The start-up bubble

"Startup" in the old Silicon Valley used to mean companies with serious technology like Amiga or Apple or Illustra. The staff used to be PhDs and sometimes professors from Stanford & Berkeley EECS. "Startup" did not used to mean "3 marketing dweebs and a website".

Valley interviews used to be "Super Saturday" 6-hour exams with theory questions for junior positions. Startups had more rigorous requirements than big companies; BigCos would at least look at entry-level resumes, Startups not so much.

I have trouble believing London's Shoreditch is any kind of "Silicon Valley".

The massive difference in this one is there really is a load of money to be made. Everyone is now online all the time. Back in 1999 there were bugger all people online and you wouldn't put your credit card details in for love nor money. Business wouldn't buy critical tools online. A lot of the industrial tools are moving cloud based rather than the old server install method. It's expensive to have your own IT team for a couple of massively overpowered servers that still seem to go down every day.

And a lot of consumer faced products are making massive sums just because of the sheer scale of the marketplace now. Google is profitable and there really was a time when it wasn't, Facebook is profitable. Match.com, craigs list. You've got businesses like netflix and spotify. People buy digital goods online. There's a lot more opportunity out there.

Some industries have gone crazy in that they're not charging, the one I look at and shake my head at is the diet industry, what on earth brilliant tools like myfitnesspal and their ilk are doing I do not know, that seems like a sad race to the bottom in an industry traditionally worth hundreds of millions, if not billions. And others, like the newspapers, seem to be regaining their senses and are now charging (personal opinion, let's not derail the point :).

Your field, big data really is meaningful and it really is worth a lot of money to the right people. You'll usually get opportunities in the right startup to advance your learning far beyond what you'll ever achieve at most big companies.

There are exceptions to every rule, but big business often gets bogged down by conservatism and politics.

But in the end, do what makes you happy and find the culture that does. And there are plenty of great jobs out there with a CV like yours.

I partially agree there is a bubble, but only in certain startup sectors.

Some Google searches show the talk of the bubble going as far back as 2005, if not even late 2004. I wonder what it takes for a bubble to become normal business?

The companies I admire most now, used to be start-ups, however the term tends (for me at least) to get synonymous with something that's easy, temporary and quick money.

Maybe I should write another post talking about the good parts of working in start-ups. The parts that attracted me in the first place. So I can balance my opinion and not generalise so much.

I'll get some corporate experience soon (hopefully) and then I'll be in position to make a small comparison from a totally subjective point of view. After all, who knows, I may miss the start-up environment :)