How Burning Man Has Inspired Silicon Valley Innovations Over the Years

Burning Man, the annual festival held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, has long been a meeting ground for revelers attracted to the event’s principles of self-reliance and community support. Every year, it attracts artists, musicians, and bohemians, as well as an onslaught of tech entrepreneurs. This year, however, the nine-day affair is facing unusually low demand. For the first time since 2011, its $575 tickets weren’t sold out before the event’s kick-off on Monday (Aug. 25). Slower ticket sales could be linked back to unfavorable weather conditions at last year’s Burning Man, where rain and subsequent mud left so-called “Burners” stranded at the festival site for days. But its losses are also reportedly attributed to a decreased number of Silicon Valley participants, whose lack of attendance comes amid financial struggles and mass layoffs in the tech industry.

A lessened tech presence at Burning Man would mark a significant change for the festival, which started in San Francisco in 1986 before moving to Nevada in the 1990s and has impacted a slew of major tech decisions over the years. The congregation of Silicon Valley’s elite inevitably translates to opportunities for networking and business brainstorming. Tech titans like Elon Musk and Larry Page are regulars, while Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered into the event in 2012 to give out grilled cheese sandwiches. Even Amazon (AMZN)’s Jeff Bezos reportedly made an appearance at the festival back in 1999.

Here’s a look at some of the most pertinent ideas across tech that can trace their origins back to the annual event:

“Google Doodle” and the hiring of Eric Schmidt

Two of the most prominent Silicon Valley “Burners” are undoubtedly Google (GOOGL) co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The duo have long been regulars at the festival and aren’t afraid to combine their passion for Burning Man with Google’s corporate culture—the company used to fill its headquarters with imagery from the desert, and has previously sent free shuttle buses to the annual event.

Even the company’s “Google Doodle,” a special image adorning Google’s logo to celebrate holidays, originates from Burning Man. When Brin and Page attended the festival in 1998, they placed a Burning Man figure behind Google’s logo to let others know they were out town. Afterwards, they decided to continue decorating the webpage for future events.

The festival also ended up landing Eric Schmidt the role of Google CEO in 2001. As Brin and Page looked through a list of potential leaders for their company, they were reportedly struck by the fact that Schmidt was the sole candidate who had attended Burning Fan. “We thought [that] was an important criterion,” Brin told the journalist Doc Searls at the time.

A source of inspiration for Elon Musk’s Tesla and SolarCity

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of $243 billion, has braved the Nevada desert many times over the years to attend Burning Man. “Hard to describe how incredible it is for those who have never been. Best art on earth,” wrote Musk in an X post last year, echoing remarks he’d made in the past. “If you haven’t been, you. just don’t get it,” he told Vox of the event in 2014.

Musk has previously incorporated his love for the festival with at least one of his numerous companies. In 2022, he commissioned the artist Hunter Leggitt to create a 30-foot-tall sculpture entitled MetaFork in the Road that appeared at the festival that year ahead of its permanent installation at Tesla (TSLA)’s Autopilot offices in Palo Alto, Calif. And in 2004, the billionaire was on his way to Burning Man with his cousin Lyndon Rive when he reportedly gave him the idea for SolarCity, a solar energy company that was eventually acquired by Tesla in 2016.

The ‘Airbnb open’ festival

AirBnb (ABNB), the online homestay marketplace, has close ties to Burning Man in more ways than one. The company’s CEO Brian Chesky has previously attended the festival, as has his fellow co-founder Joe Gebbia. Gebbia additionally helped fund the 2016 acquisition of a Nevada ranch by Burning Man organizers, who reportedly are interested in turning the land into a year-round arts location tied to the event.

Chesky was originally brought to Burning Man by Chip Conley, a former Airbnb executive who led the company’s global hospitality and strategy division between 2013 and 2017 and is also a founding member of the Burning Man Project, the nonprofit supporting the festival. “Burning Man is what life would be like if artists ruled the world,” remarked Chesky upon his introduction to the festival.

Conley’s experiences with Burning Man made him approach Airbnb in a more “culturally curious” manner that combined tech with “IRL,” or “in real life,” experiences, said the executive on a 2019 podcast. This notably materialized in the form of initiatives like the ‘Airbnb open,’ an event inspired by Burning Man and largely led by Conley that brought together participants for a three-day company festival in San Francisco during editions held between 2014 and 2016.