The short-termist cult of incredible journeys and rollercoasters.
Or what short exits/acquihires have in common with Pop Idol and Made in Chelsea.
There seems to be a meme worming its way through the world about short cuts. You find it in TV shows which sometimes purport to be about finding hidden talent (Pop Idol etc) and more recently seem to be about generating “reality” involving people hungry for fame (Made in Chelsea). The short cut is going from obscurity to fame, missing out on the irritating “hard work” and “developing your craft” bit.
This phenomenon has been around for a while now. We’ve had Big Brother. We’ve had every form of Idol under the sun. We’ve had shows where people dance and shows where even dogs dance too. There seems to be a new kid in town now as well, not just “reality” but structured reality or constructed reality.
In all of these “reality” shows there’s an underlying trend which involves the value of the performer. In all of these reality shows the performer is very undervalued, both in the short and the long term. They are a cheap and disposable component of entertainment for a throwaway society. They and the shows they’re part of come with built in obsolescence. Even if they’re winning a “big recording contract” they still only have a year to be the new hotness before the next manufactured star has a tilt at the Christmas number 1.
The cult of short-termism is rampant and it feels like at some point in any evening you could turn on the TV and within about an hour hear someone - who may well have some talent - talk about their “rollercoaster” experience on one of these shows. And therein lies the problem. Most of the things that truly last - music acts, acting careers, companies - are things which happen over a long period, with a knowing development and improvement of the relevant craft. There’s no rollercoaster, or if there is it’s a really long slow dull one.
This sort of content programming has been around for a while now, so why am I writing about it now? In fact, why am I, a technology person, writing about it at all? We’ll get on to the second part in a minute but the timing is due to two things that happened this weekend.
The first was watching some of the coverage of Glastonbury, and in particular seeing and listening to the wonderful set by Nile Rodgers. I’m not a fan of festivals, but by the end of the set I wished I’d been there. The depth and the breadth of his work was quite amazing and the quality exceptional. Even as a fan who knew a lot of his career already, it was quite incredible to see it as a performance. There was an effortlessness to what he did too. Some of that effortlessness was natural talent, but some was just practice: a craft built up over years of working and learning with other talented people - rather than being developed by a set of stylists, coaches and preening mentors.
The second catalyst for writing this was a visit from a friend: a very talented actress who happens to be the daughter of a well known and talented actor whose career stretches over thirty years. We talked quite a lot about the “constructed reality” shows and also about the per episode fees that the participants earn. She was shocked at how low they were (I’ve been researching the background of Made in Chelsea which has peturbed me since I watched an episode out of curiosity during an episode of insomnia). The sting in the tail of this discussion is she no longer acts as there is less and less work of suitable quality or financial reward.
So why am I writing this? I think the same thing is happening in the tech industry. Almost every week we hear a story of an acquisition by one of the larger internet properties of one of the many small ones; short exits to purchase features or to kill competition or to hire talent. These actions all seem to have the same phenotype: acquisition, celebratory blog post on both sides, followed either immediately - or a short time after - with the sunsetting of the service followed by an “our incredible journey” blogpost apologising for closing the service down (thank you Phil Gyford for collating them). The money then rolls back into the VCs and to the founders who are handcuffed for a while. When the founders lock-in is over and they can leave, the whole thing cycles again, maybe with a few founders becoming angels along the way.
If this short lifespan of a company before exit is one of the main trajectories in the knowledge economy then that makes me sad. The other trajecrories, as far as I can see are: IPO, failure, or acquisition and a more full integration. Apart from IPO, none of these ever seem to end too well either - what made the small company special is often lost in the assimilation into the larger acquiring company - leading either to a loss of the talent or the users or both. But that’s ok, there’ll be another semi-disposable company along in a minute.
It’s time we started celebrating different things in the tech press covering startups. All too often they only seems to cover raising money, deadpooling and acquisition/IPO. Raising money is all well and good, but surely the true measure of success is delivery/execution and, dare I say it, profitability.
However I think there’s a better measure even than these, and that’s job creation. My thoughts here are probably naïve but they’re ones I’m interested in researching and I’d like to invite others to help and join in on thinking through of them/telling me I’m wrong. If companies took a longer term view - grew more organically, possibly charged users for things if appropriate, and employed more people - it may well be better for the public/government part in the knowledge economy. Instead of money flowing into the government through taxes on exit, often reduced through mitigation schemes designed to incentivise investment, more money could possibly flow into the public purse through corporation tax and personal tax paid by employees. More employment would also reduce the social security burden if we’re merely looking at economic benefits. There may still even be an exit.
It seems strange to me to start off with a dream and then continually pivot towards a point where there’s enough traction to be acquired and then lose control of what you’ve dreamed of. With your dream service subsequently being closed and forgotten.Why not play a long game? Why not develop a service over a long period of time collaborating with great people along the way? Why not actually have a journey which is truly incredible?
