Startup Shutdown
A bit of mind clearing before tackling the last day of the week…
I’m finally done with a long stretch of parties that took place unusually at the beginning of June. This is supposed to be dead quiet time for social engagements, but it’s actually been incredibly busy lately. Even though we skipped the tail end of Internet Week, other engagements kept us busy over the past couple of days.
There was a very strong response to the ideas shared in the initial “Internet Weak” post on Wednesday, and unfortunately I bit into a lot of troll bait afterward (though I had the sense to continue discussions offline after I saw where things were going). Many people seem to agree that most of the events associated with Internet Week were rather underwhelming, for reasons I’ve already discussed. Someone confusingly suggested that I was unwise to complain about the scene without contributing to it, and from there I delivered a pretty bitter sermon about my experience with the job market. There were two main points, lost in the mess, which can be summed up as such:
- I have a very pessimistic view of the media/startup scene here in NYC. It’s not because I don’t think I could start a new company. It’s because I think it’s all hot air and bad business plans. The “Internet startup” concept is badly broken, and there are dead bitches up and down the information superhighway testifying to this. More appropriately, people who have tried to make a big business out of a tinkered idea and spare parts/labor have generally failed. And also, to see a thousand of those ideas paraded around - that’s not culture.
- I related my job situation to illustrate that (as I’m not the only one, and I’m DEFINITELY NOT lazy) there might be a large number of startups around, but there aren’t many jobs being created from these startups. From an occupational viewpoint, what’s the use of 10,000 companies each with one employee (the owner who made sure he/she got paid first), ten freelancers, and six interns? It sounds to me like half the people employed in this industry are struggling to work for themselves or their college buddies. There’s something unappealing about taking such people on as freelance clients or applying for cut-salary jobs in those situations. I fear I’m going to bounce my rent check when someone else bounces their check to me.
You can take those criticisms as “whining”, you can refute them by talking about your own startup, you can call me an asshole and a cynic. I still stand behind my general sentiment that I don’t think NYC is worth the time, effort, or irritants if it’s so difficult to find interesting business projects that are profitable (NOW) and not ephermeral. I think anyone would have more time to work on a startup or on creative projects if he/she were in a place where honest work was steady and expenses were much lower. I’ve found that, in general, being in close proximity to aspirational interactive media leaders only means that you wind up drinking with them more often, and more heavily.
To some extent, I am trying to convince people that we could all do better than this. A lot of people are unimpressed with the current state of affairs, openly questioning the existence of substance in this scene. With so many startups trying to win the Internet popularity contest as a business model, it’s difficult to unearth ideas of substance. They’re not as sexy as mobile geolocation applications. They’re not throwing big parties to get attention. And there’s fewer of them out there, though they have a much better chance of making it longer than five years.
And, for the record, this is my startup.