After the time I spent with a tech company who claimed they are still a startup, or at least want to be culturally, I found out about this book by Dan Lyons about the time he spent at HubSpot.
As stated on the cover, the book is about Silicon Valley and is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Dan describes how it is to work at HubSpot as an older man, and trying to fit in with a general younger work force, but also working in a startup.
It is really funny how he describes the culture at HubSpot with the mandatory beanbags, full kitchens and all the candy you want. Coming from journalism he was in for quite a shock. The structure of the company is really confusing, there are no processes, no hierarchy and lotsa political decision making not based on data, but on who knows who, or who likes who.
But it is not all laughs, he analyses the startup culture really well and explains the drive for the IPO and the whole “fake it till you make it”. For the extreme recent example of this, I can recommend “Bad Blood” from John Carreyrou about the rise and fall of Theranos. The analysis by Dan Lyons gave me more insight why startups behave like this. But it also showed me that after an IPO you really need to change this into a more structured and data-focused culture. I think that Reed Hasting of Netflix explained this well in his book (see my earlier post). Some industries or even departments don’t need a lot of control and structure, but will need to have lots of creativity that will flourish under a freer culture just like in a startup culture when you are basically developing your product or service. But you don’t want that in every company or even department. Logistics or Finance should be structured and efficient, you want your product in a day on your doorstep or you payments handled correctly, right? And producing medicine or cars should be highly controlled and with high safety procedures, I would think.
I read this book in almost one go, it is funny and I even recognised certain things from my short stint at a tech company. But most of all, I liked the analysis of the culture of a startup and how it relates to the business model of a startup.
