Kathryn Minshew

I’ve been playing around with this idea of narrative shifts lately. Over my 15 years in startups (I joined Box in 2009), there have been three distinct umbrella narratives for the tech/startup ecosystem. I believe we’re in the early years of a new one. The first narrative probably started around 2007 or 2008, with the launch the iPhone and App Store, and ended with the 2016 presidential election. This was an era where founders were scrappy underdogs, and tech was a force for good. The industry had finished licking its wounds from the dot-com crash, and was the first to rebound from the Great Recession. The combined platform shifts of cloud and mobile were transformative for consumers and businesses alike, and nearly all startups painted themselves as “democratizing” forces. New business models emerged (Uber for X). Disruption was (mostly) good, and startups largely got the benefit of the doubt. Even the bigger players were seen as challengers—in fact, Steve Jobs is probably the best figurehead for the ethos of this era, all its optimism and potential, maybe even more so after his death. Marc Andreessen is another—a hero of a prior era returned to build a firm that broke with conventional venture wisdom and unabashedly celebrated founders. Software was eating the world, and we were thrilled. And then came the 2016 election, and with it, an era of reckoning. Tech got bigger and bigger, but its growth and influence were increasingly called into question. There was widespread soul searching in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory—had tech, and Facebook specifically, undermined our democracy? Two years later, we had an answer with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Me Too movement swept the tech industry in 2017, and we grappled with power imbalances and abuse. Travis Kalanick, a pioneer of the prior narrative era, was ousted from his company by his own investors. Meanwhile, valuations kept going up, the SPAC frenzy began, and people were getting rich overnight on NFTs and meme stocks. The pandemic initially looked like it might put an end to this party, but no—tech reached new heights. Venture investments and valuations skyrocketed while companies grappled with employee burnout and demands for more equitable practices in the wake of the BLM movement. Coinbase was a perfect poster company for this tension—a phenomenal IPO, and unrest within its ranks. Sam Bankman-Fried tried to meet the moment with a carefully crafted do-gooder image, but became our perfect villain with the collapse of FTX in 2022, following the bursting of the web3 bubble and a market reset for all of tech. I think our third era started last year, after the shockwave of 2022…I’ll call this the anti-hero narrative. The bottoming out of the startup ecosystem gave founders permission to do what needed to be done—mostly, layoffs. Unlike in the era of reckoning, the tone became unapologetic. Elon led the way, slashing Twitter’s workforce in the wake of its acquisition, espousing free speech—the more shocking and offensive, the better. The criticism continues, of course, but tech’s most powerful no longer care. The spirit is gleefully combative: anti-media, anti-woke, anti-DEI. Once controversial industries like defense tech are celebrated; once taboo political opinions are expressed without reservation. AI is our new platform shift, and the ethos of e/acc captures this moment perfectly: technological progress is inevitable and we should run after it at all costs. Mark Zuckerberg is back, fully rehabilitated from the prior era, with his chain necklace and cage match challenges. Jensen Huang, one of the heroes of the AI wave, wasn’t toppled from his throne for signing a woman’s chest; if anything, it made him shinier. Progress is what matters, how we get there matters less. The narrative—and vibes—have definitely shifted. And of course, no era describes any one company, and no era is all good or all bad. Nor are the phases perfectly distinct: the seeds of each are planted in the era prior. Like with platform shifts, understanding how your business fits into the broader context is essential. No narrative exists in a vacuum. The stories we tell about ourselves, about our industry, help shape our reality. They influence what kinds of ideas and founders are backed. Where talent flocks. Where we’re willing to suspend disbelief. At the same time, most companies don’t get to live snugly in the bubble of tech—the way they (and our industry) are perceived by customers and partners outside our sector is essential to their success. Which means this is an especially interesting and challenging phase we’re entering: the newly combative spirit of the tech industry, paired with an AI platform shift that’s going to transform every sector, disrupt labor markets, and touch the lives of consumers around the world.