Don't Believe The Hype

The Scooter company Bird filed for bankruptcy yesterday. Another high-flying unicorn falls to earth.

This is an important reminder that you can’t believe the hype in the startup press.

Let me show you what I mean.

Take a look at the photo above. Wait! Don’t scroll down to the second photo.

That’s me. Where am I? What am I doing?

Let me give you some context.

It’s July 2011. Three months earlier, I had led the sale process of the Huffington Post for $315 million. An extraordinary result after two years of hyper-growth.

A month later, I landed at Thrillist, where I was starting a 6-year journey to build one of the largest digital media companies in the world. That’s a story for another day.

I was having a good year.

With that context and this tightly cropped photo, I can craft a narrative of being somewhere interesting and exciting.

Perhaps I’m hanging out in the Hamptons. Maybe I’m on a nice boat. Hobnobbing with founders and venture capitalists. Basking in the glow of the red-hot NYC startup scene.

And if you believe that carefully crafted narrative, you might feel envy. As if you’re falling short. Because you’re not on that boat. You weren’t hobnobbing last weekend.

But that narrative isn’t real.

Ok, let’s zoom out.

Where am I?

That’s me on the monorail at Disneyland in Florida.

It is the last day of a 7-day trip in July. The trip included my two children, ages 3 and 5, my brothers’ families, and my mom and dad, both in their late 60s. It was a special trip. There are wonderful memories we’ll always have.

But let’s face it. It was July in Florida. There were 13 of us traveling in a pack, all with wildly different expectations and needs. My kids hadn’t eaten normal food in a week. Everyone was hot, overstimulated, and tired. We were all ready to go home.

Look at my face in that second photo. That blank stare. It’s time to go home.

The first photo isn’t a lie. But it is a carefully edited piece of a much larger story.

Keep this in mind when you read stories in Business Insider or TechCrunch about the latest startup that’s ‘crushing it.’

Be wary of founders on podcasts telling tales of glory, high valuations, and another round of funding.

Many of their stories are carefully cropped and edited. They are designed to build investor FOMO, excite current and prospective employees, and grow their valuations.

None of this is about the hard work of building a great startup.

When you find yourself feeling pangs of jealousy and envy, remember that most founders are on that monorail with you. Circling the park. Trying to find the right parking lot.

Or product-market fit. 🤷🏻

That’s just not the photo they chose to share with you.

This has been a year when the media darlings of the startup world once again showed that the emperor had no clothes.

👮 Sam Bankman Fried is going to jail.
💰 Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges and stepped down.
💥 Convoy, WeWork, Olive AI, Veev. All startups that raised hundreds of millions of dollars, only to have shut down in the last few months.

2024 will show both sides of this hype cycle. A continued wave of unicorn failures. Fawning hype over the next wave of AI startups that have yet to demonstrate any product-market fit.

Here’s a New Year’s resolution for you.

Don’t believe the hype you read in the startup press. Focus on the hard work of building your startup.

Craft your own narrative instead of chasing someone else’s.