Chris Hurtado > Chris's Quotes

“Online marketing is not quite as sleazy as Internet porn, but it’s not much better, either.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Arriving here feels like landing on some remote island where a bunch of people have been living for years, in isolation, making up their own rules and rituals and religion and language—even, to some extent, inventing their own reality. This happens at all organizations, but for some reason tech start-ups seem”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Maybe the best way to do something really innovative is to hire a bunch of young people who have no experience and therefore no preconceived notions about how to run a company.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to talk about a phenomenon called a “bozo explosion,” by which a company’s mediocre early hires rise up through the ranks and end up running departments. The bozos now must hire other people, and of course they prefer to hire bozos.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“These are the bozos. They are graspers and self-promoters, shameless resume padders, people who describe themselves as “product marketing professionals,” “growth hackers,” “creative rockstar interns,” and “public speakers.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“By the occasion of the inaugural Fearless Friday I’ve come to realize that HubSpot is just as crazy as the rest of them. But all of HubSpot’s lofty bullshit about inspiring people and being remarkable and creating lovable content might actually be part of a cynical, and almost brilliant, strategy. HubSpot is playing the game, saying the kind of ridiculous things that investors now expect to hear from start-ups. HubSpot is feeding the ducks.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“The happy!! awesome!! rhetoric masks the fact that beneath the covers, there is chaos.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Another thing I’m learning in my new job is that while people still refer to this business as “the tech industry,” in truth it is no longer really about technology at all. “You don’t get rewarded for creating great technology, not anymore,” says a friend of mine who has worked in tech since the 1980s, a former investment banker who now advises start-ups. “It’s all about the business model. The market pays you to have a company that scales quickly. It’s all about getting big fast. Don’t be profitable, just get big.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“But Silicon Valley has a dark side. To be sure, there are plenty of shiny, happy people working in tech. But this is also a world where wealth is distributed unevenly and benefits accrue mostly to investors and founders, who have rigged the game in their favor.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“This is the New Work, but really it is just a new twist on an old story, the one about labor being exploited by capital. The difference is that this time the exploitation is done with a big smiley face. Everything about this new workplace, from the crazy décor to the change-the-world rhetoric to the hero’s journey mythology and the perks that are not really perks—all of these things exist for one reason, which is to drive down the cost of labor so that investors can maximize their return.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Spinner at one point comes up with an idea to get some publicity. “We should pitch a story about you working here at HubSpot, and how you’re learning a whole new thing,” she says. “We can call it ‘Old Dog, New Tricks.’” I look at her as if to say, You must be kidding. She tries to backpedal, saying she didn’t mean it as an insult. She thinks it’s really cool that I’ve joined this company with such a young culture and I’ve done such an awesome job of fitting in. I want to believe she means well. I tell her I’ll think about”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Making the movie” is the term that a venture capitalist friend applies to the process of building a start-up. In my friend’s tech-company-as-movie analogy, the VCs are the producers and the CEO is the leading man. If possible, you try to get a star who looks like Mark Zuckerberg—young, preferably a college dropout, with maybe a touch of Asperger’s. You write a script—the “corporate narrative.” You have the origin myth, the eureka moment, and the hero’s journey, with obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, markets to disrupt and transform. You invest millions to build the company—like shooting the movie—and then millions more to promote it and acquire customers. “By the time you get to the IPO, I want to see people lined up around the block waiting to get into the theater on opening night. That’s what the first day of trading is like. It’s the opening weekend for the film. If you do things right, you put asses in the seats, and you cash out.”
― Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

“Tsukiko, she murmured, being in love makes people uncertain. Don’t you know what that’s like?”
― Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo

“A love fated in the stars.’ As I sat there, watching the happy couple seated on the wedding platform and listening to the toast, I remember thinking to myself there wasn’t a chance in a million that I would ever encounter ‘a love fated in the stars’.”
― Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo

“Is that what you called benevolence? With Sensei, his benevolent nature seemed to originate from his sense of fair-mindedness. It wasn’t about being kind to me; rather, it was born from a teacherly attitude of being willing to listen to my opinion without prejudice. I found this considerably more wonderful than him just being nice to me.”
― Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo

“That was quite a discovery for me, the fact that arbitrary kindness makes me uncomfortable, but that being treated fairly feels good.”
― Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo

“If people don’t reply when you speak to them and never initiate conversation, you soon forget they’re there. Alicia had quickly melted into the background, becoming invisible.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress. The same goes for verbalization”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror / Just keep going. No feeling is final / Don’t let yourself lose me.”
― Melissa Febos, Abandon Me

“Because you know what I’ve learned, no matter how long I wait? That I will never be someone that is effortlessly good, it’ll always be hard work for me, and I’m not that strong.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I think some people are just born broken. I think about life as one big Laundromat and some people just have one little bag to do—it’ll only take them a quick cycle to get through—but others, they have bags and bags of it, and it’s just so much that it’s overwhelming to even think about starting. Is there even enough laundry detergent to get everything clean?”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“We want the people we know to be who we think they are, and to stay how we know them.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires