![]() VCs, for all of their faults, are professionals. The traditional gatekeeper preventing non-venture capitalists from entering the room disappeared. The ability of every startup to issue its own token fueled the bubble, as regular (retail) investors could get in on the action. Everyone, at first, was making money in crypto. ![]() Crypto is here!įast forward to 2020 and in the aftermath of the global pandemic, the latest tech craze took off. But for every eBay, there are hundreds like the startup I worked at that flopped and faded into obscurity. From that period emerged Amazon, Paypal, eBay and ShutterFly, and later arrived Google and Facebook. When people think of startups, they usually think of the wildly successful ones. That startup, along with most of the dot-coms of the era, went down the toilet. program, as many others did, to jump in and join the company. “We closed a seed round of $2 million!” “We have hired our first 10 people!” They moved into a super swanky office in a lovely loft in TriBeCa.Īmidst the frenzy, it’s hard to resist. work at my lab, and the vibe was amazing. I would go to this startup’s office twice or three times a week, mostly in the evenings, after finishing my Ph.D. Collectively, their biggest talent had nothing to do with tech or with media it was an amazing ability to convince investors that they were onto the “next big thing.” The COO and CTO, as far as I could tell, had no skills at all. The CEO was a former junior media executive. Of course, the young founders had big ideas like, “revolutionizing media using technology.” The founders gave themselves important titles - CEO, COO, CTO - with little to no regard for their actual experience or abilities. One of them had just a website with a few images, but investors were throwing money at them. in New York City, I began spending time at a couple of web startups.
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