You know something smells of ‘bubble’ when someone tells you, without a hint of irony, “I work for a 10 year old mobile start-up.”
‘Start-up culture’ is everywhere in London at the moment. One of its by-products is office space specifically targeting this category of companies. The photo above was taken near Kings Cross, an area transformed from seedy to civilised since the arrival of the Eurostar terminal a few years ago.
“I’m doing a start-up,” is something I hear frequently these days, and it worries me. It sounds rather similar to: “I’m doing a dotcom…” We all know how that ended.
The issue here is not start-ups per-say, but rather the misunderstanding that being a start-up is anything other than the means to an end of providing good customer experience. New businesses providing new things are great for customers. New businesses created to fit the mould of ‘start-up’ culture, however, will rarely find themselves aligned with what users really want want.
If someone asks you what you do and the reply is: “A start-up,” it could be time to re-consider. Customers don’t buy the lifecycle stage of a company, they buy its products and services.
Mirren Fischer is someone who finds herself at the confluence of some really big challenges:…
Poetry and place...listening and lockdowns... Dan Phillips, who led the Royal College of Art's (RCA)…
Mark Baldino's path to co-founding a Chicago-based design agency wends its way from a degree…
Paul Campbell, a former chief designer at Ford, is now re-imagining the wheelchair at Centaur…
Opening the oven released a cloud of steam. I should have been expecting it. It's…
Jared Ficklin's approach of 'think by making' has led him to produce remarkable digital design…
View Comments
As if on cue, shortly after this article appeared, Reuters published this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/20/us-startups-idUSBRE8AJ0OL20121120.
...and news arrived of 'Startup City Bali': http://www.startupcitybali.com/.
Boat, sailed.