HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."
Mixed in with Lyons's uproarious tale of his rise and fall at Hubspot is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out.
With a cast of characters that includes devilish angel investors, fad-chasing venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and "wantrapreneurs," bloggers and brogrammers, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is a gripping and definitive account of life in the (second) tech bubble.
...ContinuaHilarious, occasionally sarcastic, account of what a 52-year-old journalist experienced in a startup. There is a good comparison from a reviewer in Amazon: it is "Liar's Poker" of tech startups.
Well, hilarious is only the way the author presented his situation. You can tell how frustrated he was with the culture shock - he could not fit in at all even he tried to blend in!
Then came a revelation.
He started to notice the company he worked at was not a software development company but a financial instrument. In the old days, tech companies first had the products and sales (and IPO) came later. But nowadays sales and marketing come first. That is the new economy as the VCs accept the model as long as there are growth in revenue (and cash in with IPO). The fortune, if any, is based on unfair labour practices.
If the main body of the book is hilarious and sarcastic, the epilogue is unsettling. I can feel how insecure the author was when his privacy is on the line.
In short, I enjoyed reading this book very much. To an extent I re-read it after finishing it the first rime.
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