Jacob Helberg on Hill and Valley's 10x growth and why bipartisan tech-policy bridges are producing real legislation
May 1, 2025 with Jacob Helberg
Key Points
- Hill & Valley Forum has grown 10x year-over-year from a planned 40-person dinner to standing-room-only events, signaling Capitol Hill's hunger for direct access to tech builders.
- Helberg claims legislation emerges directly from forum conversations each year, translating Silicon Valley-Washington relationship-building into concrete policy outcomes.
- Re-industrialization dominates this year's forum agenda, with participants framing the prior 20-year de-industrialization as a reversible mistake and rallying around manufacturing revival.
Summary
Jacob Helberg on the growth of the Hill and Valley Forum — a bipartisan, bicoastal effort to close the trust gap between Silicon Valley technologists and Washington policymakers.
The premise is straightforward: builders and policymakers are both in the business of building the future, just with different tools. Hill and Valley was designed to make that relationship explicit, bringing founders and engineers to Washington so legislators would see them not just as an industry to regulate but as a toolkit for solving national problems. A specific frustration Helberg cites: a prevailing view on Capitol Hill that America's best technical talent was focused on advertising technology rather than paradigm-shifting work.
Growth trajectory
The forum started as a private dinner planned for four tables of ten people. It drew 100. From there, growth has been exponential — the event is now standing-room only and has drawn protesters with fake press badges, which Helberg treats as a marker of having arrived.
Helberg describes the arc in Thielian terms: the first iteration was hard to name because it didn't really exist yet, followed by a small, highly engaged community, then rapid scaling. The 10x year-over-year framing came up in conversation, with demand now well beyond available capacity based on the waitlist.
Policy output
Helberg says every year the forum has run, legislation has come out as a direct result of conversations held there. He doesn't name specific bills, but the claim is that the in-person engagement translates into concrete policy movement, not just networking.
Re-industrialization as the theme
The dominant conversation at this year's event, in Helberg's telling, is re-industrialization. He frames de-industrialization as a 20-year mistake and describes the energy around reversing it as the most inspiring thread running through the gathering.