Visionaries, Fighters and Pretenders
In any hot sector or economic cycle, there are three communities. The first are the people toiling in obscurity before any trend appears. The second are the trend spotters that find themselves a strong foothold. The last group are the late-comers looking for a quick buck. The first are the visionaries, the second are the fighters and the last are the pretenders.
Whether you are in the bubble or not-a-bubble camp, I think it is safe to say that tech is currently on the upswing. It is more than simply the TechCrunch cycle of hype; it is the mainstream media mentions, the sky high valuations, and even a Hollywood movie or two to boot. Sharing food photos, checking in to events, snagging real time daily deals, scanning QR and barcodes, you see tech out in everyday places used to everyday people, everywhere and every day.
Prior to 2008, tech appeared to be in a nearly decades long slumber. The wreckage of the dot-com bust sent much of the tech world out of sight, out of mind outside of established tech centers. But working in the trenches on the next big ideas were visionaries like Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, Andrew Mason and Mark Pincus in the mid-2000’s building what is now the class of tech royalty; Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and Zynga. Without any ideas of success or even an understanding of business model and objective, they simply wanted to build something awesome. They were in the game to change it.
When the dust settled on the financial meltdown of 2008, the tech world emerged as the one sector with any near-term growth potential. With the banking sector and many other fields throwing off talent and traditional jobs for college graduates evaporating, tech was waiting with open arms. Thus the class fighters emerged to claim their spot in the tech version of Manifest Destiny. These folks have a goal in mind to make something great, but may or may not have that one big idea. What they definitely have though is a goal to build something useful for people.
As we close on the summer of 2011, things have radically shifted in the world of technology. It seems as if everyone and their mothers have a startup. There are tech drinking meetups, startup weekends, startups to help “launch” startups, and TV shows about startups. In the frenzy, everyone is looking to cash into the hysteria before the whole thing collapses. Thus we have a massive influx of pretenders panning for Internet riches on rivers and streams that have already been mined upstream. Just look at the explosion of daily deal clones and location-based mobile apps and curated this and that.
A lot of folks that were around in the earlier cycles though seem to be getting touchy about these newcomers. Some have decried the fact that our precious tech scene is becoming like MTV or TED. Others are questioning the rise of so many incubators. There are others making the case that some startup founder should just quit now lest we have a massive talent crunch. Effectively, the message to the pretenders is “GET OUT”!
I understand the frustration as it seems nonsensical that many of these so-called startups should even exist. But therein lies the rub. Without the hype, much of what makes the visionaries and the fighters successful may not transpire whether it is capturing the imagination of the public, making the big sales, getting the funding and securing a profitable exit for all involved. But along with the hype will always be hangers-on jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at what happened to the real estate market and all of those mortgages.
The difference however from our current tech market from many of those previous cycles is what we are seeing is the changing wholesale of our economy. The rise of technology is only one of many such smaller revolutions to the way we will view labor markets and economic output in the future. This is the important distinction; what is happening in tech is the foundation and the permanence for a new society of innovators and creators.
So whatever happens to the pretenders does not even matter. Most will fail in due time. What some may see as the tech scene becoming “vapid and short-sighted” with people trying to “make the scene” is simply the evolution of a growing community that is changing the world for the better. In fact, we should welcome more people into the tent and to start building and designing and creating stuff. We should welcome people leaving their crappy jobs in mega corporations to start new businesses or to operate independently. Therefore, instead of talking about hype and things getting overblown and bitching about faux entrepreneurs with their Launchrock startups, let’s celebrate the fact that people actually give a crap about tech nowadays.
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