For a long time, it was easy (for me, at least) to imagine the life of the tech employee as an idyllic one: local kombucha and beer on tap in the office, a strict 40-hour work week and a generous six-figure salary, synapses firing with savvy colleagues while you build the Next Big Thing. The pervasive layoffs of the past year have surely disrupted the idea that working in Silicon Valley paves a guaranteed path to prosperity. But that was always a myth, wasn't it? Money is a finite resource, and most startups are doomed to fail.
In 2014, writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus rented a room in one of San Francisco's "hacker houses" to document the cutthroat, make-or-break, all-hands-on-deck startup scene for WIRED. The resulting feature, "One Startup's Struggle to Survive Silicon Valley's Gold Rush," doesn't mince words about the myriad hurdles burgeoning companies had to clear to get off the ground, even at a time when the tech space was flush with cash. In it, he follows Nick and Chris, a founder duo, as they race all around the Bay in their quest to raise a round of seed funding.
It's grueling, not to mention existentially fraught, work. "Starting a company has become the way for ambitious young people to do something that seems simultaneously careerist and heroic," Lewis-Kraus points out. But "this daydream of constant killing-it has made it difficult to talk about how fearful and distraught the life of the founder can be." And arguably the scariest thing of all, as one VC put it, is that they might actually get what they wish for. Even if a founder gets the money, can live the startup dream, it's only a matter of time before they realize that autonomy will always be out of reach.
But again, we know that now. My question is: What does the future hold for startups, and the people behind them? Where will innovators go to make the next big thing five, 10 years from now? Who will support them? I'd love to hear what you think. Write me a note with your predictions, or leave a comment below the story.
See you next week!
Eve
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