TechCrunch Disrupt is a tech conference that makes a lot of money for TechCrunch and gives a little bit of attention to tech startups. It’s a place where people are overly optimistic, eye-buggingly enthusiastic and entirely removed from reality. A conference for buzzwords that don’t mean anything, hollow phrases that sound nice together, and proponents of a dictionary exorcised of vowels.
BuzzFeed FWD’s Jack Stuef went inside the belly of the tech startup beast by seeing what TechCrunch Disrupt was about and found that he didn’t quite belong:
From what I could see, the default in the startup world was either to love an idea dearly or to merely like it. When I talked to startup founders and went down a line of questioning that made it seem I might actually have a negative idea of what they were doing, a disturbed look came over their face. They seemed to think I was confused and just needed to hear more about their startup, so I got stuck talking to some, repeatedly. Eventually I learned to just fake enthusiasm, look down, say, “what a cool idea,” like I was jealous I hadn’t thought of it, and then I was able to walk away.
It’s like a happy high school do-over filled only with enthusiastic tech nerds. What a crazy place. Read FWD’s take on the whole conference here. [BuzzFeed]