I’m just another failed tech entrepreneur sitting at a bar writing these words. I’ve made a ton of mistakes during my 27 years on earth. Stupid, drunk, naked mistakes. And now those moments are becoming public record forever. We are all kinda fucked if you ask me.
About a month ago, I was a Gawker headline. A video was leaked of my “private life” and then my entire life exploded. How did the video get on the internet? Simple, really. My dick head “friend” @jess3, equipped with his iPhone, decided it was worth more to him (and his hundred thousand followers) to take advantage of me in my drunken state. He posted the video on Facebook through both private and his company channels, it ended up on Gawker, instantly making me naked and (in)famous. I got a call at 4am in India a few days after the video was posted, “Dude, you made the front page of Gawker.” And then hundreds of Facebook messages and emails and texts flooded in. I posted a jovial “Naked and Famous” note on Facebook. Then I curled up in a ball in a shitty hotel room in India.
Blame social media? I can’t. I’ve built my career helping advertisers feed messages to consumers on sites like Facebook. And I got damn good at it. But right now I have other things on my mind. I don’t know what is going to happen to me. It’s been about 2 months. Just how bad is this thing going to get? Am I going to lose my company? Am I ruined forever? Tonight, I’m at Gjelina down the street, drinking beer in a dimly lit corner, writing these words. I’m trying to decide how to decide what to do. Anyway, good decisions are made from the heart. And maybe my heart just isn’t in it anymore.
My social media accounts will, in a beautifully packaged timeline of events, show you that, yes, I have toured the Mediterranean on yachts, I have flown in jets packed with A-listers, and that I have raced fancy cars across the globe in the Gumball 3000. You may even be lead to believe I am a really well connected entrepreneur. I’ve intentionally shared moments I wanted you to see. That is how the world works now. But what those accounts won’t show you is the rest of it—the 99% of life that isn’t so perfect. And it is for good reason.
Everyone wants to do a tech start-up for the fame and glamour, but contrary to popular belief, you can’t just “get some coders”, “launch an app”, and “exit” for a billion dollars 18 months later. You have a better chance getting an exit camping out in Mark Zuckerberg’s front yard hoping he pays you to leave him alone.
For those of us willing to do the work, we are getting our shit kicked in every day by all the unknowns of entrepreneurial life. Product, market, team. Experimenting with other peoples money. It’s just not that easy. The one day we do something cool, something worth sharing, we post about it, and that post represents us—in the timeline of our lives. We are living in a world of snapshots. I will rewrite that last sentence just so it sinks in. We are living in a world of snapshots.
Is it sustainable? I don’t know. Probably not. But I’ll keep doing it. Why? Because my audience, whether out of spite or love, keeps growing. And that’s power. When you wipe away all the bullshit and hype and skewed reality the internet has become, all you have left is people.
One fellow at the bar is shooting glances my way. Maybe he remembers me from one of the shindigs, my instagram photos, or some conference I spoke at? I’m not sure. I’m in no mood to be social tonight. Here’s the interesting part: I would have a hard time convincing my fans and followers that I am currently depressed. Why? Because last night, I posted a series of photos on Instagram of me and a few supermodels cooking dinner and painting at my loft. Yes, I posted it for the enjoyment of my audience. But, knowing that the first thing I do right when I open my eyes in the morning is check my iPhone, I may have also posted it last night so that I could wake up to a nice little bundle of likes and comments and the attention that fuels my addiction these days.
It turns out that art is a great distraction for me. I’ve started to take it more seriously. Another successful founder of a company “bought” one of my paintings for 50 grand last week. I sold a story with the art. We shook on the deal. He still hasn’t paid me. Still, my art is now worth 50 grand a piece.
I feel like it can’t be said enough — the world we live in today is fueled largely, almost entirely, by bullshit. We propel ourselves from tiny, little kernels of truth to a world of pure embellishment. Why? Because it works. The way the tech world operates isn’t much different from one of my college experiences. I was a freshman at Stanford when I met the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and she also was extremely wealthy. My friends, who wanted to see me succeed, were connected to some of her friends. They inconspicuously spread rumors of my innumerable wealth and incomparable intelligence. It wasn’t long before I was having awkward freshman sex with her on the floor in the laundry room of my dorm—the whole experience offering me quite a convincing understanding of how powerful the right people are with the right message. After sharing my encounter with friends over beers, I got toasted, “Go Matty Mo!”
Like I said, the tech world isn’t much different: think about all the fake press reports, vanity metrics, and the rosy quarterly updates created for the people who need to be convinced. Most tech startups out there are teetering on the brink of destruction, but they are always, according to them, either “crushing it” or “killing it.” The only thing they have is the perception of success. Some tech entrepreneurs I know are also really good at acting.
The world is full of people waiting to be told what to think. And, to survive, the best of us have become masters of persuasion. As far as the industry is concerned, there’s the guy who’s sold a tech company for hundreds of millions of dollars, and there’s the guy who hasn’t. That’s it. Bullshit and hype are necessary to stay relevant now. And some people have made a ton of money staying relevant. But another result has been arguably the most demonstrative misrepresentation of reality in any era. The lines are so blurred that perception, if crafted masterfully, becomes reality.
So I guess my conclusion to this shitty intro is: we are living in the new era. Perception has become reality. We are just a world of snapshots being interpreted. And those shots can start a war. Or ruin a life. Or create great change. But, this is just a story about a guy that used social media to get laid, paid, and made. The truth is somewhere out there, it’s just not always obvious.
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