Self-admission up front- I am not a tech-weasel. I have
never been an early adopter, my personal cell-phone would be considered and antique
by most, I carry a Blackberry for work, and I have studiously avoided all
things Facebook since 2012. I have been mildly intrigued by the so-called tech
bubble and all of the acquisitions and chitter-chatter about multi-million or
billion dollar deals that seem to pop up in Silicon Valley on a daily basis
almost in spite of a lack of any real products being produced.
That being said, I was interested in getting an
insider’s low down on the world of startups and deal making from somebody who
had been there and done that. It is promised in the form of Antonio Garcia
Martinez’s book, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene
Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. Billed as doing to the tech
world what Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker, did
for Wall Street and investment banks, in Chaos
Monkeys, Martinez walks the reader through getting started in Silicon
Valley and then busting out with a couple of partners to start hacking on their
own project, the dash for cash and working towards the big payoff in the form
of a buyout deal featuring lots of zeros.
Martinez comes off like a smarmy, self-important,
dickhead who likes to point fingers at other smarmy, self-important, dickheads.
He drops names like the Kardashian sisters drop their clothes; the problem is
the folks outside the insular world of Silicon Valley don’t know who these
people are much less care. Aside from high profile tech-weasels like Zuckerberg
or Elon Musk, most people could pick these guys out of a lineup.
If you wade carefully through all of the name dropping
and unwarranted self-importance, Martinez does drop a few crumbs of insight
into the startup process. Most interesting among the crumbs is the fact that
while talk of big dollar deals abounds the reality is those big bucks come with
lots of strings attached, employment contracts and vesting before the big
payoff comes down. Skip any of those little steps and all those zeros end up in
the ether.
In end, Martinez may not reveal a whole lot of the dirt
you may have been hoping for on guys like Zuckerberg other than to possibly
confirm your suspicions of the Facebook founder.
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