fuzzcheek

I want to re-iterate the thoughts that I had a few months ago, where I said that startup culture has crossed the chasm of becoming purely status seeking & for clout chasers (think of the viral post where a bunch of Asians came out to say "Forbes 30u30 / Harvard / Colombia students help build for you!") and like all things, this subverts the original intentions of startups and entrepreneurships Preface to say that this is not directed at the account in particular, but more of this trend of "startup schools" and "hacker houses" becoming the new in-thing that seems to have replaced traditional accelerators and even traditional colleges as people are dropping out to join these: Startups were meant for entrepreneurs to solve problems, with the structural advantage of moving fast and breaking things that bigger players can't afford to do (You can't turn a huge ship easily) But somewhere along the way, the ecosystem flipped. The thing that made startups cool - the scrappiness, the garage mythology, the "I dropped out because I couldn't stop building" energy — became aesthetic. And once something becomes aesthetic, it attracts people who want the aesthetic without the substance. Now u get this weird amalgamation of "having the status already, without the results" - "Fly To Seoul, KBBQ & Soju, etc." like it's a lifestyle or a game, and not the difficult journey it seems to be. The problem you're solving isn't even in the conversation. The city is the draw. The funding is the draw. The experience is the draw. The actual startup is almost an afterthought - a ticket you need to punch to access the lifestyle. I think it seems easy because people aren't thinking beyond the product - the end goal is to get the raise, because it seems common sense that once you get the $, you can raise the next round easily, and the next, and the next - that it'll just be an easy snowball. This is exactly how subcultures die. The original creators: obsessive founders who were building in obscurity because they genuinely couldn't help themselves - get drowned out by a wave of participants who showed up for the scene, not the work And then people figure out you can package "startup founder" as an identity product and sell access to it. Suddenly demo days and warm intros are what gets optimized for ; YC in its early days optimized for the quality of the problem and the obsession of the founder. Now these programs optimize for Instagram moments & LinkedIn announcements. Instead of "here's what alumni have shipped", we have "all expenses paid, nice hotels" - no longer selecting for builders but for people who want to be selected. The irony is that these programs will produce exactly enough surface-level success stories to sustain themselves - a few decent companies will emerge from each cohort, because even random selection from ambitious people yields some hits. And those hits will be used to justify the next cohort, and the next one, while the median outcome remains what it always is: a nice LinkedIn post, a network of other aspiring founders, and no product anyone uses. Anyways, like all things - this is merely an observation. There's no solution to this, this is just how cultures evolve and cycles turn. Like all trends, this is just the dying light of the trend. When everyone's a "founder", the word means nothing. When every 22-year old has "backed by [accelerator]" in bio, it becomes becomes noise. This is basically how universities died. And this will be how startup culture will die too.

i have no desire to be rich so i can buy a rolex or a lamborghini. i want to be rich so i can control my time and go to the gym at 3pm on a monday. sit at a cafe and relax for an hour on a rainy afternoon. so i can cook meals at home with fresh ingredients. spend on my family and friends without worrying about a budget. that's my idea of a rich life, not the fake consumerist idea shoved down my throat.