Ideology and branding go hand in hand. They inhibit intellectual honesty.

During his celebrated startup school talk dhh said that the few examples of extremely successful VC funded companies are brought up over and over to brainwash. It played out even better since he went (right?) after Greg McAdoo who had the great analogy of the surfer on the big wave with and the slides to go with it. Dhh had a point, though. And a very good one at that.

Whenever I realize there is some brainwashing I look for the ulterior motive. In the case of the seed fund/VC crowd it is easy to see why they would want crops of entrepreneurs trying to make the next youtube: that's how they make money. That's the most likely ulterior motive -- welcome to sociology 101 ...

And, of course, there is nothing wrong with that. It just brings out the Dr. Skeptismo in me whenever I hear what they say. [1]

37 Signals is the underdog calling the brainwashing out. Cool!

Recently, however, the noise to signal ratio has been high.

Either they've turned stupid or there is an ulterior motive. I can argue why each of those posts is stupid, and so I thought it was that. But no. 37s is a brand. They sell basecamp and books. Their sales go down when less people subscribe to the "getting real" ideology. And out the window goes intellectual honesty.

And, of course, there is nothing wrong with that. It just brings out the Dr. Skeptismo in me whenever I hear what they say.

Oh and by the way: why kick the shit out of the old guys when the old guys want to pay you a lot of money for 2 years of work and the ability to make money with you? The first x million are not about mojitos. They are about the freedom from having to work to sustain yourself. Valuation is only one component of the vector; I'm not sure how many components the vector has, but certainly at least one more: the amount of cash you get. Investment is (hopefully educated) betting.

Everyone worth reading regularly should understand those things.

Running a startup is about tradeoffs and making decisions without enough information. The -- err ... A way of dealing with that is to leave all possible options open, exposing oneself to good risk and mitigating exposure to bad risk. Committing (ideologically or otherwise) yourself to do it without investment or to build a company that can only go VC -> acquisition is stupid. The only valid ideology for a startup is pragmatism.

Notes