For anyone interests in big bonus and stock options working for startups in Silicon Valley, beware of the big lie about startups. Danny Crichton writes at TechCrunch that startups in Silicon Valley run on an alchemy of ignorance and that lying is a requisite and daily part of being a founder, the grease that keeps the startup flywheel running. The truth is that most startups fail. The vast, vast majority of startup employees will never exercise their options, let alone become millionaires while doing it. “Founders have to tell the lie – that everything is fine, that a feature is going to launch even though the engineer for that feature hasn’t been hired yet, that payroll will run even though the VC dollars are still nowhere on the horizon,” writes Crichton. “For one of the most hyper-rational populations in the world, Silicon Valley runs off a myth about startup success, of the lowly founder conquering the world.” (techcrunch.com)
