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The Startup Backlash

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Re: The Startup Backlash

#21

Post by bdcravens »

It seems that folks get upset at these types of narratives about SV because they're convinced that it's an attack on tech entrepreneurship. It's not: it's an assault on the Series A -> writing checks to Lamborghini lifestyle, and the poor allocation of resources that world rewards.

Real businesses that use tech as a lever are steps of progress that moves the world forward. You don't have to cure HIV, but you shouldn't receive a seven-figure check to pursue your dream of predictive music based on the color of cats you upvote on Reddit either. Anything that destroys the fallacy that working in this industry requires you to live in a tiny region in a certain state in a certain nation is good, and in a very small way, pushes humanity closer to the egalitarian ideal of the Internet.

Build a SaaS app that improves a dentists relationships with their patients from the middle of Minot, ND. Hell, take some kids in a village in the middle of Africa, teach them to code. Let them launch something using little more than a circa 2000 class laptop with a 3G connection, in a hut with a generator. $300,000 a year in revenue. Total. That totally changes the game for things like world hunger. That kind of business will revolutionize the world far more than 10-figure exits for photo-sharing apps ever will.

Re: The Startup Backlash

#22

Post by wavefunction »

wavefunction wrote: post #14

I can't leave any comments on the actual blog so I'll just leave it here: This is some bullshit written by a very entitled young man that is apparently aimed at very entitled young people. To wit: "You didn’t even need to be a finance major to get aggressively courted by the bulge bracket firms. Goldman Sachs, in particular, seemed to have an obsession with taking the most liberal-arty kid" Maybe if you are one of th…

I want to add an addendum that I shouldn't have necessarily included the author when I said "what's wrong with this country." He may be a thoughtful guy after I considered the ending to the article. I also think anyone who really loves technology should have a seat at the table. It just seemed tone-deaf in many ways to the reality that most people in this world face, let alone most Americans his age.

Re: The Startup Backlash

#24

Post by wavefunction »

michaelochurch wrote: post #17
wavefunction wrote: post #14

I can't leave any comments on the actual blog so I'll just leave it here: This is some bullshit written by a very entitled young man that is apparently aimed at very entitled young people. To wit: "You didn’t even need to be a finance major to get aggressively courted by the bulge bracket firms. Goldman Sachs, in particular, seemed to have an obsession with taking the most liberal-arty kid" Maybe if you are one of th…

Startups are just small companies trying to grow fast. Some are good, some are bad; but there are systemic reasons why there are a lot of douchebags becoming founders (hint: they have the social contacts to raise money on ideas alone and tap into the private welfare system called "acq-hires") and we need to address the problem, have the conversation in a no-holds-barred format where no solution is off the table, and…

I agree with most of what you've written, though I don't agree with the part about "intellectual superiors." Certainly it seems like a flashy rich kid can walk into a room and have a lot of success selling a pretty silly idea built with some hard work by some smart folks just because of his connections and advantages and that really bites, but I think sometimes engineers and scientists can fall into an ego trap as well when we get bitter about the weirdness of that same situation.

My main issue is when I talk to people and they tell me they're "in tech," and they're a marketer or sales person or biz dev and they could be doing the same thing in some other vertical for all they care. (the "for all they care" is the important part too)

I would rather they just go back to Hollywood or the Media/PR world or wherever they generally come from and leave the tech industry to focus on creating cool tech in a more sensible fashion than the way it seems now.

I don't want to sound jealous either, because I've been fortunate to learn a lot from incredibly smart people, work on some challenging and fun projects, and pay my bills.

Re: The Startup Backlash

#25

Post by 2pasc »

wavefunction wrote: post #24
michaelochurch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups are just small companies trying to grow fast. Some are good, some are bad; but there are systemic reasons why there are a lot of douchebags becoming founders (hint: they have the social contacts to raise money on ideas alone and tap into the private welfare system called "acq-hires") and we need to address the problem, have the conversation in a no-holds-barred format where no solution is off the table, and…

I agree with most of what you've written, though I don't agree with the part about "intellectual superiors." Certainly it seems like a flashy rich kid can walk into a room and have a lot of success selling a pretty silly idea built with some hard work by some smart folks just because of his connections and advantages and that really bites, but I think sometimes engineers and scientists can fall into an ego trap as we…

My only caveat is what does "in tech" mean nowadays? > Enterprise software/SaaS Companies have very often been started by sales oriented founders (Siebel, Benioff come to mind). > Ecommerce/marketplaces have very rarely been started by CS majors/engineers.

So sure, you can have very engineering focused Companies like New Relic, Heroku or Dropbox, and that's great, but if you send all business people to Hollywood, I am not sure how you could actually have a tech industry in Silicon Valley.

Re: The Startup Backlash

#26

Post by aaronbrethorst »

> Even if the vast majority of engineers and designers today are obsessing about...car rides

There's a lot I don't like about Uber, but that doesn't change the fact that it has changed the way I interact with transportation. I hate the word, but it is disruptive.

I would love to see every startup cause as much of a shitstorm as AirBnB and Uber have managed to do. At the very least, the public conversations they force us to have are incredibly useful.

Despite the fact that it flamed out spectacularly, think about how different the music industry would be today had Napster never existed.

Re: The Startup Backlash

#27

Post by jacques_chester »

akristofcak wrote: post #7
danso wrote: post #6

Wow. What a non sequitur at the end: > That is, until the NSA scandal broke. Nothing made the purported libertarianism of Silicon Valley more laughable and aggregious than the fact that many of these companies are tools of secret government surveillance. This is why I had to include Paul Carr’s article about Silicon Valley’s participation in our security state infrastructure. This is not even a complete thought, neve…

Yep. This wasn't exactly an essay, just some thoughts around a "trend" I picked up on (ie the backlash). I could write a whole separate article about the NSA but I let Carr's article speak for itself. The reason for including it was that the NSA disclosures put a different light on the tech vs society question. But yea, it could have been more developed.

It just seemed like a lazy attempt to somehow slur those kooky libertarians, god bless 'em!

Guilt by a vague association:

* Some libertarians live in the Bay Area

* Some people in the Bay Area worked on projects, companies and systems being exploited by the NSA

* Therefore ... wait, huh?

Re: The Startup Backlash

#29

Post by johnjlocke »

michaelochurch wrote: post #17
wavefunction wrote: post #14

I can't leave any comments on the actual blog so I'll just leave it here: This is some bullshit written by a very entitled young man that is apparently aimed at very entitled young people. To wit: "You didn’t even need to be a finance major to get aggressively courted by the bulge bracket firms. Goldman Sachs, in particular, seemed to have an obsession with taking the most liberal-arty kid" Maybe if you are one of th…

Startups are just small companies trying to grow fast. Some are good, some are bad; but there are systemic reasons why there are a lot of douchebags becoming founders (hint: they have the social contacts to raise money on ideas alone and tap into the private welfare system called "acq-hires") and we need to address the problem, have the conversation in a no-holds-barred format where no solution is off the table, and…

My sentiments run towards agreeing with the first comment in this thread. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for using their talent in any way they see fit, but the article on Medium seems to not only be written for approval of HN, but glosses over the fact that there are a lot of pointless startups. There are some amazing startups out there that are changing the world, working on problems that the world outside of the tech bubble needs solving - clean water, higher education, transportation that doesn't chew up fossil fuels - but for every one of those, there are indeed 50 startups that focus on trivial things (to-do apps, mail apps, photo apps, weather apps, really? Really?). I know everyone can't work on curing cancer or world peace, but if there is a backlash from within, it stems from founders who act as apologists for the more banal of startup ideas.

Re: The Startup Backlash

#30

Post by Cookingboy »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #26

> Even if the vast majority of engineers and designers today are obsessing about...car rides There's a lot I don't like about Uber, but that doesn't change the fact that it has changed the way I interact with transportation. I hate the word, but it is disruptive . I would love to see every startup cause as much of a shitstorm as AirBnB and Uber have managed to do. At the very least, the public conversations they forc…

Uber is disruptive because it caters toward the SV/SF crowd (20 something professionals living in a crowded city with bad infrastructure but have quite a bit of disposable cash) better than the traditional public transportation can. Sure it's useful, but these days so many starts are no longer aiming to solve even first world problems now, they are aiming to solve the unique "silicon valley problems" that most people in this country can't even dream about.

Then investors throw millions at those companies and media put them under a glorified spotlight while the rest of the country is going through a rough recovery from one of the worst recessions in most people's memories, and that's when there is a backslash.

Again, not saying companies like Uber don't provide value, but how much capital in the form of money, talent, time and effort need to be poured into solving Silicon Valley problems for 20 something single professionals making six figures?

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