Company Golden Ages: The Magic 5 Years

There was this write up that came out in february about the “It” company of 2026, Anthropic. One of the leading AI companies that is growing like mad: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-anthropic-hive-mind-d01f768f3d7b

As of February 2026, it’s reported that their ARR is $40 billion dollars and they recently raised $30B dollars at a post money valuation of $380B usd. Incredible. I don’t think we have seen companies grow like this. And this fast. I guess we will see how long this lasts but it’s hard to argue that Anthropic is not in its magic era. 

"A Golden Age is a period of intense innovation, category creation, velocity, and productivity that lasts typically several years. Golden Ages at companies have the property of attracting all the greatest talent in the industry, very quickly. That’s happening at Anthropic right now.

So now you see how the magic starts and ends. During Golden Ages, there is more work than people. And when they crash, it is because there are more people than work.

As soon as there wasn’t enough work, people began to fight over the work that was left. It kicked off a wave of empire building, territoriality, politicking, land grabs, and, as Lydia Ash taught me, Cookie Licking–a phrase folks at Microsoft had invented to accuse people of claiming work that they will never actually get around to doing."

I was lucky to experience a 5 year golden period at Yahoo!, roughly 2002-2008, where we had tremendous growth and a hothouse of talent. I caught a 4 year magical window at 500 Startups as well where the alumni have gone on to bigger and better things after. 

Alas, these golden ages don’t last forever. We saw this happen at Ebay, Paypal, Google, Facebook aka META, even Coinbase. I’d say Stripe and Ramp are probably in the midst of their Golden Age right now. Golden Ages are magical times to be at these companies where you learn immensely and meet awesome people. These company mafias are invaluable for your career. So if you find yourself at one of these hot companies during their magical period, count yourself very lucky. It’s not that common, even in Silicon Valley.