It was the summer of , and Laurie Segall, a year-old tech correspondent for CNN, was being given a tour of a sex dungeon designed specifically for Silicon Valley tech geeks. Madame Rose, a dominatrix from Oakland, Calif. I lock them up for the weekend. I wondered out loud about the connection between power, control and sex. She ended up landing exclusive interviews with many of the biggest innovators in tech before they became household names, everyone from Mark Zuckerberg Facebook and Jack Dorsey Twitter to Kevin Systrom Instagram and Travis Kalanick Uber.
Segall met one prostitute who regularly used Square, a mobile payment app designed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, for more discreet compensation from her johns. Not all of the intimacy in Silicon Valley was being charged by the hour. Uber, why not hack the concept of traditional relationships? Upon arriving at the party, she made small talk with couples she recognized from their tech careers — there was a woman who worked at Google, and an engineer who built supercomputers — and discovered how easily they agreed to talk about the swinging lifestyle.
A new book lifts the lid on the secret sex parties that keep Silicon Valley running. I wondered out loud about the connection between power, control and sex," Segall writes. Kitty Stryker, a former sex worker, recalled in the book how she would have more clients when a new start-up was flush.
One madam mused that Apple engineers get their creative inspiration from being locked up in BDSM gear on the weekends. One prostitute in the book is revealed to use Square for client payments. You are viewing 1 of 8 images Previous Image Next Image.
