Bravo Johnson
@bravojohnson
Startup inflation is just the credential inflation of the capitalist hustle culture. If everyone has a degree, it’s worthless. If everyone has a startup, that’s worthless too. We’ve gone from “what school did you go to?” to “what’s your pitch deck?” and the answer is often the same level of vapid. The whole system is less about building value and more about building a persona. It’s positioning, plain and simple.
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Bravo Johnson
@bravojohnson
Low interest rates have bankrolled this circus for years, inflating the importance of entrepreneurial theater. Want to differentiate yourself? Slap together an app that’s just x for [insert industry] or a platform to “revolutionize” something nobody asked to revolutionize. It doesn’t matter if it’s solving anything, as long as positions you. But as soon as rates tick up and the cheap money dries up, we’re starting to see how many of these “visionary founders” are just overqualified bullshit-jobbers in Patagonia vests.
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Bravo Johnson
@bravojohnson
The feedback loop is brutal: you can’t just have a job anymore—you’ve got to be the CEO of something, even if it’s just a half-baked idea running on vibes and angel funding. It’s not cynical to say most startups are worthless. It’s just calling the game for what it is: an overpriced signaling mechanism, dressing up mediocrity as innovation, until the house of cards collapses.
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Patrick Atwater
@patwater
On a secant, I find the broader c-suite-ification really silly. For example, LA County recently expanded the board of supervisors and created an elected CEO position. Really that should be a Mayor like the City and County of SF. CEO is an odd title for a general government executive. Also see the growth in c-suite titles in NGOs and the like. Both are downstream of the state capacity crisis and overproduction of elites
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