What comes next for “startup culture”?

The Zoom window looked like a modern Brady Bunch sample of international startup culture. In the boxes of smiling heads stacked on my screen there was everything from the wireframe glasses and buttoned shirts of France, the street sartorial stylings of Shoreditch, and of course the requisite Bay Area hoodies. Then there’s me, sitting in a home office at the tail end of the pandemic lockdown in Australia, missing these humans in real life and all the colourful quirks of our various regional flavour. A mix of voices sharing the common question of… what comes next?

Questioning the future of startup culture

The reason we virtually gathered was to discuss and debate the future of not just startup culture but our entire industry. These are ideas that have intrigued us so much that I’ve started recording these conversations as video podcasts. But more on that in a second.

These questions are a range of topics that have progressed from casual musings to full-time research and exploration for a lot of us in the technology industry. As is the case for me as part of QUT’s Creative Enterprise Australia team. Researching potential venture building and startup studio models, I’ve intersected some interesting and often contentious reflections on the production line built by venture capital over the last decade —a somewhat timely if at times painful study given the extent of social, political and economic issues that we are currently dealing with.

The stories we find ourselves discussing are…

• The current era of startup culture is nearing the end of a natural cycle.
• Hyper-growth is not sustainable or even desirable as a dominant company strategy.
• The majority of “startup culture” is manufactured and has manifested with unintended consequence for society above and beyond the lives of those participating directly.
• As much talent is forced away from “startup culture” due to elements of its negative reputation as is enabled by it — limiting the potential benefit of the valid methodologies and maker spirit it is built upon.
• The best talent of a generation would be better served to solve global challenges rather than just increasing the effectiveness of online advertising algorithms.
• As a generation of veteran founders we have a moral obligation to contribute to positive change.
• The lessons of “the startup decade” offer insights into application across multiple industries and social structures (as powerful methods to find and solve problems versus methods to resource and scale).
• Everything we love about startups is about enabling us to live a fulfilling life making things and solving problems. This can be resourced and sustained in a range of ways not reliant on going big with venture funding.
• Everything we dislike about startups has to do with social signalling and survivorship bias that is not genuinely sustainable. This can be addressed and acknowledged in a range of ways.
• We need to move on from worshipping “disruption” and start to acknowledge the need for “induction”.
• Moving fast and breaking things is a childish and destructive outsider mentality. The following decade can build upon the lessons learned through greater participation and collaboration with the real world. Not the teenage boy fantasy of unregulated power.

So what’s the point of these questions?

These are raw and challenging ideas for a community that has benefited from the genuinely applicable project and product methodologies. Some of them feel evident to some of us now in a way that would seem confronting even two or three years ago in our founder journeys. Others feel like we are stating the obvious at the cost of digging into deeper and more pressing topics. Finding that balance is hard, but it needs to be an active and diverse conversation given that startup culture has gone global. After all, for a culture so obsessed with moving fast and pivoting, it would seem counter-intuitive to be limiting ourselves to cultural definitions created a decade ago. Especially with a whole new generation coming through, and a whole new set of global problems and economic variables to navigate.

What do you think is coming next?

I’m writing this while preparing for my next Zoom call, which will be part of a series of video podcasts we are recording to explore this topic. I’ll be speaking with a first batch of 12 thoughtful members of the startup world, ranging from founders, community managers, venture capitalists, accelerators and so on. I’ve initially drawn from my network having lived and worked in the US, UK, France, Australia, India, etc. But I would really love more voices, more perspectives, and more ideas.

If you have some suggestions for people thinking deeply and constructively about what’s changing in startup culture, what needs to change, and how we get there — please let me know. Here’s a Typeform survey to share some info and I’ll get right on it.

And of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If there’s one observation, feeling or ideas you’ve had about the state of startups, let me know below.