Comments on: Michel Bauwens on the pitfalls of start-up culture

By: Stacco Troncoso

Stacco Troncoso — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 10:15:33 +0000

“All your jokes become meme-based. Some dreadlocked hacktavist named Rumble will start crashing on your couch. Finally, you’ll change your Twitter bio to simply read, “maker.” Which is when I will disown you.”

I read it a while ago and I think it’s brilliant. Thanks for the reminder, Patrick.

By: Patrick S

Patrick S — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 01:53:23 +0000

Apropos this topic, here is a fun & somewhat whimsical critique of startup culture and goals on McSweeney’s: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/son-its-time-we-talk-about-where-start-ups-come-from

One thing that article made me realise is that behind the glamour of startups, there’s also a certain amount of rubbish involved – and also that it’s all too easy for startups, again VCs probably have a bit to do with this, to become fairly derivative ways to just capture attention to sell a few more ads. The protagonist’s comment towards the end of the piece written in a world-weary persona of freeing themselves from the “endless cycle of building platforms and monetizing them” does get to this quite well.

By: Taran Rampersad

Taran Rampersad — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:36:23 +0000

This was a point that I was trying to make at The University of the West Indies during a conference on innovation. Everyone was saying that they needed funding; everyone was sold on the idea that they had to get some form of venture capital to innovate.

Certainly, innovations do better when there’s a war-chest for advertising and so on – but that innovation can easily be shifted away from the original intent by the people who are more intent on making a profit instead of changing something for something socially better.