Throwing Rocks at the Growth Curse

I’ve spent the last week making my way through Douglas Rushkoff’s “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus”. If you’re considering starting a business or are interested in finance and entrepreneurship, this is a book you really must read.

In a nutshell, “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus” is about “how growth became the enemy of prosperity”. Rushkoff critiques the very basis of modern economic thinking and calls out the grand illusions so deftly hidden behind the enticing veil of the digital economy. An economy dominated by the stock market, venture capital and platform monopolies, it turns out, is not particularly good at creating real value. When the accumulation of capital is prioritized over the movement of capital, the principles that underlie how we create and exchange value become skewed in favour of a winner-takes-all game.

Startup culture, in other words, is no longer about building a profitable enterprise, it’s about building a sellable enterprise.

Consider, for instance, the cannibalistic nature of venture capital. Rushkoff outlines how entrepreneurs these days have little hope of ever escaping the abstracted game controlled by investors who seek to make big exits. When people put money in a startup, it’s not because they’re interested in growing…