Today, a 'startup' means a group of people with money hiring enthusiastic youngsters to implement something. They bet their youth, health, relationships and mental health to work for that something in exchange for 'funding rounds' and the chance to be the next Xberg.
Unfortunately, more or less 90% of the enthusiastic young founders end up broke, depressed and resigned as a consequence. I know this because I've been the founder of a startup in the 90% club. Took me years to recover financially, mentally and personally.
The quiet winners in this case are the big corporations, who's technology and services have been paid for with seed/venture money given to startups. The investors loose their money, but no worries, because they have other groups of young people who are doing the same thing.
But of course there's a bright side to this - the 10% winners. Those that go on to transform the world around us. Again, I've been there - I was lucky to work for a startup that eventually made a multi-billion dollar exit. And change the world it did !
But now I'm looking at this changed world around me - what kind of reality are we living in ? We're constantly inside these cool shiny gadgets which can do incredible things, while the world around us is disintegrating - climate is going nuts, crazy politicians are getting elected and dystopia is settling in with clouds of war and destruction forming on the horizon.
How did we get to this ? How come all these young and enthusiastic dreams morphed into dystopia ? Make no mistake - technology that you and I have been developing is very much a cause of what the outside world looks like today - didn't we 'change the world' ?
And since most of this technology was born out of startups, we can conclude that the 'startup culture' was the precursor to the dystopia we're currently in.
This has to change. It has to at least go back to 'young people solve world problems with money as a means' instead of 'young people do something for the sake of hitting the jackpot'.