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Early True Believers

By: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Fisher
Narrated by: Vanessa Grigoriadis
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Publisher's summary

Early True Believers: The Untold Story of Silicon Alley is a 1990s saga of ambition and innovation set in Manhattan’s Silicon Alley, a swath of downtown that served as New York City’s nerve center of tech entrepreneurship. The series features the stories of a forgotten cohort of early internet visionaries, countercultural social networks, the digital gold rush, and the lavish events that came with it, including one held in an underground Tribeca bunker that abruptly ended in a police raid—a harbinger of the upheaval to come. After 9/11 and the dot-com crash, nearly all of Silicon Alley’s businesses, many based on a utopian ideology of inclusion and creativity, were lost to history.

This is a groundbreaking oral history of Silicon Alley, the flamboyant and art-driven counterpoint to Silicon Valley’s engineering culture. From the pioneering efforts of figures like Stacy Horn, Jason Calcanis, and Josh Harris to the speculative frenzy that led to the tech bubble’s burst, Early True Believers takes listeners through a world where creativity and capital collide, providing a useful lens to understand the internet today.

©2024 Smokehouse Pictures & Campside Media (P)2024 Audible Originals, LLC.
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About the Narrator

Vanessa Grigoriadis is a veteran long-form journalist and a co-founder of Campside Media. She has created podcasts including Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen, Fallen Angel, Run Bambi Run, Tabloid: Ivanka Trump from New York magazine, and the weekly show Infamous. She is a National Magazine Award winner and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair.

Early True Believers: The Untold Story of Silicon Alley is an Audible Original.

Produced by: Audible, Smokehouse Pictures, and Campside Media
Reported by Vanessa Grigoriadis and Adam Fisher
Narrated by: Vanessa Grigoriadis
Executive Producers for Smokehouse Pictures: Grant Heslov, George Clooney, and Rebecca Arzoian
Executive Producers for Campside: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, and Matt Shaer
Executive Producer for Audible: Aysha Choudhary
Writers: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Shoshi Shmuluvitz, Lily Houston Smith, and Natalie Robehmed
Managing Producer and Editor: Shoshi Shmuluvitz
Producer: Lily Houston Smith
Researchers: Julia Case-Levine and Emma Simonoff
Sound Design: Mark McAdam
Sound Engineering: Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan
Head of Creative Development: Kate Navin
Chief Content Officer: Rachel Ghiazza

What listeners say about Early True Believers

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The History

I’ve heard bits and pieces over the decades, but this was really cool hearing it from the beginning to now 

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Interesting Bit of History

Intriguing bit of history. Kept my attention for four hours while I painted walls! Very good narrator. Interesting story.

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So insightful and informative!

I lived through this time and never knew the Alley ever existed. This piece portrayed that story with journalistic acumen but also a level of art that would hopefully make the ETBs proud.

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What I Never Knew

It's true that we learn something new every day. This book showed me a whole part of the history of the internet that I'd never imagined. Very interesting!

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I'm a dropout Valley girl

The true detail and the impact in the 90s made in today's internet business. We all had to start somewhere and hope that is made us all better individuals.

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