Remember back in the good old days (2011) when being called a hipster used to mean something. You’d only listen to bands that ended in the word ‘club’, stencil moustaches onto mugs and mirrors and live exclusively off pulled pork in brioche buns like some bizarre, trendy version of Super Size Me. Ah memories. Only now all that intolerably kitsch stuff has bled into the lives of everyone else. Now I.T grads have fixie bikes and your mum’s bang into beard oil. There’s money in Hipsterism. Talking of money, now, consider the world of the start-up, the start-up founder, an entrepenuer with an air of cool (maybe) intertwined with a tad of ‘nerd’, you know the ones, they’re typically found at a destnation that begins with ‘Silicone’ and ends in ‘Valley’ or ‘Roundabout’. Mix the two…and so the start-up hipsters (Stipsters) were born. Here’s how to spot one in the wild.
They’re Intern Wranglers
See the bored looking barista struggling with the concept of a chai latte on his second month on the job. Intern. The lad eating Sainsbury’s Basics off of some bare
brickwork outside an office building? Intern. Literally anyone whose suit trousers suggest they might have worn them throughout Sixth Form? Intern. But you already
know all of this; giving these penniless but academically capable young minds a laptop and a brainstorm session is your bread-and-butter. You know how to wrangle
these balls of youthful energy and you can always be spotted by two or three hovering around you with a coffee or a stats report.
Their Company Name is a Verb
Here are a few ideas. Duck: A pop-up dodgeball event on Clapham Common for six months. Plod: An app that lets hikers connect and share routes and tips while out on the trail. Jolt: A dining experience inside a moving bus. All great ideas I’m sure you’ll agree and all with the capacity to be household names.
The Offices are Co-Habitable
The stipster isn’t concerned with personal space. What’s the stench of a man’s unwashed feat or a dog on heat getting intimate with your shins? They can still work. Most Stipsters think nothing of having lunch which is essentially nuts and fruit out of a big trough, pushing on through the noise of a huge canteen full of similarly-sized stipster egos. It’s a sense of freedom you don’t get with other workplaces.
Marketing is Guerilla
Traditional marketing is for chumps. Stipsters don’t want billboards and telly; they want graffiti stencilled onto the cubicle doors in the gent’s toilets. Shame anyone who rings the number won’t get the good time they were after. Unless, of course, their idea of a good time is a nervous intern listing the nutritional benefits of a brand new energy drink. If the hipster is participating in a publicity stunt or tattooing their brand’s name onto their chest; they’re a stipster.
They’re Scandinavian
Legend has it that the first stipsters began as a small clan of angels living on the inside of a Fjord, selling cost-effective lifejackets to passing adventurers. And so it makes sense that anyone you see with a healthy Nordic glow, sporting a luscious beard or wearing a tasteful fisherman’s jumper, must be a stipster. To be born into one of these great Northerly Kingdoms is to be born both trendy and innovative.
