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ravuri 's review for:
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
by Dan Lyons
The conceit of this book is that a tech journalist, implicitly trained to spot problems, gets a job to a startup and finds many more than he bargained for. The story is interesting because HubSpot is a complete shitshow of a company, with a weird crunchy cult-like culture to boot, and Lyons is trained to take down a place like this. It's funny hearing about what a mess this place is, but...
All startups are shitshows, and many of them manage to be enormously successful. Much of the disaster does not make the newspapers because, as Lyon admits when trying to help the CEO get prepped for a New York Times interview, journalists try to pry any negative information out of CEO's mouths, forcing said CEO to spout bromides to avoid negative press.* But, just because the place is a disaster, it does not mean it's not successful. Given Lyon's previous stints in stably dying media companies, it must be a shock going to a place like HubSpot, but that doesn't mean it's bad per se. In this case, however, it actually might have been a bad place, as an event at the end of the book suggests that HubSpot may have been covering up some corporate malfeasance.
I do think the book is an accurate reflection of a certain type of startup, whose main value derives from the marketing department. Much of what they do feels to me eye-rollingly stupid, but this is an important part of the US economy, and something that will not go away in the near future. I wonder if Dan Lyons would have been more comfortable at a more engineering-focused startup, as they tend to share the dark humor that he does.
I think the book is worth reading if you are interested in what a marketing-focused startup looks like day-to-day, but I would not uncritically accept the author's viewpoint on the experience.
* NB athletes rarely say anything interesting because of the same effect
All startups are shitshows, and many of them manage to be enormously successful. Much of the disaster does not make the newspapers because, as Lyon admits when trying to help the CEO get prepped for a New York Times interview, journalists try to pry any negative information out of CEO's mouths, forcing said CEO to spout bromides to avoid negative press.* But, just because the place is a disaster, it does not mean it's not successful. Given Lyon's previous stints in stably dying media companies, it must be a shock going to a place like HubSpot, but that doesn't mean it's bad per se. In this case, however, it actually might have been a bad place, as an event at the end of the book suggests that HubSpot may have been covering up some corporate malfeasance.
I do think the book is an accurate reflection of a certain type of startup, whose main value derives from the marketing department. Much of what they do feels to me eye-rollingly stupid, but this is an important part of the US economy, and something that will not go away in the near future. I wonder if Dan Lyons would have been more comfortable at a more engineering-focused startup, as they tend to share the dark humor that he does.
I think the book is worth reading if you are interested in what a marketing-focused startup looks like day-to-day, but I would not uncritically accept the author's viewpoint on the experience.
* NB athletes rarely say anything interesting because of the same effect