Eric, this is amazing! You hit so many topics spot on, while keeping it light and funny. I would love to see this turned into a skit or a graphic novel 🤘🏽🚀🚀
Thank you for the kind words, Bikul! I would be happy to oblige if any bigshot producers would like to option it 😉 For now, I think HBO's Silicon Valley is the gold standard; hilarious, incisive in their criticism, and also shockingly accurate in the details. Like Mike Judge's Idiocracy, it started as satire but became closer to a documentary over the years...
I loved this. Thank you for such a level-headed take on what often amounts to frenzied spending on startups, thanks to giant blind spots about where things can go wrong and the failure of due diligence. I’m curious to know your thoughts on the recent failure of Fuzzy Pet Health, which resulted in sudden job losses for over 100 employees. Fuzzy managed to round up $88 million, then “pivoted” from their original business model because it wasn’t scalable. Everything seemed to be coming up roses for Fuzzy until suddenly their garden turned into a mud pit. Their case would seem to fit a lot of what you’ve written about here.
It is unfortunately so, so, so common. Really part of the standard Silicon Valley playbook.
To give an example I *am* personally familiar with, without giving exact names: a veterinary digital cytology start-up that was a competitor to mine was working in parallel on FDA approval for human products. It was always transparent to us that they were using vetmed as a short-term proving ground to generate revenue and proof-of-concept while the real play was human healthcare. I urged caution to a number of colleagues who were enamored with them for a couple of specific technical reasons.
Well, the long and the short of it is they eventually did just that: shuttered the vet division with little notice, leaving clients and employees in a lurch. In fact, some of the pathologists found out the situation third-hand from some other clients, and like Fuzzy, they were STILL SIGNING CLINICS after it was revealed they were folding. What was left of the vet side was sold for scraps (client lists, pathologist relationships) to a large corporate lab. Some of the universities and professional societies that were relying on them were left out to dry.
That’s pretty awful. It’s always interesting to me to observe who is “enamored with” the latest startups and often I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Just a little bit of critical thinking should lead to questions about whether this or that business model is really as great (and “disruptive”) as it seems to be at first blush. But I’m a questioner by nature, and I’m never the one that jumps on the “trendy train” when it first leaves the station, lol. I tend to hang back, watch, and wait. That probably means I miss out on opportunities sometimes though!
People like new technology. The company in question definitely had cool innovative hardware and were doing something unique others hadn't figured out to do (and really still haven't). But the implementation, logistics and company behavior is what turned me off to them relatively quickly. Not everyone sees that stuff
It’s PowerPoint. Normal people call “decks” PowerPoint
Thank you for this 🎉
It had to be said!
Eric, this is amazing! You hit so many topics spot on, while keeping it light and funny. I would love to see this turned into a skit or a graphic novel 🤘🏽🚀🚀
Thank you for the kind words, Bikul! I would be happy to oblige if any bigshot producers would like to option it 😉 For now, I think HBO's Silicon Valley is the gold standard; hilarious, incisive in their criticism, and also shockingly accurate in the details. Like Mike Judge's Idiocracy, it started as satire but became closer to a documentary over the years...
I loved this. Thank you for such a level-headed take on what often amounts to frenzied spending on startups, thanks to giant blind spots about where things can go wrong and the failure of due diligence. I’m curious to know your thoughts on the recent failure of Fuzzy Pet Health, which resulted in sudden job losses for over 100 employees. Fuzzy managed to round up $88 million, then “pivoted” from their original business model because it wasn’t scalable. Everything seemed to be coming up roses for Fuzzy until suddenly their garden turned into a mud pit. Their case would seem to fit a lot of what you’ve written about here.
I totally agree, Suzanne. With the caveat that I don't have any personal experience with Fuzzy or inside knowledge about the company, much of the behavior described in this article, if true, is totally unconscionable: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/san-francisco-pet-startup-fuzzy-shuts-down-18161874.php
It is unfortunately so, so, so common. Really part of the standard Silicon Valley playbook.
To give an example I *am* personally familiar with, without giving exact names: a veterinary digital cytology start-up that was a competitor to mine was working in parallel on FDA approval for human products. It was always transparent to us that they were using vetmed as a short-term proving ground to generate revenue and proof-of-concept while the real play was human healthcare. I urged caution to a number of colleagues who were enamored with them for a couple of specific technical reasons.
Well, the long and the short of it is they eventually did just that: shuttered the vet division with little notice, leaving clients and employees in a lurch. In fact, some of the pathologists found out the situation third-hand from some other clients, and like Fuzzy, they were STILL SIGNING CLINICS after it was revealed they were folding. What was left of the vet side was sold for scraps (client lists, pathologist relationships) to a large corporate lab. Some of the universities and professional societies that were relying on them were left out to dry.
Really poor behavior, IMO
That’s pretty awful. It’s always interesting to me to observe who is “enamored with” the latest startups and often I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Just a little bit of critical thinking should lead to questions about whether this or that business model is really as great (and “disruptive”) as it seems to be at first blush. But I’m a questioner by nature, and I’m never the one that jumps on the “trendy train” when it first leaves the station, lol. I tend to hang back, watch, and wait. That probably means I miss out on opportunities sometimes though!
People like new technology. The company in question definitely had cool innovative hardware and were doing something unique others hadn't figured out to do (and really still haven't). But the implementation, logistics and company behavior is what turned me off to them relatively quickly. Not everyone sees that stuff
This about sums it up: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones" - Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-algorithmic-anti-culture-of-scale