Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble

Moderator:

Steve Smith, The Starr Conspiracy

Speaker:

Dan Lyons, author
For 25 years, Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession — until one Friday morning when he received a phone call. Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston startup, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong?

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Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble

For 25 years, Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession — until one Friday morning when he received a phone call. Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston startup, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong?