

The Danger of Celebritizing Entrepreneurship - jmitcheson
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/the_danger_of_celebritizing_en.html

======
olefoo
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.

------
yesimahuman
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.

~~~
zxcvvcxz
Would you describe your product as vapid though? Can't be that bad if people
are paying you for it.

~~~
yesimahuman
No, the point was his assertion as far as I could tell is that people like me
are making vapid products because we aren't giving up our dreams and working
at the "next hot startup."

------
JVIDEL
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.

------
codex
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.

------
zan2434
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.

------
netvarun
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)

------
zerostar07
The reverse seems to be more prominent, the entrepreneuralization of
celebrities.

~~~
linker3000
Good point.

I am also concerned by the growing amount of word alizationing and izing.

~~~
zerostar07
Funny but I think there is a growing field of studying 'ologies'! In
bioinformatics, 'omics' is a subfield on its own

------
dmor
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.

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

------
ChrisNorstrom
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.

