to launch an online gaming com-
pany called Outland with two buddies, and
for a while during the dot-com boom, it
looked as if it would provide the Lipas with
a life-altering sum of cash. “Every single one
PHOTOGRAPH BY YING TANG
Won a $500M divorce settlement two years ago from husband’s
IPO bundles; just put $50M in beau’s hedge fund

17. SANFRANCISCOJUNE2008
114
of us thought we were going to be multimil-
lionaires,” Gia says. “We all thought we had
it made.” But the IPO never happened, and
the corporate acquisition that did material-
ize delivered only a fraction of the riches
the Lipas had once expected. Gia’s own
foray into a dot-com startup also went
nowhere. Eventually, she and Bill both took
regular 9-to-5 tech jobs—and tried to live
the salaried life. He was with Electronic
Arts; she worked in IT at Wells Fargo. But
in 2006, Bill announced that he was ready
to start another new company, a product
research site called BestInClass.com.
Gia was furious at first. They had two
children now, they were making decent
money, and the stability seemed important.
But Bill persuaded her that the timing was
right, partly because all the free software
that’s available online now makes running
a startup much cheaper than it was in the
’90s. Besides, Gia says, “he wouldn’t take no
for an answer.” A few months ago, Gia quit
her Wells Fargo job and went back to free-
lance consulting while they, once again, risk
a lot for the big score.
Why do it? What’s clear in talking with
Gia and Bill is that money isn’t their prima-
ry motivation. Mostly, they are moved by
the chance to do their own thing, outside
the strictures of a big corporation, and to
create something new. “It’s in our blood,”
Gia says.
She speaks for a lot of Bay Area people,
yet she is also aware of the complications
that entrepreneurship can engender. Go
through what experts call a “liquidity event”
(what most of us would call winning the
lottery)—a public stock offering or a cor-
porate acquisition that makes someone a
gazillionaire—and, voilà, everyone looks at
you differently: spouses, parents, in-laws,
siblings. If your brother’s car breaks down
for the umpteenth time, do you simply
replace it because you have the means?
Or will that come across as pompous and
patronizing?
Even friendships can become fraught.
“I had people I worked with side-by-side,
and they became ultrawealthy, and all of
a sudden, I don’t see them,” says Gia.
“My friends are not necessarily my friends
anymore.” She tells of one high school class-
mate in particular, with whom she was close.
Then came the friend’s husband’s IPO, and
Gia found herself taking a backseat—to a
stable of horses at the equestrian center.
Made $5M in 2003, when his law firm was snapped up by
white-shoe NY firm looking for a Valley presence

18. JUNE2008SANFRANCISCO
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Ultimately, though, she isn’t too hard
on anyone. “We’re comfortable, and we
feel blessed with what we have,” Gia says,
mentioning their house in the hills of
Redwood City.
“This time around, we don’t want to
delude ourselves,” she adds. “We’re a little
more hesitant about letting our emotions
get ahead of us. But we still believe.” If
BestInClass.com were to wind up making
Bill and Gia wealthy—truly wealthy—“that
would be the most thrilling thing in the
world.” ■
A FORMER REPORTER AND EDITOR AT THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL AND LOS ANGELES TIMES, RICK WARTZMAN
IS DIRECTOR OF THE DRUCKER INSTITUTE AT CLAREMONT
GRADUATE UNIVERSITY AND AN IRVINE SENIOR FELLOW
AT THE NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION.
GOOD $IGN: Thanks to the powerful
examples of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett,
suddenly you are expected to give away at
least some of your hundreds of millions,
and to do it intelligently—long before you
die. Says financier Warren Hellman, one of
San Francisco’s biggest givers: “I think it’s a
sea change.”
BAD $IGN: “Significant pockets” of new
tech wealth remain “cautious” and
“untapped,” concedes Emmett Carson of
the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Imagine being 27 and waking up to the
sound of a dump truck unloading bags of
$100 bills onto your front porch. You’ll
probably need some time just to adjust to
the fact that your car now features a pleas-
ant female voice offering directions—and
they already want you to start thinking about
Habitat for Humanity?
GOOD $IGN: More wealthy Bay Area
residents of all ages are forming ambi-
tious private foundations than ever before.
Contributions to community funds like Carson’s
and the San Francisco Foundation, where
assets recently passed $1 billion, are stead-
ily rising.
BAD $IGN: As a group, the really rich
remain pathetically parsimonious. If they
gave away as big a percentage of their
dough as the rest of us do, one estimate
found, an extra $25 billion per year would
go to good works.
GOOD $IGN: The newest philanthropists
are following personal passions and giving
enormous sums to institutions they know and
love. Alumna Meg Whitman gave $30 million
to Princeton to build a residential college; at
Stanford, alum Jerry Yang’s $75 million will
create an environmental center; while golf
nut Tom Siebel’s $3 million built the Stanford
golf team a wonderland of practice greens
modeled on the world’s finest courses (and
he didn’t even attend the school).
BAD $IGN: Unfortunately, giving to a
wealthy university isn’t effective phil-
anthropy, say some foundation experts,
because universities can legally just park
their money forever—and places like
Princeton and Stanford already have the
means to buy all the new buildings they
want, anyway. (Their endowments are now
an obscene $15.8 billion and $17 billion,
respectively.) Too bad the super-rich don’t
know anyone in West Oakland or Richmond.
GOOD $IGN: The ultrawealthy used to shy
away from global issues, but now micro-
finance is all the rage, personal foundations
are contemplating how to throw millions a
year at slowing down climate change, and
malaria vaccines have become a safe—even
sexy—cause.
BAD $IGN: Local nonprofits that serve the
poor or combat pollution right here in the Bay
Area continue to struggle mightily, largely
unsupported by new money. “The further
from home, the easier it is to look at social
justice,” notes one foundation executive.
GOOD $IGN: More younger philan-
thropists are running their operations
like startups—finding a niche and demand-
ing results.
BAD $IGN: Few of them are taking what’s
often the fastest route to real change:
directly funding political and lobbying
organizations that can yank on the levers
of power. You don’t get a tax break that way,
but how else are you going to win manda-
tory mileage standards or get guns off the
streets?
GOOD $IGN: Do-gooder entrepreneurs
now build philanthropy into their business
models. Marc Benioff’s Salesforce.com con-
tributes 1 percent of profits, 1 percent of
equity, and another 1 percent of its employee
hours to community organizations; Google
puts 1 percent of profits and equity into its
foundation, Google.org.
BAD $IGN: Big business still instinctively
fights new taxes—even though public
schools are falling down, healthcare is in
shambles, and the Bush tax cuts have given
the top 1 percent of earners an outrageous
$100,000 per year of extra cash they don’t
need, while the poor get next to nothing. It’s
been said that philanthropy is a safety valve
to protect the rich against revolution. Fund-
ing a government that doesn’t invite revolt is
probably a smarter hedge. ■ BRUCE KELLEY
FANTASY THOUGHT: The Bay Area’s recently rich, fresh from creating
the new economy over the past decade, will devote their winnings to
building a more perfect world (once they remodel their places in Kona
and B.C., of course). And why not? This is the home of Messrs. Hewlett,
Packard, and Moore, who turned their loot from the region’s last Gilded
Age into three of the 11 largest foundations in the U.S.
REALITY: Not everyone around here likes to give their money away.
We track the promise and pitfalls of relying on trickle-down economics.
WILL ANYTHING
TRULY GOOD COME
OF ALLTHIS?
PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS BROENING