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Danny Crichton writes at TechCrunch that startups in Silicon Valley run on an alchemy of ignorance and amnesia and that lying is a requisite and daily part of being a founder, the grease that keeps the startup flywheel running. Most startups fail. The vast, vast majority of startup employees will never exercise their options, let alone become millionaires while doing it. But founders have little choice as they sell their company to everyone, whether investors, employees, potential employees, or clients. "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."
Crichton says that Silicon Valley needs a new transparent approach toward information, but also need to understand that startups are inherently risky – and accept the lies that come with them. Founders can't expect to hide the term sheets and their liquidation preferences from employees who ask and informed employees have a right to know what they are getting into. "We still need that Big Lie to function. We still need to dream about the possibility of success in order to realize it," concludes Crichton. "With greater transparency comes a responsibility on the part of everyone in the startup ecosystem to understand and empathize with the plight of founders trying to build their companies."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @01:18AM
The Wikipedia article you cite states that "cognitive dissonance" is "the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs." That article has some relevant side topics related to Silicon Valley, such as Social Engineering and Marketing; also keep in mind that certain people are more tolerant of withstanding cognitive dissonance than others (and I feel that your average MBA or business-oriented startup founder falls into that subset of people rather nicely).
However, if you posit that a startup founder promoting and release-dating a feature that doesn't have staff allocated for it yet isn't a lie, or that a founder painting a rosy picture about potential VC funding when they're going to be short for the next payroll, I disagree. Those are lies. Sometimes there are times when businesses will want to hold their cards close to the chest for PR reasons (and privately funded businesses are within their right to do this, so long as they hold to other legal standards and due diligence), but it does create a bit more of a "caveat emptor" situation for customers, as well as employees. (Case in point: if a payroll round bounces, RUN.)
The pervasiveness (and inanity) of Silicon Valley startup mentality is only one side of the current mess of 21st century business, although I would prioritize it as the biggest threat to technology advancement as well as livelihood advancement for the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the United States and other countries. The other side of this is what Michael Dell terms the "90-day shot clock" of demands from technologically ignorant shareholders that are hampering Fortune 1000 companies with byzantine policies. Another major factor is belligerent activist investors such as Carl Icahn and Paul Singer buying up positions of companies to ultimately ruin them, all while claiming to add value, when in fact they're ultimately perpetrating a complex, long-con form of "pump-and-dump". (If one of these activist investors touches your company, RUN.)
Amid both sides of these are a sea of cognitive dissonance, and the lies that form the foundation. Some revel in cognitive dissonance, while others are driven to extreme stress.