Question
Why isn't there a legitimate "critic" in Silicon Valley for early-stage startups? Why isn't this role filled in such a dynamic environment? Is there little incentive to critique companies that are so young?
Answer
Silicon Valley has the critical feature of any bubble: near-complete control over it's own internal discourses and readymade mechanisms with which to discredit external ones.
The first purpose of such a bubble is to sustain itself, so people within it mainly listen to each other (hence the terms "mutual admiration society" and "echo chamber.") In this stream, positive stuff gets amplified, negative stuff gets dampened.
The amazing thing is that everyone inside will profess concern over the bubble. But anything from outside with any chance of creating doubt is discredited at the door ("that's big company bullshit," "politicians just don't get it," "the mainstream is too dumb for this," "she's just another of those pompous post-structuralists," "I won't argue with you; I just think you really won't get it till you move here and immerse yourself in the culture."
So the only people left who are considered legitimate sources of criticism are internal, and internally, your brand goes down if you criticize, so frequent critics self-destruct. This is an obvious consequence of the preferential amplification of the positive, since stature follows mindshare, which is a function of how often you are heard.
So far so good. The question is: is this healthy?
The argument in favor is the same as the argument for giving babies a kind, positive, nurturing environment, and being careful about when you tell them Santa isn't real.
The argument against is that startups are NOT like babies. That there is a huge cost to a culture which can only produce value via boom-bust processes driven by positive-bias groupthink, deliberate self-delusion, pathological optimism and so forth.
The onus then shifts to the critics to propose something better. Those who believe they've found something better (like lifestyle business types today) generally don't hang around arguing. They fork off their own innovation cultures. There are many such cultures that are either silicon valley forks, or emerged independently elsewhere.
Most are relatively unknown because their successes are smaller and more numerous. No competing culture seems to produce the mix of rare big-bangs and high failure rate that SV does.
In that sense, there is a simple reason for SV's success: it is a Black Swan discovery process. 99.9999% of everything SV does or says is complete nonsense. But the very nonsensical nature of how SV functions means that it produces big bangs by accident 0.0001% of the time.
So don't bother criticizing. Just watch for those Black Swans and follow/land grab around anything that looks like one as fast as you can.
And if you're not built for speed of imitation and opportunistic movement, get out. There are better, alternative places to be for those who have other strengths.
The first purpose of such a bubble is to sustain itself, so people within it mainly listen to each other (hence the terms "mutual admiration society" and "echo chamber.") In this stream, positive stuff gets amplified, negative stuff gets dampened.
The amazing thing is that everyone inside will profess concern over the bubble. But anything from outside with any chance of creating doubt is discredited at the door ("that's big company bullshit," "politicians just don't get it," "the mainstream is too dumb for this," "she's just another of those pompous post-structuralists," "I won't argue with you; I just think you really won't get it till you move here and immerse yourself in the culture."
So the only people left who are considered legitimate sources of criticism are internal, and internally, your brand goes down if you criticize, so frequent critics self-destruct. This is an obvious consequence of the preferential amplification of the positive, since stature follows mindshare, which is a function of how often you are heard.
So far so good. The question is: is this healthy?
The argument in favor is the same as the argument for giving babies a kind, positive, nurturing environment, and being careful about when you tell them Santa isn't real.
The argument against is that startups are NOT like babies. That there is a huge cost to a culture which can only produce value via boom-bust processes driven by positive-bias groupthink, deliberate self-delusion, pathological optimism and so forth.
The onus then shifts to the critics to propose something better. Those who believe they've found something better (like lifestyle business types today) generally don't hang around arguing. They fork off their own innovation cultures. There are many such cultures that are either silicon valley forks, or emerged independently elsewhere.
Most are relatively unknown because their successes are smaller and more numerous. No competing culture seems to produce the mix of rare big-bangs and high failure rate that SV does.
In that sense, there is a simple reason for SV's success: it is a Black Swan discovery process. 99.9999% of everything SV does or says is complete nonsense. But the very nonsensical nature of how SV functions means that it produces big bangs by accident 0.0001% of the time.
So don't bother criticizing. Just watch for those Black Swans and follow/land grab around anything that looks like one as fast as you can.
And if you're not built for speed of imitation and opportunistic movement, get out. There are better, alternative places to be for those who have other strengths.