Disrupted: Ludicrous Misadventures in the Tech Start-up Bubble

by Dan Lyons

What’s most remarkable is that HubSpot pulled this off even though the company had come within a hair’s breadth of running out of money. Apparently this happens more often than I realized. “It’s called ‘Go public or go broke,’ and it’s not at all uncommon,” says Trip, a former investment banker and venture capitalist. “The one thing people do not appreciate is that these companies are incredibly fragile. There is so much less to them than people believe. The difference between success and failure is so much smaller than people recognize. The whole thing is based on companies trying to achieve escape velocity before they blow themselves up.”