Governments do not build startups!
Yesterday one of the organisers of yet another government programme for “accelerating the growth of growth tech startups” came to see me. Thinking that perhaps I could tell him which startups they should select for a new programme for startups.
But here is the thing. They should select none. They should cancel the whole bloody idea. Because it is yet another hopeless initiative that show that the consultants and interns the government hires to create startup programme have zero insight into what startups actually need.
Actually this one was even worse. It wants to “incubate” already funded fast growing tech startups. Oh, and not the whole company, just the founders which it would remove from the rest of the team for months. But here it is, unless you successfully (and that does NOT mean having run a small consultancy company) have run, grown and preferably sold a tech startup yourself you dont know anything about how to do that!
It is plainly insulting that they think that founders are so stupid they could benefit from incubating from a couple of interns, some old-school corporate managers and consultants. I mean, if these people are that good at it, why dont they start tech startups themselves?
Sorry for the rant, but I am sick of programmes being designed for the consultants to be able to collect a pay check and fit into political agendas, rather than trying to solve problems startups actually have (believe me, there is lots of stuff we would LOVE help with - start by looking at everything admin).
If you’re not going to do anything good with this tax money, then lets put it into healthcare or looking after the elderly or something like that. It certainly does nothing to help generate growth via startups.
Let’s get serious here.
