Belgium doesn’t need more startups if you want long-term innovation. Having little dedicated teams raising money from a very specific part of the population and selling out 18 months later to American tech giants is not gonna help create many jobs in Belgium. Silicon Valley profits California a lot because eventually those startups are going to be acquired by tech giants in the region. But Belgian startups selling out to US-tech giants have little to offer to the Belgian economy (especially without a tax on capital gain).
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Most startups have a terrible culture, hostile against minorities and affected by what is known as the brogrammer culture. CEOs believing they are making impact by building a to-do app. It’s just a facade. I found little ethical considerations in that specific Silicon Valley kind of startup.
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Our relationship with Google is pretty close to the medieval feudal system. They provide us a service and in exchange we give them our data. The “digital knights” are in control, the vassals must abide by the dictated law (terms of services), do they really have a choice to enter that contract? Not really.
Je suis toujours tiraillé au sujet des startups. Il y a le côté « pire représentation du capitalisme ». Mais il y a aussi une forme d’espérance, de naïveté entrepreneuriale. Je ne ferai pas les erreurs de mes pairs/pères. On retrouve ce pharmakon dans toute création. Y compris la création d’humains.