Folding Table Theory of Start-Ups Is Shite

Michael Malone, a “celebrity business journalist” provided this convenient pat analysis of start-ups:

One of the tools I’m best known for is Folding Table Theory of Start-Ups. It says that when you walk into a new entrepreneurial company and you see a nice lobby and expensive office furniture, that company has its priorities screwed up — either it is more interested in comfort than success or it is over-capitalized and lazy — and it will never make it.

This “theory” has virtually no real predictive value. It’s just a fable, a nice, morally affirmative tale to tell around the camp fire. I’ve seen plenty of glitzy start-ups that succeeded. I’ve also seen plenty of dirt-poor, cheap-arse start-ups that failed. Classic example of glitzy start-up that prospered: Google. It *never* spared any expense in super-expensive office furniture or expensive employee toys and perks. And I also saw lots of excellent, spunky, bare-bones start-ups in San Francisco with wonderful products, clever marketing, driven people, and who patched their servers together with duct tape but that just couldn’t get a nod from fad-obsessed VCs.