The good news is that over the past few months a lot of attention has been paid to whether women are succeeding in Silicon Valley.

The bad news is that most people agree we still have a long way to go.

No matter whether you lean in or lean out, there are some easy ways that you can be more successful.

Here are eight ways to help yourself — and all the women around you — succeed in Silicon Valley.

1. Change your thinking

We need to take a hard look at the way we think and the messages we give to our children.

When I was growing up it wasn’t cool for girls to be good at numbers.

So when I had the opportunity to learn to code I didn’t take it. That was something boys did. We need to change this way of thinking, and we need to change it now!

Push yourself to learn new technologies and skills. And mothers of girls, help them grab that opportunity with both hands.

2. Build your brand

For anyone — man or woman — to be successful, you need to position yourself for it. Think about what you want to be known for in your career, and market yourself correctly to achieve your goals. A mentor can give you valuable insight and feedback to help.

Networking can help you build an army of champions that have your back. And participating in conversations about timely issues and trends, through your company blog or posting on LinkedIn, can help you build a profile and share your insights and point-of-view with the outside world.

3. Speak your mind

Sometimes it seems like women in the workplace are afraid to be heard. The old stereotype is that men are more focused on demonstrating power and expertise and women are more focused on building relationships. Too often women sit silently at the back of the room while men run the meetings.

Focusing on relationships may be more powerful in the long run, but it’s killing you at the negotiating table. When I offer a salary, women typically say “thank you” — but men ask for more. Women, you need to take charge of these meetings and start asking for more too.

4. Help each other

Women need to start supporting other women. There’s a misconception that there are only a few executive positions for women and if you want one you have to knock someone else out to get it. No, no, no. You aren’t competing against each other. You don’t need to take from someone else to be successful.

Women at the top, don’t be threatened. Give each other good advice. Mentor other women a little more. Have their back and they’ll have yours.

5. Build an empathetic culture

You might think it’s just a touchy-feely hippie notion, but in today’s technology-driven, often impersonal world, empathy can be your competitive advantage. And it can help everyone on your team develop their skills and do their best work.

When you have an empathetic culture, employees have a better understanding of market needs and building tighter relationships with customers. They work together better as a team, and every employee — whether they are junior or senior, man or woman — can achieve their full potential.

6. Be nice to your partner

Women are never going to be able to grow in the workplace without support from our partners, so be nice to the person who is backing you — especially if they are staying home to do it. Work in the home is every bit as important as work in the business world.

Show gratitude for what they do — it’s not hard to say “thank you.” Especially if your partner who is staying home is a man. He’s fighting a stereotype and that takes a lot of courage.

7. Make it count

You can’t do it all. Do the things that matter and outsource or delegate the rest. This applies to both your professional and your personal lives. At work you need to prioritize projects that innovate, not iterate. Nobody built a market or a career by doing the same thing over and over again.

You need to have the same ruthlessness at home. Reading with your kids at bedtime is more important than making sure all the laundry is perfectly folded.

8. Do something that scares you

I challenge every woman who is reading this article to try to do at least one thing that scares the you-know-what out of them this year. Especially if you are choosing between two paths. Take the one that terrifies you. Every meaningful choice that I’ve made in my life was the harder one. Going to the Peace Corps.

Starting at Salesforce when I had a new baby. Taking my new job at Desk.com. This list goes on and on. They were frightening and intense, but they’ve all paid off for me in a big way.

Let’s face it, nothing is going to change for women overnight. We need to challenge ourselves, work together, stand up for ourselves, and build a culture that will enable all of us and our daughters — to succeed together.

Leyla Seka leads Desk.com, salesforce.com's all-in-one customer service app for fast-growing companies. Prior to her current role, Leyla was responsible for building and growing the Salesforce AppExchange, the world’s leading business apps marketplace. In her five years managing the AppExchange team, she helped grow salesforce.com’s robust and innovative partner ecosystem of startups and ISVs building and selling the next-generation of enterprise apps.

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According to Chris Sacca, the Lowercase Capital partner who made more than $1 billion through his investments in companies like Twitter and Uber, Silicon Valley doesn't need more business advice. It needs a lesson in empathy.

The current generation of entrepreneurs, investors, and programmers have a tendency to live in a bubble removed from the rest of the world, he tells "The 4-Hour Workweek" author Tim Ferriss in the latest episode of Ferriss' podcast.

They may be more highly educated than those who came before them, but they're lacking the valuable experience that doesn't come with a degree, like working construction or waiting tables in the summer, traveling, and volunteering in poorer parts of the world.

That's resulted in a concentration of tech workers and investors with "narrow-band perspectives on the world,"Sacca says. "They were missing empathy. So they weren't able to put themselves in the shoes of the folks they might be building a product for, what the problems of the world might be."

He tells Ferriss that he's always looking for ways to offset this problem for the founders he works with, as well as himself, and frequently recommends the following books.

"Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived" by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton

Peter Barton made a fortune in tech as the founder and CEO of Liberty Media, which acquired clients like the Discovery Channel and QVC. He left the company in 1997 and became the head of a foundation, a professor, and a Yahoo board member — he was busy, but he had enough freedom to enjoy spending time with his family. Then, in December 1998, he was diagnosed with incurable stomach cancer.

In 2002, Barton was approaching death and reached out to the writer Laurence Shames to help him tell his story. Barton died before "Not Fade Away" was published.

The book is Barton's exploration of dealing with his mortality and taking stock of what truly mattered in his 51 years.

"You will cry reading this book," Sacca says.

"It's an exercise in what's on the mind of the person who's dying, and how is he thinking about the impact of his death on his family, on his friends, on his business partners, on his legacy, on the continuing responsibilities as a dad even though he's passed on to the next life."

"The book will not only leave you feeling incredibly lucky for what we've got here and where we are," he says, "but at the same time will sharpen that sense of how do I put myself in somebody else's shoes."

"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" by Mohsin Hamid

This book is written in the second-person. It addresses the reader as "you," making you the hero of the story.

It's about growing up in a Southeast Asian slum and escaping to develop a business that brings you to an unnamed city in "rising Asia," where you become a wealthy entrepreneur.

Hamid, whose family is from Pakistan, has lived there as well as in the US and UK. "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia," published in 2013, is his profound twist on a self-help book, a meditation on ambition across vastly different social classes.

"You close that book and you feel like you've walked through 15 or 20 different lives in another world," Sacca says.

"And I just think more of that would be better for all of us. I think it would be better for our industry, for the depth and the impact of the products we build. I just think it would be better for getting along with each other."

After all, he says, it's hard to lose sleep over a competitor's new product when you have an appreciation for the magnitude of the privileges in your life.

You can listen to Sacca and Ferriss' full, in-depth conversation on Ferriss' site or iTunes.

SEE ALSO: Billionaire investor Chris Sacca explains the 4 key elements of his investing philosophy

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Chinese tech firms have fallen out of love with America, and it shows — a growing number of them are looking to drop their listings in New York and head back home.

Many Chinese tech executives are betting on higher share valuations in China, where stock markets have recently caught fire.

They also hope to evade any legal mess when Beijing formally outlaws foreign shareholder control of firms in protected tech sectors.

An exodus of Chinese tech firms would spell the end of a profitable line of business for Wall Street underwriters. Last year, the $25 billion initial public offering of the e-commerce giant Alibaba — the world's largest IPO ever — generated more than $300 million in fees.

The numbers are hard to resist. China's tech-driven ChiNext composite index has gained nearly 180% this year, eclipsing the 30% rise in the Nasdaq OMX China Technology Index that tracks offshore listed mainland firms.

Firms listed on the Nasdaq index get an average share price equal to 11 times their earnings. On ChiNext, they get 133 times. There's a debate over which ratio is more accurate, but Chinese executives blame US ignorance of China.

"American investors don't understand the business model of Chinese gaming companies," said a senior executive of one such firm planning to eject from New York and move back to a Chinese listing, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Earlier this year, the New York-listed Chinese gaming firms Shanda and Perfect World said they would go private, while the online dating service Jianyuan.com and the medical R&D services provider Wuxi Pharmatech said they were thinking about it.

Analysts expect dozens of lesser-known companies to follow if they can, and they see the pipeline of Chinese companies trying to list in New York drying up.

"The possibility of stirring interest among US investors is slim," said Shu Yi, CEO of the Beijing-based advertising technology company Limei Technology, which recently gave up on plans to list in New York and now is hoping to IPO in Shanghai or Shenzhen.

On Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang encouraged more of such companies to return, particularly those with "special ownership structures," referring to the contractual loopholes employed by many Chinese firms to evade restrictions on foreign ownership.

China is lining up the finances to assist the repatriation. The investment bank China Renaissance has teamed up with Citic Securities to raise funds to help delist and underwrite new listings in China, while Shengjing Management Consulting has launched a fund-of-funds that intends to repatriate about 100 Chinese firms.

Thing of the past

That Chinese internet companies would list in the US might seem strange, analysts say, but it once made sense.

For one thing, Chinese investors' enthusiasm for startup listings is relatively recent, whereas US investors have been rewarding internet startups with high share prices for decades.

But more important was the fact that Chinese regulators wouldn't let such firms list in the first place. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has required any company to be profitable for several years before listing — a rule that ruled out most Chinese internet companies.

But Beijing aims to make Shanghai a global financial center on par with London, Hong Kong, and New York by 2020, and it can't do that without making room for its most innovative companies.

"The obstacle to coming back has been removed," China Renaissance said in an email to Reuters. "The issue is not whatever valuation you can get in China. Hot market themes are fleeting."

Profitability requirements are being eased, and there's also a shortcut: a merger with a Chinese company with a listed shell.

The Chinese display advertising giant Focus Media, which left New York in 2013, said this week it would relist in China via a $7 billion reverse merger with the rubber manufacturer Jiangsu Hongda in what analysts say is a model for returnees to follow.

Bad contract

Even if the stock-market rally cools, the delisting trend is expected to continue as Beijing closes a key legal loophole.

Chinese law bans foreign investment in domestic internet firms. Investors get around the restrictions by buying into variable interest entities (VIEs) set up by the internet companies, including Alibaba. US courts recognize that as equivalent to ownership of the companies.

But now Chinese regulators are revising the foreign-investment law. A draft version of the document published by China's cabinet explicitly forbids "effective control" by foreigners of a Chinese company in a prohibited sector.  

Paul Gillis, professor of accounting at Peking University, said there will most likely be an exception for VIEs such as Alibaba, which are wholly controlled by Chinese management, but that offers scant protection to foreign investors.

"Are you comfortable buying a stock where you really have no say?" 

(Editing by Nachum Kaplan and Ryan Woo)

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The luxury-watch world is pretty low-key place, but on Thursday it was jolted by the news that Digg founder Kevin Rose would be merging his watch-news site, Watchville, with one of the most respected online watch publications out there, Hodinkee.

Rose, who co-founded the mobile app development lab Milk in addition to Digg, will also be moving to New York City where Hodinkee is located. He's an icon in the Silicon Valley startup world who has invested in companies like Shyp, Twitter and Square.

The New York Times' Mike Isaac has the story:

Mr. Rose will take the full-time position of chief executive of Watchville and plans to move to Manhattan, where Hodinkee is based, by the end of the month. Along with Benjamin Clymer, Hodinkee’s founder and editorial director, the team has raised $3.6 million from True Ventures and a handful of angel investors to continue expanding the effort.

After the merger, Watchville and Hodinkee will continue to exist and grow as stand-alone entities under the same roof.

And at Hodinkee, founder Ben Clymer announced that Rose would be assuming the role of CEO. He also provided some additional detail about the investors who are in on the deal and said that Hodinkee and Watchville will operate under one roof:

Now, since I know many of you feel closely connected with HODINKEE, I want to share with you a little bit of background too because I'm often asked how the business of HODINKEE works. HODINKEE and Watchville are merging to create one company, HODINKEE, Inc. HODINKEE. Inc. has then secured an additional $3.6 million in funding (it's not a secret – it's published here). This money comes from some absolutely amazing partners, including True Ventures, Google Ventures, Twitter's Evan Williams, Basecamp's Jason Fried, and Mr. John Mayer. All of us will now work together to bring more watch information to more people, with the goal of empowering the consumer first and foremost.

According to Isaac, Rose experienced something of a horological epiphany at about the same time Digg was collapsing in fairly spectacular fashion. His gateway drug was a watch he inherited from his father. After that he was off and running, taking a deep dive into a realm in which timepieces change hands for thousands of dollars, sell for far more than that at auction, and are endlessly compared and debated by obsessive collectors who debate the details of complicated movements and the merits of Rolexes versus Omegas and Patek Philppes versus Audermars Piguets.

Hodinkee was started by Clymer, who once worked at UBS, as a labor of entrepreneurial love in 2008. The Times called him the "high priest to a growing cult of young mechanical-watch lovers that includes whiskered heritage-brand devotees, fashion-forward Wall Street analysts and more than a few celebrities"in a 2013 profile.

In a short period of time, Hodinkee has grown to be a go-to resource for the vintage-watch community. In fact, although Clymer and his contributors cover new watches, the site is routinely credited with popularizing the vintage-watch craze that over the past decade has seen prices soar for older Rolexes, Heuers, Omegas, and other classic Swiss brands.

This is really the first clear sign that the online watch world has real commercial prospects, outside the current hodgepodge of ecommerce sites, eBay, and market aggregators such as Chrono24.com. Rose's objective seems to be clearing up a lot of the dicey transactions that occur with watches on the internet, outside the established network of authorized dealers. A more trustworthy marketplace would be a huge leap forward for watches, and to Rose's credit, he probably couldn't partner with a more beloved publication than Hodinkee.

Currently, Watchville gathers watch news and content from the web and puts it all in one place. But if The Times' reporting is accurate, Rose wants to turbocharge both the existing site and Hodinkee by infusing both with a healthy dose of technology and commerce. To that end, he's moving to New York to preside over the new venture.

We reached out to Hodinkee for comment and will update this post when we learn more.

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Stanford's president John Hennessy is stepping down in summer 2016, the University just announced.

Normally, a university president stepping down isn't a big deal in the world of business.

But Hennessy is one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, a quiet power broker with lots of connections.

He invented an early microchip architecture.

He's on the board of directors at tech giants Google and Cisco. When President Obama came to town to raise money in 2012, Hennessy was right there at the exclusive private tech industry dinner alongside Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Stanford is right in the physical heart of the valley, but it's also at the heart of the tech industry.

The best students in the field are being offered as much as $500,000 to take jobs at big name tech companies. Some of the tech industry's biggest and most successful companies, like Google and Yahoo, were started by students while they were still at Stanford. It's famous for its classes on entrepreneurship taught by successful investors like Peter Thiel.

A lot of that is to Hennessy's credit. As Stanford put it in the announcement of his stepping down, "Hennessy, a pioneering computer scientist who founded technology companies, advocated as president for constructive relationships between universities and industry in order to more rapidly bring academic discoveries to the public."

Hennessy has been the president there since 2000, and was previously the dean of the school of engineering, and chair of the computer science department. He'll go back into teaching and research. The school will search for new president during the next academic year.

SEE ALSO: The truth about life in 2015 at Stanford, where 21-year-olds are offered hundreds of thousands of dollars right out of school

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The current tech boom and mass migration to Silicon Valley have dramatically driven up home prices. 

Santa Clara County homes often sell for more than $1,000 per square foot. It's not uncommon for 1,000- or 2,000-square-foot homes that would be tear-downs anywhere else to sell for much more than $1 million here. 

Our friends at real estate listings site Point2Homes helped us compile a list of Silicon Valley homes that are listed for startlingly high prices.

You may be surprised to see just how little your money will get you. 

This $1.5 million home dates back to 1958.

Address: 15560 Blossom Hill Road, Los Gatos 

Price: $1.5 million

It has 2,355 square feet of space overlooking the hills. 

This house is "in need of repair," but it's listed for more than $1.5 million.

Address: 1565 Plateau Avenue, Loyola

Price: $1.595 million

According to the listing, it was built in 1938, and maintenance has been deferred for several years. 

This $1.8 million pad dates back to 1968 and has a solar-heated pool.

Address: 19766 Junipero Way, Saratoga

Price: $1.799 million

According to the listing, "it needs updating to make it your own." 

In Silicon Valley, we're getting comfortable talking about the fact that there aren't enough women in tech.

When it comes to racial diversity, though, the conversation is just getting started. And frankly, it's awkward.

On Friday, I watched as interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and 500 Startups founder Dave McClure took the stage at the PreMoney conference for venture capitalists to talk to a room of mostly white men about diversity. (Although McClure later told us there were more people of color in the audience than at any other VC event he'd been to.)

Pao recently lost her own high-profile sex-discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. (She has since filed a notice to appeal the decision and is currently embroiled in negotiations with the venture firm over the costs in the case.)

But through Pao's trial and because of Sheryl Sandberg's work with Lean In, the tech industry has become more accustomed to talking about the lack of women in the room and making promises to bring the number up.

Only 6% of venture capital firms have a woman partner, which has actually declined from the 10% it was 1999, according to a study from Babson College.

"So, at the average VC firm of eight people, that would be zero," McClure joked. "Which sounds about right," Pao agreed.

Even though she wants to see venture capital at 50% women, Pao said the engineering team at Reddit is only made up of 14% women engineers. "It's a small number. It's not great," she admitted. "We're working on it."

But, as the audience found out, the numbers are worse when it comes to racial diversity, and the conversation becomes much more awkward to navigate.

Here's an excerpt of when McClure started asking Pao about what the numbers are like:

McClure: "We're talking about this later this afternoon, but a lot of time people talk about diversity like women's is the only issue in diversity, and there's a lot of other types of diversity to think about. So, I'll ask you, how many African-American or black people work at Reddit? How many Hispanic American or Hispanic people work at Reddit?"

Pao: "We haven't counted. We have one African-American engineer. We just hired a general counsel, Melissa Tidwell, who is an African-American woman. I think we have three other African-American people working."

McClure: "Do you ask people to self identify?"

Pao: "No."

McClure: "How do you know if this is a stat or a KPI that I should be considering? Am I more racist for asking people or for not asking people?"

Pao: "I don't know. When I look around I want to see diversity on the team."

McClure: "I'm pretty sure there are no black people in Silicon Valley."

Pao: "I don't know, are there any in the room here?"

McClure: "Well, we're trying. I don't know, a few. Mostly speakers I think."

Pao: "It's very weird."

McClure: "That's meant as a very insensitive joke. There are a lot of black people in the Bay Area."

From the audience, it felt slightly cringe-inducing and uncomfortable.

It's not because McClure and Pao seemed out of line or inconsiderate. Rather, McClure came off as a little nervous (although he says he wasn't), and Pao was a well-spoken sparring partner for McClure's comments. 

The audience tension came from realizing Pao's comment on the lack of African-Americans in the audience, albeit mostly a jab at McClure, was actually the truth. Her own company was an example of it.

Maybe feeling uncomfortable is actually a good thing.

The trouble is we haven't figured out how to talk about the diversity problem in tech, let alone how to address it.

"I'm not trying to make a joke about this," McClure said shortly after the exchange quoted above. "I feel like this a real issue that we don't talk about very much, and it's uncomfortable to talk about this."

"It's hard because it's so complicated," Pao said. "I feel like people are having a hard time because if you say something, and you didn't bring in other types of minorities, other types of issues, and then you get some flack for it, are you being sensitive about all the other issues that are involved? So maybe it's just better to stay quiet."

We have to give credit to McClure and the conference for at least forcing an industry to confront its problems.

SEE ALSO: Ellen Pao: Reddit doesn't negotiate salaries because that helps keep the playing field even for women

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Randi Zuckerberg, CEO of Zuckerberg Media and sister to Facebook chief Mark, has sold her Los Altos home for $6.549 million, according to Redfin. 

The home sold only one week after being listed for $5.488 million, property records show. The final sale price was about a million dollars more than what the listing team at DeLeon Realty was hoping to get for the house. 

You'll find plenty of bold colors inside this home, from deep purple bookshelves to a lipstick-print wallpaper in the dining room. 

Zuckerberg is rumored to be making a move to New York City. 

The 6,426-square-foot home sits behind a gate and is shaded by trees.

Rose bushes form an arch in the front yard.

It makes for a beautiful entryway.

This article contains spoilers for season two of "Silicon Valley."

A lot of comedies can have trouble getting off the ground in their first seasons. HBO's "Silicon Valley" certainly didn't have that problem. Last year, it launched a funny and memorable first season.

However, season two, which concluded Sunday, has taken the show to another level. What started off as a sharp satire of the tech world (and still remains as one) has morphed into a sometimes tense, yet always hilarious, thriller. 

It's also the best comedy on TV right now, and one of the best projects creator Mike Judge has worked on during his entire career.

This says a lot, given that Judge is responsible for a lot of classics. "Silicon Valley" combines the spot-on, sometimes painfully true workplace satire of "Office Space" with Judge's amazing ability to write bumbling idiots, as best exemplified by "King of the Hill" and of course, "Beavis and Butt-head." 

Season two of "Silicon Valley" started with a high point for Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) and his growing company Pied Piper. After impressing investors at TechCrunch's Disrupt, a yearly competition for unfunded startups, during the season one finale, it looked like the struggling young company was finally going to make it big.

But it's been a rough road to the top for Pied Piper. This season has seen Richard get sued by Hooli (a fictional company with a lot of similarities to Google) CEO Gavin Belson (Matt Ross). Richard once worked for Belson and he believes Richard first created Pied Piper while working at Hooli, thus meaning that Pied Piper actually belongs to Gavin. Meanwhile, Richard nearly lose complete control of his company and all his employees all while trying to learn how to be the boss.

While dealing with one lawsuit, Richard also has to deal with another company who stole his code. Watching "Silicon Valley" is akin to watching somebody on a learning curve: there will be a lot of painful mistakes along the way. And it is painful watching them.

Middleditch gives an Emmy-worthy performance as the fidgety Richard. In season one, he was the quietest character in the show, despite being the lead. In season two, he still seems barely comfortable with the world around him, yet he still has to learn how to run a company. This season is about backwards character development for Richard: he has to go from being a nice guy to a huge jerk, and that manages to backfire a lot. 

The first season of "Silicon Valley" showed it could be suspenseful when it needed to be, but this season has really upped the intensity. At many points, I have found myself on the edge of my seat more often while watching "Silicon Valley" than when I watch actual drama on "Game of Thrones," which serves as lead-in for the HBO comedy.  

The final stretch of the season finale includes a scene where Richard has to make a crucial phone call, but can't find a phone. The events snowball — his phone dies, then he loses his car keys in which there's a car charger. Once he does get to a phone it doesn't matter because he can't remember anyone's numbers. Oh the pitfalls of the 21st century.

The buildup of the scene until Richard physically arrives at Erlich's (T.J. Miller) home to deliver his message gives audience members as much agida as the lead is experiencing in the moment.

And while it's easy to assume that every comedy will have a happy ending, but this season has proved that "Silicon Valley" doesn't follow those rules and it seems entirely possible that yes, the entire foundation of the show could dissapear in an instant.

Yes, a comedy about coders is capable of taking on the aspects of a thriller. But by focusing on the drama around getting Pied Piper off its feet, every scene involving complicated formulas and lines of code suddenly have much higher stakes. In the competitive tech world, you truly get the feeling at times that Richard and the Pied Piper crew are fighting and gasping for survival. 

This is not to say that "Silicon Valley" isn't still hilarious, because it is among the funniest shows on television at the moment. Part of that has to do with how much more well developed the characters have become.

There's Jared (Zack Woods) who is way too square for the environment that he is working in. But the most fleshed out dynamic is between Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), two Pied Piper engineers who couldn't be more different, yet always end up together. In one episode from this season, the two of them use SWOT Analysis (a planning method that businesses use to analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a situation) to decide whether or not they should allow someone to die. It is dark comedy stretched to its limits.

Judge pokes fun at his characters a lot, as he has a habit of doing, but if you are still around watching at this point, then chances are you really do care about what happens to Pied Piper. This has become the kind of show that masterfully balances the absurdity of a monkey with a robot arm pleasuring itself to Richard's poignant and authentic courtroom testimony.

Great characters raise the stakes immensely and as "The Social Network" first proved and "Silicon Valley" reaffirms, sitting at a computer and typing all day can be as intense as you make it.

All episodes of "Silicon Valley" are currently avaliable on HBO GO and HBO NOW.

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Don't invest in African-American led companies because of diversity, but because they're a good business, argued African-American founders and venture capitalists at the PreMoney conference. 

"The more people think this is an obligation, a social obligation, that's probably not a good thing," said Hamet Watt, a venture partner at Upfront Ventures.

"There's so much research that speaks to the importance of diversity and inclusion in the innovation process. The notion that people aren't prioritizing it is a little bit surprising to me, but also an opportunity."

Many investors are missing out on the market opportunity because they're just not doing the work, said Diishan Imira, CEO of Mayvenn, which uses stylists to sell hair extensions. Imira explained during the panel how he had to basically "start from zero" to get venture capitalists to understand what a hair weave is and why there is even a market around it.

"We don't need support. You guys are investors, you want to make money," Imira said. "What I'm saying, if you want to get some of this money, you should do the work and the research that there's not going to be ten million other investors competing with you to go get."

Of course, the ideas have to be viable in the first place, and it can be hard to know what's a good idea for venture capital versus what's a good idea for a small business unless you're already in Silicon Valley. 

Charles Hudson, a partner at SoftTech VC and one of the most visible African-American venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, said he feels like he has to make himself accessible to African-American entrepreneurs.

"I also feel a certain pressure to try to help African entrepreneurs who I think are talented not work on terrible ideas," Hudson said. "It's not that they're terrible ideas in general, it's just that they're not appropriate for venture. To me, that's not unique to African Americans."

He also admitted to feeling "an enormous amount of pressure backing an African American entrepreneur."

"Pursuing an African American business, for whatever reason if that investment that doesn't work, the buck stops with me," Hudson said. "You realize that for whatever reason that investment's failure is likely to be scrutinized to a greater degree than that SaaS company that didn't work out. And I think about that. I wish I didn't have to think about that."

Here's the "Black is the new Black" panel in full, which also included Shauntel Poulson of Reach Capital and Marlon Nichols of Intel Capital:

SEE ALSO: This conversation about black people in Silicon Valley tech was really awkward

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A recent study by real-estate brokerage Redfin showed that more people are looking to move out of the Bay Area than ever before. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said that tech workers and their high salaries could be responsible for making Silicon Valley unaffordable. 

A new Redfin study demonstrates a correlation between rising home prices and hiring by big tech companies.

They found that, as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have ramped up their hiring in various cities in the past year, the cost of homes in those cities has also gone up. 

"For every 1% increase in technology workers, there’s a roughly half-percent increase in home prices above and beyond the national rate of appreciation," Kelman writes on the Redfin blog. 

Nationally, home prices have risen by 6.5% in the last year, while tech companies as a whole have increased their workforce by 3%. 

Seattle and Boston have seen the biggest increases in hiring by tech companies over the past year. In Seattle, home prices have risen 12.7% year-over-year, while hiring of tech workers has risen by 21%. Boston, however, seems to be an anomaly, as home prices have only risen 3% while hiring has increased by 18%. 

Redfin also broke down the rate of employee growth by company and city. 

As these high-salaried tech workers move to other cities, a new set of anxieties arise. In an earlier interview with Business Insider, Kelman called these imminent changes the "Valley-fication of America."

"They're coming in to these new markets with a lot more money, and everything becomes more expensive," Kelman said. "Some might see this as the apocalypse — and there will be more gentrification — but some will see it as a benefit to the culture. It invigorates the economy. With good leadership, you can balance wealth creation with being a good influence on the city you're building you company in."

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley is unaffordable even for software engineers

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Today at the Bloomberg Technology Conference, Bloomberg's Emily Chang asked Thomas Middleditch, the star of HBO's "Silicon Valley," if we were in a bubble.

"What is the tech bubble? What does that even mean?" said Middleditch.

As a more proper response to the question, Middleditch told a story from the production of the show. 

In the first episode, Hooli CEO Gavin Bellsom tries to buy out the Pied Piper technology from Richard, Middleditch's character, for $10 million.

But apparently, in the first draft of the script, it was $100 million. The writers ultimately decided that $100 million was too unrealistic for anybody to turn down.

Between filming that pilot and the show actually airing on HBO, the news came out that Snapchat had turned down $4 billion in an acquisition offer. 

"We were like 'oh wow, silly us,'" Middleditch says. "To us, $4 billion seems like the end result."

Middleditch went on to poke fun at Snapchat's hubris: "These selfies will be revolutionary. They're going to change the world." 

Incidentally, Middleditch says that fellow Silicon Valley star TJ Miller was approached by Waze to be an investor, before Google snapped it up for millions.

"He should have gone in," Middleditch says.

"This feels like a very tense moment right now," quipped Mike Schur, executive producer of shows like Parks & Recreation (which featured a fictional startup called Gryzzl that mined users' personal data) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. 

With all of these "absurd" deals and valuation flying around, Schur says that "of course" there's a bubble — and that the hubris makes for great joke fodder. 

"I think Hollywood really likes to satirize any subculture that's more absurd and self-obsessed than we are," the Hollywood-based Schur said.

SEE ALSO: A subtle jab at a flopped Microsoft product is hidden in a recent episode of 'Silicon Valley'

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There is such a thing as a free lunch, and you can find it at a lot of tech companies. 

Free food is no longer enough to attract new tech talent or retain the employees you already have. 

Tech companies are coming up with new job perks that go above and beyond your traditional health insurance and paid vacation days. 

Apple and Facebook: Egg freezing

Both Apple and Facebook offer women the opportunity to freeze their eggs and will pay to cover the costs up to $20,000. It's part of Apple's "fertility benefits" and Facebook's "surrogacy benefits" plans, which includes other benefits like access to fertility treatments, surrogate mothers and sperm banks.

Facebook: $4,000 in "Baby Cash"

If you have a newborn, Facebook will give you an extra $4,000 to in "baby cash" in addition to the four months off both moms and dads get at the company.

Deloitte and Salesforce: Caretakers for aging parents

Benefits don't have to be limited to newborns, either.

Deloitte and Salesforce are examples of two companies that extend back-up care options to elderly or aging parents since qualified caretakers can sometimes be harder to find than a last-minute babysitter.

It's becoming more and more expensive to live in Silicon Valley, and recent studies by real estate brokerage Redfin show that more and more people are looking to move away from the area. 

When you compare the modest homes that you can buy in Silicon Valley with the mansions you could buy elsewhere, it's easy to see why. 

Our friends at Redfin helped us to find homes that will cost you $1 million or $2 million in different cities across the US.

You might be surprised to see how much the same amount of money can get you in different real estate markets.

In Silicon Valley, $1 million gets you a modest home that was built in the '70s.

Price: $999,999

Square feet: 2,474

Address: 5122 Kozo Place, San Jose

But in Seattle, $1 million can get you a sleek, modern home with views of Lake Washington.

Price: $1.05 million

Square feet: 1,620

Address:2518 Everrett Ave E, Seattle

In Boston, the same amount of money buys you a Tudor home with four bedrooms and 2,596 square feet of space.

Price: $999,900

Square feet: 2,596

Address: 284 Pond Street, Boston 

In an increasingly tech-savvy world, there's no escaping Silicon Valley.

The startup universe even made its way into Pixar's latest kids' movie, "Inside Out."

The Bay Area-based animation giant often sets its movies in the Golden State. All three "Toy Story" movies take place in California's Tri-County area, and the famous "Up" house bears a striking resemblance to the Victorian-style houses in Berkeley. Still, it comes as a surprise that Pixar would admonish the tech capital in its latest flick.

"Inside Out," in theaters Friday, follows bubbly 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) as her dad's new job in San Francisco uproots the family from Minnesota.

Helping to navigate Riley through this change are her emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who live in the control center of her mind.

*Warning: Some spoilers ahead.*

Riley's picture-perfect family life turns sour, however, the moment their sedan crosses the Golden Gate Bridge.

They pull up outside a skinny Victorian-era house, where dust bunnies and a dead mouse currently reside.

The interiors are white-walled and dull, reinforcing Riley's disappointment.

The depiction of San Francisco draws a stark contrast to the movie's other setting: Riley's mind. The girl's psyche is visualized as a technicolor landscape, saturated and bright.

"Inside Out" finds other little ways to antagonize the city.

Riley revolts at the sight of the earthy-crunchy, broccoli-topped pizza at Yeast of Eden, a pizzeria that only serves one topping on its pies. The restaurant parodies Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, which has an identical menu gimmick.

While the movie's "bad guys" are hormones and the realities of growing up, the dad's (Kyle MacLachlan) career path drives the plot forward. He moves the family so he can launch his startup, Brang — a nonsense word intended to fit in among oddly named tech companies. Upon settling, he slips into the Silicon Valley uniform, a branded T-shirt that says "What did you brang?"

Shortly thereafter, the job consumes him. He misses Riley's try-outs for the local hockey team, and can't tuck her into bed at night because a phone call with a presumed investor holds him up. According to Mom (Diane Lane), he's too stressed focusing on his new "venture."

His unrelenting work schedule causes his relationship with Riley to quickly deteriorate. And by the movie's end, we're left wanting closure. The dad makes no apologies for being absent.

Working around-the-clock has become a status symbol in America, and that observation couldn't be truer among the Silicon Valley elite. Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview that he logs 50 to 60 hours per week in his role as Facebook's CEO. Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer returned to work just two weeks after giving birth. "Inside Out" reflects the price those innovators pay.

Perhaps the directors will tackle "work-life balance" in a sequel. Here's hoping Brang gets funded.

SEE ALSO: 'Inside Out' is Pixar's most stunning animated film since 'Finding Nemo'

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America’s second-largest automaker is following on the heels of Silicon Valley and pursuing self-driving vehicles. 

Ford announced Tuesday that it has created a team devoted to autonomous-vehicle development.

Based in Palo Alto, California, the team will be tasked with “taking the company to the next level in connectivity, mobility and autonomous vehicles,” according to a press release. 

“During the next five years, we will move to migrate driver-assist technologies across our product lineup to help make our roads safer and continue to increase automated driving capability,” said Raj Nair, Ford group vice president of Global Product Development, in the release. 

“At the same time, we are working to make sure those features and the whole way you shop for, buy and own a Ford vehicle provides an outstanding customer experience.” 

Ford has lagged behind competitors, including GM, Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes, and Tesla, which have all announced plans to offer semiautomated driving systems within the next year and a half, according to Reuters. 

Automatic braking and pedestrian detection are also on the docket for Ford’s Silicon Valley research and innovation center, which expects to have 125 employees by year-end. Those features are already available on the Mondeo sedan in Europe. 

Ford says that all its vehicles will feature pre-collision assist and pedestrian detection by 2019. 

SEE ALSO: Google's self-driving cars are better at driving than you are

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NOW WATCH: This new version of Google's self-driving car will hit the streets of Mountain View this summer

After months of research and debate, Business Insider has released the Silicon Valley 100, the who's who of the most prominent, and coolest, people in Silicon Valley.

To compile the list, we looked at who won big in the past year: star executives, industry-changing acquisitions, top VCs, promising companies shifting industries, and more.

We've listed everyone from 1-100 below, as well as some quotes from the most well-known and influential people on the list. You can view the full SV100 in detail here, or click on each name for more information about the coolest people in Silicon Valley.

1. Elizabeth Holmes– Founder, CEO, and chairman of Theranos

2. Travis Kalanick– CEO and cofounder of Uber

3. Tim Cook– CEO of Apple

4. Jack Dorsey– CEO of Twitter (interim) and Square

5. Sundar Pichai– Senior vice president at Google

6. Renaud Laplanche– Founder and CEO of Lending Club

7. Nick Woodman– Founder and CEO of GoPro

8. Marc Benioff– Cofounder and CEO of Salesforce

9. Stewart Butterfield– Cofounder and CEO of Slack

10. Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Box

11. Mikkel Svane, Morten Primdahl, and Alexander Aghassipour– Cofounder/CEO, cofounder/CTO, and cofounder/CPO of Zendesk

12. Rob Bearden– CEO of Hortonworks

13. Suresh Batchu and Ajay Mishra– Cofounders of MobileIron

14. Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe– Cofounders of Oculus

15. Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin– Cofounders of Lynda.com

16. Art Levinson– CEO of Calico

17. Elon Musk– CEO and CTO of SpaceX; CEO of Tesla Motors; chairman of SolarCity

18. James Park– CEO of Fitbit

19. Mark Zuckerberg– Cofounder and CEO of Facebook

20. Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp– Cofounders of Pinterest

21. Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, and Joe Gebbia– Cofounders of Airbnb

22. Jony Ive– Chief design officer of Apple

23. Larry Page– Cofounder of Google

24. Garrett Camp– Cofounder of Uber; founder of Expa

25. Ryan Graves– Head of global operations at Uber

26. Chris Sacca– Founder of Lowercase Capital

27. Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue– Cofounder of Beats Electronics/SVP of internet software and services at Apple

28. Anthony Noto– CFO of Twitter

29. Parker Conrad and Laks Srini– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Zenefits

30. Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, and Kevin Lin– Cofounders of Twitch

31. Meg Whitman– Chairwoman, president, and CEO of Hewlett-Packard

32. Kayvon Beykpour and Joseph Bernstein– CEO and cofounder/cofounder of Periscope

33. Shannon Liss-Riordan– Employment-rights lawyer

34. Mark Pincus– Cofounder and CEO of Zynga

35. Ellen Pao– CEO of Reddit

36. Tony Fadell– CEO of Nest Labs (Google)

37. Patrick and John Collison– Cofounders of Stripe

38. Angela Ahrendts– SVP of retail and online stores at Apple

39. Reed Hastings– Cofounder and CEO of Netflix

40. Marissa Mayer– CEO of Yahoo

41. John Thompson– Chairman of Microsoft; CEO of Virtual Instruments

42. Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, and Safra Catz– Former CEO, now chairman and CTO/co-CEO/co-CEO of Oracle

43. Susan Wojcicki– CEO of YouTube

44. Megan Smith– US chief technology officer

45. David Marcus– Vice president of messaging products at Facebook

46. Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani – Cofounders of Dropcam

47. Albert Lee and Mike Lee– Cofounders of MyFitnessPal

48. Simon Khalaf– President and CEO of Flurry

49. Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett– Cofounders of Github

50. Dheeraj Pandey– Cofounder and CEO of Nutanix

51. Nirav Tolia, David Wiesen, Prakash Janakiraman, and Sarah Leary– Cofounders of Nextdoor

52. Peter Asbill, Elias Roman, Elliott Breece, Scott Robbin, and Aza Raskin– Cofounders of Songza

53. Alex Hawkinson, Jeff Hagins, and Andrew Brooks– Cofounders of SmartThings

54. John Zimmer and Logan Green– Cofounders of Lyft

55. Mike Olson, Christophe Bisciglia, Amr Awadallah, and Jeff Hammerbacher– Cofounders of Cloudera

56. Jason Kilar and Richard Tom– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Vessel

57. Max Mullen, Brandon Leonardo, and Apoorva Mehta– Cofounders of Instacart

58. Josh James– Founder and CEO of Domo

59. Tony Xu, Evan Moore, Stanley Tang, and Andy Fang– Cofounders of DoorDash

60. Ryan Hoover– Founder of Product Hunt

61. Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev– Cofounders of Robinhood

62. Ben Rubin, Roi Tirosh, and Itai Danino– Cofounders of Meerkat

63. Kevin Gibbon and Joshua Scott– Cofounders of Shyp

64. Craig Martin and Curtis Lee– Cofounders of Luxe Valet

65. Balaji Srinivasan, Matthew Pauker, Nigel Drego, Daniel Firu, and Veerbhan Kheterpal– Cofounders of 21 Inc.

66. Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Coinbase

67. Brit Morin– Founder and CEO of Brit + Co.

68. Doug Evans– Founder and CEO of Juicero

69. Kavan Seggie– Founder of AddLive

70. Josh McFarland and Mark Ayzenshtat– Cofounders of TellApart

71. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg– Cofounders of Re/code

72. Amit Kumar, Jeff Winner, Eckart Walther, and Geraud Boyer– Cofounders of CardSpring

73. Dave Morin– Cofounder of Path; founder of Slow Ventures

74. Solomon Hykes– Founder and CTO of Docker

75. Steve Zadesky– Vice president of iPod/iPhone product design at Apple

76. Bill Gurley– General partner at Benchmark Capital

77. Chamath Palihapitiya– Founder of Social+Capital Partnership

78. Sam Altman– Founding partner and president of Y Combinator

79. Andy Rubin– Managing director of Playground Global

80. Renee James– President of Intel

81. Ed Lee– Mayor of San Francisco

82. Eric Migicovsky– Founder and CEO of Pebble

83. Josh Reeves, Edward Kim, and Tomer London– Cofounders of ZenPayroll

84. Andrew Rubin, PJ Kirner, and Alan Stokol– Cofounders of Illumio

85. Ev Williams– Founder of Obvious Ventures

86. Adam Cahan– Senior vice president of mobile at Yahoo

87. Jason Johnson and Yves Behar– Cofounders of August

88. Kyle Vogt– CEO of Cruise

89. Aarthi Ramamurthy– Founder of Lumoid

90. Liz Wessel and JJ Fliegelman– Cofounders of Campus Job

91. Amanda Bradford– Founder and CEO of The League

92. Or Arbel– Cofounder and CEO of Yo

93. Ross Mason– Founder and VP of product strategy at MuleSoft

94. Rand Paul– US senator (R-Kentucky) and 2016 presidential candidate

95. John Doerr, Megan Quinn, Matt Murphy, and Mary Meeker– Partners at Kleiner Perkins

96. Peter Thiel– Partner at Founders Fund; chairman of Palantir; founder of the Thiel Fellowship; investor

97. Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest– Cofounders of Okta

98. Conrad Chu, Van Tran, and Tri Tran– Cofounders of Munchery

99. Gagan Biyani, Morgan Springer, Neeraj Berry, and Matt Kent– Cofounders of Sprig

100. Mat Honan– Bureau chief of BuzzFeed SF

SEE ALSO: THE SILICON VALLEY 100: The coolest people in tech right now

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Business Insider ranked the 100 biggest names in Silicon Valley— we put every single one of them into a video in just 100 seconds. 

Produced by Eames Yates. Reporting by Emmie Martin, Maya Kosoff& Melissa Stanger. 

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You may have heard that real estate is expensive in the Bay Area.

This is how expensive: A 9' by 7' tent someone has pitched in their garden is currently going for $899 per month (or $46 per day) in the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View. A tent. In someone's garden. Rents for nearly $900 a month. 

And this is considered a steal.

The listing on Airbnb says that "the tent comes with a shower per day." It's also specified that the renter "can eat inside."

The crazy thing is that if you spend enough time researching Silicon Valley housing, this does start to look like a steal. 

Buying a pretty basic house in the area, within a good school district, costs over $1 million these days.

However, if you are the type of person considering pitching a long-term tent, living at the gorgeous Big Sur campground seems like the better option, for just $11 a day more. 

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley's housing nightmare is breeding absurd assumptions and unrealistic solutions

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