Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

Dan Lyons is an awesomely talented storyteller and smartass. He was the Fake Steve Jobs and wrote a book on that. He’s a writer for HBO’s Silicon Valley. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble is a diverting and revealing story, vividly told. Dan starts by losing his job as technology editor at Newsweek and, soon after, leaving a management position at ReadWrite. At age 52, as he puts it, “Losing my job sent me into a tailspin.” So he interviews with Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the leaders of HubSpot, a “powerful, easy to use, integrated set of applications for businesses to attract, engage, and delight customers.” In other words, HubSpot makes cloud-based marketing tools. HubSpot focuses on inbound marketing, which means activities you undertake to draw customers to you, such as blogging and social media. HubSpot also helps small and medium-sized companies to manage the leads which that activity generates, nurture them, and sell to them. The CMO hires Dan as a marketing fellow, to write blog content and advise management. The best thing about this book is the nakedness of the story. Dan holds nothing back in his descriptions of his coworkers and, most importantly, in his description of his own feelings and emotions as he goes though this epic saga. It’s written in the present tense, which makes it feel more real. Disrupted is a tragedy. Dan finds HubSpot filled with enthusiastic, inexperienced workers, nearly all white and very young, who operate in an orange-colored frenzy of passion for the company’s mission. The senior managers who hired him don’t have time to manage him; somebody much younger ends up as his boss. They can’t figure out what to do with him; he’s overqualified for everything they throw at him. He hangs onto the job for appearances, having a salary, and health insurance. The hinge of this story is culture clash. HubSpot is about moving fast, growth, and a go-go culture that, as Dan tells it, values enthusiasm and “teamwork” over efficiency, strategy, or profit. Dan is an experienced journalist whom the rest of the workers just can’t seem to puzzle out. He’s got a wife and kids, while they’re hard-charging “bros” and young women who all seem to wear the same clothes and have the same haircut. Dan’s perceptions of the misunderstandings, personality clashes, bizarre incidents, social media faux pas, and HubSpot’s cult of belief make the story come alive. And when the fun is over and he finally leaves HubSpot, there’s even an epilogue about an FBI investigation of people allegedly attempting to hack computers and steal the manuscript. Is it true? The facts match what I’ve seen. But everyone has their own perspective on the truth. People who were there tell me that context is missing. Dharmesh has written his own rebuttal. HubSpot has a dedicated customer base and its products have a lot more value than Disrupted implies. (They claim revenue retention exceeded 100% for 2015, which implies happy customers — upsell is exceeding churn.) But I have no trouble believing that the chaotic environment Dan describes was real. If you want to decry age discrimination in technology, lack of diversity, profitless startups, stupid investors, greedy VCs, bubble mentality, and the venality of technology leaders, you can fuel your concerns with this book. But I don’t think whining — or this book — will change much; the current system is making a lot of money for a lot of people and churning out successful innovations from Facebook to Tesla to Uber, employing millions. It’s a terrible system that chews up people like Dan and leaves the rubble of broken startups littering the landscape. That’s just how it works. But you can learn from this. Dan made plenty of mistakes (and fearlessly documented his own failures here). And HubSpot did a bunch of stupid things, too. So after you’ve finished this entertaining story, don’t just smile. Do things differently. If you want to do more than read this book -- if you want to learn from it -- go to bernoff.com and search for "Dan Lyons". You'll see a list of lessons from the book.

My favorite books are imperfect, but challenge me to reconsider my perceptions and beliefs. Disrupted did that for me. The Good: There hasn’t been a major book documenting the dark side of the SaaS tech industry. I’ve seen more than a few books ripping apart Wall Street culture, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, and corporations like McDonalds and Wal-Mart. And while there have been critiques on Apple or Microsoft, this is the first takedown of note on the Silicon Valley scene. The author makes Hubspot — a SaaS Small to Meduim Business Martketing Automation firm — seem like the epitome of the industry. I thank the author for pointing out the lack of people diversity in these types companies. It’s not just race. It is age and socioeconomic background. There are few women in positions of power. It’s also valuable to point out the poor management and personal issues that many founders have had. It’s a service to warn people about the short-termism and the ageism. Everyone in the technology industry should read this book. I appreciate his critique that firms like Hubspot and Salesforce are Sales driven organization as opposed to engineering driven organization. There is a lot of hype and less ground breaking functionality with these firms. I also give the author a lot credit for his storytelling and writing. I was a bit predisposed to rip this book apart. Sometimes takedown or expose books get too passionate about their argument. It’s a fun read of dysfunctional work place. You can simply take the book as that and move on, but I didn’t. One story telling example, he contrasting the two founders and their metrics HEART (Humble Effective Adaptable Remarkable Transparent) vs. VORP (Value Over Replacement Player). This was well done. It’s a service to remind us that under that huggy-feely, teddy-bear carrying HEART sentimentality there is a cut-throat, make your number or you’re fired VORP mentality — free beer and candy be damned. There’s a lot of good here. There are genuinely laugh out loud moments and vivid conflict. The author is somewhat able to tie the woes of Hubspot to the larger issues in the tech industry or Silicon Valley today. The “Glassholes” chapter attempted to drive that home. However, even here, the author is mostly drawing from personal experience as editor of the Fake Steve Jobs and Valleywag blogs. Which brings us to the bad. The Bad First and foremost – the nonstop complaining that Hubspot doesn’t make a profit. Stop it. The rules of the game that Hubspot is playing do not require it to make a profit. Who says they need to? It’s the authors “Business 101” perception that all companies should be profitable despite that intellectually he knows that companies like Hubspot do not have to be profitable – and that’s been the case for the last 20 years. It’s like still complaining that Al Gore won the general election, but lost the Electoral College because of a hanging chad. That leads to the second bad – his depiction that Hubspot is a house of cards. They need to IPO or go broke, he writes. That may have been the feeling 3 months before IPO; however, Hubspot consistently raised money. They didn’t raise $100 Million over night and then blow it in 6 years. Here’s the data: [...] . Hubspot has cash-paying customers, who renew their subscription 88% of the time. They are a not Ponzi scheme or a credit default swap trading desk. The third bad – once Hubspot IPO’s it will tank. After going public 18 months ago, HUBS is up 40% compared to the S&P 500 up 7% and its closest competitor Marketo is down 10%. So much for profitability. Moving away from the bad business critiques – the author repeats himself. Same rants about ageism and lack of diversity. Same jabs at the stupidity of co-workers – the lax bros, New England college girls going on a date, middle-America Mary. Over and over. Further he doesn’t go deep on research. The information above about the funding numbers reveals that. He’s basically just writing from his own experience, which is good; however, when tries to tie that experience to the bigger industry wide issues, it lacks some creditably. The business issues further limit his credibility to just his ability to write entertainingly about his own experience. His own experience was brutal, but he didn’t help things. The Ugly The author self-sabotages. Three social media mistakes: 1) Don’t post negative comments about the CEO on Facebook, especially when you have a public following and the CEO just wrapped up his first major news interview. 2) Don’t Unfriend or Unfollow your boss, especially when your boss may be crazy and sadistic. 3) Don’t make inside jokes about your co-workers where those coworkers can also see those jokes. He made a veiled little dig at coworker, the coworker saw it, understood it, and then flipped out. Generally, the author is condescending towards everyone he works with. The whole industry is beneath him. That came through in his personal interactions. His colleagues didn’t like him; not just because he wasn’t like them, but because of his acerbic humor and air of superiority. His final self-sabotage: he put in his 6 weeks’ notice of resignation the day after a truly brutal and psychologically abusive annual review. This was revenge. Hubspot, themselves vindictive, responded by firing him, immediately. He managed to get a better deal, but he should have just waited a month and given the standard 2 weeks. He put his family at risk of being uninsured and lost salary. I don’t mean to be too harsh. I probably would have done the same. It’s a testament to self-control that he stayed at Hubspot for 20 months without doing anything worse than petty passive aggressive outbursts, My Advice: Read this book today! It’s is an eye-opener. Take his business insights with a grain of salt. Then read the response from Hubspot. It has 1000s of likes on LinkedIn – not surprising if you’ve read his book. That response is exactly the type of thing the author does a great job of fleshing out – part Orwellian, part corporate gobbledygook, part well-intentioned but aloof. If you are looking for a salacious or raunchy read, you won’t get much here. There’s nothing in the book itself that would kill the company or put people in jail. While damaged, Hubspot has responded and recovered. There was an incident last summer where three major characters in the book tried illegally to obtain a copy of the manuscript. It was investigated by the FBI. This only adds to the drama of the public real-life playout of the book. It’s a quick read and almost required if you work in the industry. As Mary would say, it's totes magotes with awesomesauce!!!

元ニューズウィークの記者がとあるベンチャー企業に入ってから辞めるまでの間の話です。私自身ベンチャー企業に入った経験があり既視感が否めない面もあるのですがもちろん独特なものもありかつその後の話も面白かったです。

Ce livre devrait être obligatoire dans les institutions formant les futurs startupeurs français. Bien que tout se passe aux États-Unis, ce livre est assez universel pour décrire les pratiques managériales avilissantes pratiquées dans les startups qui veulent disrupter le monde. C'est avec beaucoup d'humour que l'auteur nous propose donc une immersion dans cet univers où règne l'absurde...

A parte la piazzata finale che non ti aspetti per il resto non è che io sia completamente dalla parte di Dan Lyons. D'altronde, può un giornalista di 50 anni inserirsi in una start up di marketing automation piena di giovani ventenni? Secondo me con la attitudine giusta, sì, o forse. Ma l'approccio di Lyons non è a mio avviso quello giusto, sin dal principio. Due sono i suoi peccati originali: 1. Bollare questo tipo di marketing come spamming in un modo molto miope e strano da parte di un giornalista; 2. Esserci entrato con il solo scopo di far soldi con le stock options. Quello che fa Hubspot non è spamming e poi un giornalista, un umanista, non può ragionare in primis in termini di soldi. E' l'invidia verso i suoi amici che hanno fatto i soldi con le start up a spingerlo. E questa non può essere la leva giusta per uno come lui. Per sapere come se la cava non vi resta che leggerlo...

I've not often called a tech-oriented book a "page-turner" and "addictive", but I think they both describe Dan Lyons' book on his adventures at Hubspot. It's what happens with someone with old-school journalism skills chooses to take a job at a place that puts a higher regard on results than integrity. It's a massive culture challenge for him, of course, and it's on for young and old ... and this book would suit both of those audiences. It's a great read. Lyons is a talented writer and likes stirring the pot.

I’m probably late to the party (let’s call it “fashionably late”), but Dan Lyons’ Disrupted is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in a long time. It’s unflinching in its honesty, eye-opening with its prose, and comically risible. Most importantly, the book justifies my long-held cynicism about Silicon Valley and many of the cockamamie work-related ideals that are born of that sub-culture. Briefly, the book is the fish-out-of-water story of 52-year-old writer Dan Lyons being laid off and joining Hubspot, a fresh tech start-up at the time, where the average employee’s age is 29. Culture shock ensues, and at times it reads like the inmates are running the asylum. Teddy bears also feature prominently. You couldn’t make the stuff in the book up if you tried, and some of it will make your head spin. The book is short and enjoyable, but its real strength lies in its critique of Silicon Valley’s practices. I generally have a distaste for business and self-help type books proclaiming that you can become the boss of a Fortune 500 company by waking up at 4 am and going to bed before your grandmother. These books are a product of a perplexing culture which deems sleep as the enemy and a jam-packed calendar, with intervals for meditation, as a societal badge of honor. In Disrupted, Dan Lyons, as a result of his own disillusionment, cuts through all this fluff to reveal the kingmakers, gurus, and schemers behind all the fatuous thinking which we routinely praise as socio-economic and cultural phenomena. I’ve walked in Dan Lyon’s shoes, so I can relate. I’ve wandered the halls of conferences stupefied at acolytes fawning over the cultish pretensions of industry leaders and celebrities. To this day I have no clue what Will Smith and marketing automation have in common. I’ve also been a part of the lunacy of start-ups where ping-pong tables, free food and hammocks are acceptable replacements for better pay and benefits. Not to mention how the employees lose when it all comes crashing down as companies chase revenue growth. This is the book I wish I were given in business school. Millennials and Generation Z are so enamoured by this “new normal” that we are unwilling to question and ready to forego much to be a part of it. There are a host of reasons for this, but a book like Disrupted should be commonplace on every student and young professional’s bookshelf to help them separate hype from reality.