Reconsidering Startups

A presentation to Monktoberfest 2013

Transcript

1. Reconsidering Startups Alex Payne Monktoberfest, Portland, Maine October 3, 2013
2. @al3x: ✖ Working at startups for 15+ years. ✖ Early employee at Twitter. ✖ Co-founder and former CTO of Simple. ✖ Currently consulting to startups. ✖ Investor in: Lucky Sort (acquired), Datadog, Sprint.ly, Rainforest ✖ Advisor to: Simperium (acquired), Geoloqi (acquired), Kodowa
3. I was asked to talk about this:
4. It's gonna go like this: 1. Startups then. 2. Startups today. 3. Startups tomorrow. (maybe)
5. Hands up if...
6. What specifically are we talking about? Silicon Valley-style startups. Mostly, venture-funded ones. High risk, high growth. Not every small business ever. Not agencies or service businesses. Not "lifestyle businesses".
7. 1. Startups then. 2. Startups today. 3. Startups tomorrow.
8. Then
9. Then
10. Then
11. Then
12. ✖ Public/private/academic partnership. ✖ Big missions, big funding (often military). ✖ Long timelines between investment and return. ✖ Press focus on mature businesses. ✖ Unorthodox corporate cultures, no existing concept of "startup culture". ✖ Not a Golden Age, but a very different one for being in the relatively recent past. Startups Then
13. 1. Startups then. 2. Startups today. 3. Startups tomorrow.
14. Today
15. Today
16. Today
17. Today
18. Today
19. Today
20. Startups today ✖ Increasingly, a monoculture. Systematized. ✖ Celebrity-oriented, media-driven. ✖ Low-risk, herd mentality venture investing. ✖ Over-saturation of angels, incubators. ✖ High churn, inefficient use of talent. ✖ Widespread misogyny and racism: a new old boys club. ✖ Unrealistically short capital cycles. ✖ Questionable returns as an asset class.
21. The historical archetype of the Silicon Valley startup has been co- opted by predatory capitalists, offering them the stolen cover of a false utopian narrative.
22. 3. Startups tomorrow
23. Tomorrow: ✖ Rise and impact of crowdfunding? ✖ Job creators or job destroyers? ✖ Helping or hurting education? ✖ B Corporations and other new structures? ✖ Digital currencies: new opportunities or an end-run around regulation? ✖ Breaking out of traditional centers of power, geographic and institutional. ✖ How to fund work on planet-scale problems? ✖ Are big problems suitable to what startups have become? If not, who's going to take them on?
24. Questions? Thanks. – @al3x