Startup Is the New Hipster | Hacker News Reader

Startup Is the New Hipster

fosslien.com

38 pointsaliasaria9 comments

I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but something serious needs to be said about it. Venture funds and this whole startup scene are selling the "startups are cool!" image hard. But it never was cool and never will be.

Step outside of your male-dominated bubble for a minute and talk to the opposite sex. Watch as her eyes glaze over when you start talking about analytics, optimization, and creating the next big photo sharing app. You're an obvious get-rich-quick schemer. There's nothing sexy about that.

The hipster and startup hipster defined by the author seem like lame versions of the bobo created by David Brooks--basically a wannabe artist obsessed with money. And that's what startup programmers will always be.

Those artsy girls you're after will choose the musician behind the counter over you buried in your MacBook every single time. Get some perspective and don't waste your 20s buying into this game.

So what you're saying is what's really important is being cool and artsy girls?

And countless real artists have been obsessed with money, fame and the life that surrounds it. You're putting out just as many naive generalizations about people as you're accusing "startup hipsters" of having.

I'm also really curious what you do with your time and your life that puts you above all this?

+1 curious about this. Most people involved in startup culture (I say this as a marketer who lives in Brooklyn and works with and advises many startups on marketing) are in it to work hard and change the world. There are few delusions of grandeur in reality, but this idea that this mindset exists has been propogated by those who can profit from seeding the idea.

I won't name names.

You assume that people doing startups want to be "cool" in the way that Jay-Z is cool, and think that startups are a path to partying with supermodels in Las Vegas nightclubs.

My experience is that most San Francisco tech entrepreneurs, (the type accurately parodied here), do not have such self-delusions.

I'm afraid even as a new addition to the Bay Area I'm sitting at the intersection of these two. My MacBook Air rides in a repurposed burlap case made from a Guatemalan coffee sack, I hardly eat anything but organic meat and cream from Bi-Rite or food from gritty taquerias, I sold my car and kept my Italian motorcycle (which I moved here on with a vintage West German army backpack), I listen to bands that obfuscate their search results with non-ASCII names, I think Java is "too mainstream", I sleep on the floor, and I like to sprinkle my speech with Hungarian idioms. There's something good to be said about the cultures that attract and sustain such outliers.

Was doing great until I ran across the Startup's lunch choice:

Sushi Burrito.

If that isn't a thing already, it needs to be.

Sushirrito, 2nd Street and New Montgomery in downtown SF. Be prepared for a long line. Open weekdays for lunch.

This observation is SO ten years ago.

This is my favorite thing I've seen in a long time.

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