Sometimes, startup pitches sound like infomercials.
You know, the ones where a bunch of bad actors try to convince you how tough it is to wrap a towel around your body or cover yourself in a blanket, before pitching you a solution to a problem you never had in the first place?
More and more, it seems, startup pitches follow much the same formula, spoon-feeding us on how they’re tackling non-issues, from ordering a pizza faster to eliminating the hassle of picking out a t-shirt. As inspiring as startups today can be—and they inspire us here at WIRED everyday—these often inward-looking ideas can also be depressing. At times, it can feel as if some of the most talented tech minds in the world have forgotten that there are very real problems out there that need to be solved.
Which is why this smart and self-aware video released by angel investor Ron Conway’s non-profit group Sf.Citi is so refreshing (see above). It’s a promotional video for a new initiative called Circle the Schools—which encourages tech companies to adopt a local school by donating books or volunteering their time—but it also provides a spot-on sendup of the Silicon Valley startup hype machine.
In the video, Sf.Citi documents the meteoric (and fictional) rise on a startup called MyBook. The conceit is that investors, the media, and the rest of Silicon Valley mistakenly believe this to be the next big project from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Overnight, MyBook is hailed as “disruptive” and “an intersection of shareables and wearables.”
Other businesses start developing their MyBook strategies and one enthusiastic consumer even camps out for the release of MyBook. Stone is hounded by inquisitive texts from fellow Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and celebrity investor Ashton Kutcher. MyBook is the next big thing, only no one knows what the hell MyBook is.
Stone’s real project—which gets overshadowed by MyBook’s breathless coverage until it’s revealed at the end of the video—turns out to be Circle the Schools. The video ends with a clear call to action: “What if schools were the next big thing in tech? They can be.”
The video is a rather enjoyable farce. But it’s not such a far cry from what happened back in 2013 when Stone published a blog post about his new startup, Jelly, in which he revealed only that Jelly would be a tool to “help people do good in the world.” With that cryptic fodder, the rumor mill nearly spun off its hinges.
For those of us who work within the tech echo chamber, the message in the video is an important one. Hype is one of Silicon Valley’s greatest exports. Try to use it for good.
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