You’re Not As Cool As You Think You are
I worked for a very “cool” Silicon Alley (NYC) company called Pseudo back in the bubble days.
Within our little world of startups, we were rock stars. We had huge parties, we did whatever we wanted in the city, and everyone thought we were the greatest. We were hanging out with celebrities, going to awards shows, really part of a whole other world as the “startup kids.” We thought we were revolutionary (and to an extent, I guess we were), and really believed we were changing the world…this was all covered really well in the documentary We Live in Public. But that’s all perception, and being cool doesn’t write checks…
What happened is we concentrated more on being cool and having fun than we concentrated on actually making money, as did many other startups at the time. It was an awesome ride for a few years, but it was not sustainable. There are also other aspects of this culture that I hope don’t exist anymore, like the very prevalent in-office drug use, and other things (sex in the office, for example) preventing actual work from getting done. I haven’t seen that happening at a company in a very long time, thankfully.
The concept of the cool kids has not gone away, it just switches from company to company. It existed here in SF just like it did in NY in the late 90′s, and is beginning to exist again today. I think it’s horrible, has a terrible impact on the industry as a whole, and let’s face it, none of us are “cool,” we’re nerds who spend all day in front of a computer. Some company becomes cool, everyone scrambles to hire the employees from there and copy their ideas…and six months later it’s another company that everyone’s imitating.
I guess all I can say to anyone who thinks they’re one of the cool kids, is that they should be very aware that as soon as the market or popular opinion changes, they won’t be oh so cool anymore. They should make sure they’re building a career they can keep going after their company goes away, or even better, build a company that can exist after the cool factor wears off.
