(2014-01-05) Church Vcistan Bigco Bureaucracy

Michael O Church claims that the Silicon Valley "VC-istan" Start Up EcoSystem is worse (for employees) than BigCo Bureau Cracy.

cf Gervais Principle, 2012-09-04-RaoEntrepreneursAreTheNewLabor

Let me give a few comments on what it’s not. First, it’s not all of venture capital. I don’t consider biotechnology or clean energy to be part of VC-istan. The rules in those industries are different, because one actually has to know something about biology, for example, to launch a medical-device startup. The superficiality, ageism, celebrity culture, and lack of respect for Hard Work that characterize the current bubble crop are not found there; in fact, it’s the opposite, because there are objective goals to be met. VC-istan is focused on light technology, which I use to describe the marketing experiments (Social Networking) using technology.

VC-funded technology is to Corporate America as the Tea Party is to the Republican Party. I cannot think of a more perfect analogy for the relationship between this Sand Hill-funded startup bubble and the “good ol’ boy” corporate network it falsely claims to be displacing. It is, like the Tea Party, a more virulent resurgence of what it claims to be a reaction against.

The venture-funded startup world, then, has the best of one world (passionate lifelong technologists) answering to the people who failed out of their mother country: mainstream corporate culture.

As much as I despise VC-istan, that is not a good thing, because popular opinion will not separate VC-istan’s upper crust from Silicon Valley or technology as a whole. After decades of the kinds of mismanagement that only prosperity can support, we’ve developed an industry that, despite having the best individual contributors in the world– has the worst leadership out there. Additionally, even within the Valley morale is challenged.

What should be done about this? Is there a solution? Since the Tech 8′s and 9′s and 10′s can’t find appropriate matches in the VC-funded world (and, for their part, most Tech 8+ go into Hedge Fund-s or large companies– not bad places, but far away from new-business formation– by their mid-30s) where ought they to go? Is there a more natural home for Tech 8+? What might it look like? The answer is surprising, but it’s the mid-risk / mid-growth business that venture capitalists have been decrying for years as “LifeStyleCompany-s”. The natural home of the top-tier technologist is not in the flash-in-the-pan world of VC, but the Get Rich Slowly world of steady, 20 to 40 percent per year growth due to technical enhancement (not rapid personnel growth and creepy publicity plays, as the VCs prefer).