How the "Startup Mindset" helped spawn the Techlash

The "techlash" — the widespread negative public perception of Big Tech —  marches onward, gaining intensity with every new tech-related scandal. For major tech companies, the techlash has contributed to low profits, falling share prices, and fleeing users.

It seems people are wising up to the negative side-effects of a "highly online" life of the sort incentivised by many tech platforms.

There are many causes which have led to this unfortunate situation. Let's focus on just one of them for the moment – the Startup Mindset.

The Startup Mindset is a kind of origin myth and blueprint for aspiring founders. It is overwhelming confidence in the face of uncertainty. It enables people to "move fast and break things", undeterred by their failures, growing from their mistakes.

For many companies it was necessary to behave like this in order to grow so rapidly. But as a result, many product decisions were made without trying to understand the full impact they would have.

Did Uber predict that their platform could lead to a global shift and help create the unstable "gig economy"? Did AirBnB think their platform could accelerate gentrification? Did Meta predict the democracy-destabilising misinformation that would end up on their platform?

Of course not. Those companies weren't set up to make those kinds of predictions. The Startup Mindset dictated the need for creating tremendous user value in order to keep growing. Therefore, product owners needed "user focus" – meeting user needs and dispelling user frustrations, theoretically a good thing. However, this kind of approach often neglects further consequences. On families, communities, societies.

When you "try to put a dent in the Universe" you often end up putting dents in ordinary people.

In my next post, I'll explore how we can use lessons from anthropology to rethink the Startup Mindset.