The Danger of Celebritizing Entrepreneurship

One thing that is driving entrepreneur celebrity culture is the confusion of raising funding and building a revenue positive business. Fund raising is a newsworthy event that 's easy to write about and already has an array of narrative hooks that can be applied to it. It's easily digested by tech news ecosystem that has in many cases explicitly rejected any pretension of journalistic objectivity in favour of boosterism and participation in the money cycle that they are hypothetically supposed to be explaining to their readers.

As an event fundraising has a certain level of glamour in that it brings together important and powerful people; or people who would like to think they are important and powerful which is much the same thing as far as the protagonists are concerned. It's easy to fall into the scenesterism and the recurring characters (the foul-mouthed VC, the bright eyed fresh faced first time founders, the once successful entrepreneurs trying desperately to recapture the magic) and forget that underlying it all are supposed to be actual, unglamorous businesses that are solving problems for paying customers.

To some extent Silicon Valley is ripe for disruption, but that's mostly because it seems tired compared to what it once was. The positive qualities of Silicon Valley culture, the can-do optimism, the inventiveness, the piratical willingness to upset the apple-carts of the established order have been supplanted by an orderly narrative of programmed success that can pull people into creating "disruptive" companies that are just better ways to pull eyeballs to ads. For a social group that talks about innovation, it's amazing how narrow the definition of innovation can seem.

Real innovation has moved on from the valley, it's happening in marginal places where the creativity has to do with making better use of limited resources, it's going to be messing up orderly narratives of social media success and creating new products that rebuild the value chain in all industries.

I think this statement is incredibly short-sighted (or spun to make it easier for hot startups to hire):

> The second type of Starstruck Entrepreneur is far more dangerous. This type includes engineers and designers who have a lot of talent for building technology products, but, because they've been infected by celebritization hype, limit their ambitions to being able to say, "Hi, I'm the Founder and CEO of Self-Aggrandizing Apps." So instead of applying their talents to a company that is actually poised to solve an important problem and become a transformational company, they build another vapid iPhone app that nobody wants."

First of all, I am this person. I am building my own company and it now pays me close to what I made at the last "important, transformational startup" I worked at, but this time I own my own schedule and I own my own company. And people want my products and are paying for them, so I don't know how his former point implies the latter.

We are in an era of unprecedented personal empowerment, especially with tech people. I say more power to those who want to create their own value and live an independent life, rather than devote yourself to 0.1% ownership of a rocketship that could never make it. Just because you raised a big round doesn't mean you are doing more for the world.

I heard more or less the same at a meetup last month, from a headhunter guy who wanted to convince a few of us there to go work for some company at below average market wages.

This argument comes along a lot among people who's actual complaint is that engineers are too expensive these days, despite the number of other less complex professions that are more well remunerated and have no shortage of manpower right now.

I believe celebritizing entrepreneurship is a good thing. Entrepreneurship is a noble calling that has high social value.

To some extent I feel that PG's essays tend to celebritize entrepreneurship. However, I think this a bit of a conflict of interest, and can come off as predatory. The reason is that he makes more money the more (or more highly qualified) entrepreneurs he can convince to take up the cause. However, the odds of failure are still quite high. In essence, these essays convince more people to buy him lottery tickets paid for with their entrepreneurial sweat. The fact that the lottery tickets have shared payouts is of little consequence to the moral argument when the odds of a single ticket winning are so slim. The only real winner is the incubator, which holds hundreds if not thousands of tickets. To minimize the hazard, I would like to see the odds of failure emphasized more.

I don't think it's necessary to actively quell increased entrepreneurship. If these "starstruck entrepreneurs" really don't have the chops to survive in the market, they wont. Also I think one great benefit is that this increased celebritization isn't just of entrepreneurship in general, which has been popular long as anyone can remember a guy striking it rich with his own company, but technology entrepreneurship. It's encouraging more and more bright youth to pursue careers in technology and engineering; finally, programmers are receiving due respect, and as a result we're getting stronger and brighter young talent in the industry that would have otherwise pursued more popularly rewarding career paths.

The fundamental question is whether there is such a thing as too much entrepreneurship. I personally think no. Also I think having more entrepreneurs is better than more investment bankers. Net net, I think there is a greater benefit to society through even failed entrepreneurship.

Anyways, market forces will weed out all these starstruck entrepreneurs out within 6 months and they will be back working for big co in no time. Also with the low cost of starting a company now, one can write off the failed biz as a short term MBA course.

(posted from my phone)

The reverse seems to be more prominent, the entrepreneuralization of celebrities.

I agree with other comments stating the market will weed out people who are too busy getting high on momentary fame to create something of lasting value. The OP's argument that this is a mis-allocation of resources is bunk -- these resources are EXACTLY where they need to be, and to me this reads like a very outsider look at Silicon Valley. People do dumb stuff, fail, and then either come back stronger with lessons learned or give up and are weeded out (as founders). Often they go on to make awesome startup employees.

I was expecting the headline to just link to a photo of Kevin Rose.

What I hate most about "celebrating success" is that it doesn't help, it just gives people envy. Success is not the goal, it's the outcome of reaching a goal, and in order to reach it, you WILL and MUST fail many times for long periods of time. Failure is inevitable and invaluable because it helps you see what does not work. Of course everyone wants to succeed eventually, but it's only through failure that we can get there.

It's like celebrating being a good person instead of celebrating the qualities that got someone to the title of being a good person. If you celebrate the journey more people will take it. If you celebrate the outcome it doesn't help anyone, it just gives people envy.

For the longest time I didn't understand that because it went against everything my parents and society taught me. As children we are conditioned to "copy" behaviors, actions, theologies, values, and when we don't copy them from our parents correctly we are verbally punished and our behavior is looked down on. This discourages children to be "different" and associates "different, unique, new, untried" with "bad". It associates "failure" with "embarrassment" And "different, unique, new, & untried" are exactly what one needs to get ahead in life and be your own boss, build your own company, and create something new.

What I learned through all these years is that Success is the outcome of trying enough things and failing enough times to find out what doesn't work and what does. Being "afraid of failure" means to be afraid of the "Journey of trying".

Also, when you look at governments, countries, and businesses in general, failure is the default state. Things do not automatically work, they automatically fail. And you must work very hard for long periods of time and make many adjustments before you get them out of failure and into success. Even then, that success can be temporary as markets and consumer needs change quickly.

One of the things I really want to do on my blog is list all my failures, websites, product prototypes, projects. Just to encourage others to do the same.