Technology’s Broken Promises

Startups, Capitalism, and the Destructive Force of a Culturally Bankrupt Industry

My Own Youthful Naivety

It’s June 2013, and I’m cruising from SFO to The South of Market neighborhood (the pinnacle of startup driven gentrification in San Francisco) in the back seat of my future CEO’s car. I’m a little nervous. I graduated last December with my bachelors in computer science, and I have been working for two years as a programmer at a medical textbook publishing company based in my hometown of Salt Lake City. All of my equally naive classmates at the University of Utah had talked ad nauseam about the great ideas they had for their own startups: an agile dashboard, a better instant messaging app, a phone game… I never had a “great startup idea” of my own but I’m young and keen on “changing the world through technology,” so today I’m interviewing with a startup. They have raised a million dollars in seed funding, and I will ultimately become the seventh person to join the company. I’m nervous, but I’m a little giddy too.

When we arrive at the office we park around the corner. “Don’t leave anything in the car,” I’m told. We parked at 6th street and Folsom, if you know the area you also know not to leave anything in your car. “We’ve parked a couple blocks away from the office,”…