Angels? Really? YouвЂ™ve plucked your self-serving moniker from the parables of a religion that specifically and explicitly had its head honcho throw the money men out of the temple and proclaim a rich man less likely to make it into heaven than a camel through a needleвЂ™s eye. LetвЂ™s start at the bottom: People who make lots of little bets on many potential unicorns have christened themselves angels. A whole generation of people working with and for the internet enthralled by the prospect of being transformed into a mythical creature.Д«ut who can blame them? This set of fairytale ideals are being reinforced at every turn. ItвЂ™s turned into an obsession with unicorns and the properties of their вЂњsuccessвЂќ. In this atmosphere, the term startup has been narrowed to describe the pursuit of total business domination. In fact, itвЂ™s hard to carry on a conversation with most startup people these days without getting inundated with odes to network effects and the valiance of deferring вЂњmonetizationвЂќ until you find something everyone in the whole damn world wants to fixate their eyeballs on. ItвЂ™s not enough to serve customers, they have to capture them. ItвЂ™s not enough to be in the market, they have to dominate it. No, they have to fucking own the universe. Part of the problem seems to be that nobody these days is content to merely put their dent in the universe. That perhaps this zeal for disruption is not only crowding out other motives for doing a startup, but also can be downright poisonous for everyone here and the rest of the world.

Well, the reason IвЂ™m here is to remind you that maybe, just maybe, you too have a nagging, gagging sense that the current atmosphere of disrupt-o-mania isnвЂ™t the only air a startup can breathe. Why am I even listening to this guy? IsnвЂ™t this supposed to be a conference for the winners of game startup? Like people whoвЂ™ve either already taken hundreds of million in venture capital or at least are aspiring to? Who the hell in their right mind would waste more than a decade toiling away at a company that doesnвЂ™t even have a pretense of an ambition for Eating The Worldв„ў. I know what youвЂ™re thinking, right? BOOOORING. We donвЂ™t even have a San Francisco satellite office!

Even worse: There are still, after all these years, less than fifty people working at Basecamp. It didnвЂ™t add any new members to the three-comma club. Along the way it made for a comfortable business to own for my partner and me, and a great place to work for our employees. A little nicer than trying to manage a project over email or by stringing together a bunch of separate chat, file sharing, and task systems. It took a part of some peopleвЂ™s work life and made it a little better. About 12 years ago, I co-founded a startup called Basecamp: A simple project collaboration tool that helps people make progress together, sold on a monthly subscription.

Umsatz t systems