The problem with start-up culture
Mark Zuckerberg’s credo “move fast and break things” guided Silicon Valley start-ups for many years. It proved to be a winning philosophy. Big Californian tech companies innovated brilliantly, expanded rapaciously and generated ludicrous sums of money. Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google shape the way we live and wield astonishing power all over the world. Because of their success, other companies try to imitate their corporate habits and style.
The big four became economic giants sometimes complain that Canada is a bad while cultivating the personas of rebel place to grow a business—that we are teens gate-crashing the stuffy corporate over-regulated and overtaxed, and that establishment. They were capitalists, sure, investors are too slow to take risks. Industry but revolutionaries too, empowering the players convene panels and conferences dispossessed with information, equipping on the question of our competitiveness, activist groups with better communication trying to figure out how Toronto can truly tools and providing workers with new become Silicon Valley North. economic opportunities. But maybe Canada’s signature prudence Along the way, however, they did break will serve us well in the long run. Maybe many things. Big tech decimated the media we’ll learn from the mistakes of our business and launched the greatest disruption headline-grabbing counterparts south of of the labour market since the Industrial the border. Maybe, instead of trying to Revolution—all while ingeniously replicate the cowboy culture that has led avoiding paying its fair share of corporate to so many public relations catastrophes, taxes. Facebook is in the news constantly we’ll build our own, better version. Maybe for the threat it presents to democracy itself. Toronto can become a powerful global It possesses the largest-ever repository of tech centre that’s also guided by a strong personal data, which can be exploited to ethical compass. It’s nice to see some local sway elections and spread propaganda. CEOs working toward that goal. The sanctimony of Silicon Valley’s early Four years ago, my colleague, Mark years has given way to unease, skepticism Pupo, an exacting editor with a sharp eye and congressional hearings. for detail, left Toronto Life to work at a Even the much-admired, bro-ish playground rapidly expanding tech company. (He vibe of start-ups, with their pingpong continued freelancing for this magazine tables, candy buffets and beer on as its chief restaurant critic. You might tap, has come to be associated with a know him as the guy who ranks the city’s culture of sexual harassment and discrimination. best new restaurants every April.) Though Shane Smith stepped down he threw himself into his new job, he never as CEO of Vice Media after several employ-really embraced the ethos, and he couldn’t ees were accused of sexual misconduct. help but see his new industry through the Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was pushed eyes of a reporter. The resulting story out for fostering a toxic workplace. In about his misadventures, “Animal House,” November, 20,000 Google employees is an entertaining on-the-ground account walked off the job in a one-day protest of what he observed and learned. against corporate sexism and systemic In the end, journalism won Mark back. racism. Big tech is being forced to admit I hope we get to keep him. that there is more to corporate citizenship than maximizing shareholder value.
What does this period of moral reckoning mean for Toronto start-ups? Entrepreneurs