

Lately people keep asking me, Do you think we're having another tech bubble? Like an echo bubble or something? Tell you what. Look at these photos from a Yelp party at SFMOMA taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum (whose flicker page is here) and then you tell me. I mean, I'm not 100% sure, but when a) you've got companies with names like "Yelp"; and b) they're having parties at SFMOMA; and c) this man wearing a bra is one of the guests of honor; and d) your PR bimbos are acting like drunken LUGs at a Girls Gone Wild party, and e) it's all being paid for by venture capitalists who are just betting that a bigger fool (cough, Rupert Murdoch, cough) will come along ... well, yeah, you might start thinking that maybe you're in the middle of a bubble type period.
Kids, you seem like a nice bunch, and you're not bad looking, at least by San Francisco standards (in NY or LA people would just laugh), and I'm sure Oberlin was awesome and the year in Prague did you some good and opened your horizons to other cultures and you saw how the rest of the world views America and everything, and I know it's a bummer to be living in the U.S. right now with Bush as president and Rove as head of the Senate or whatever, but at the same time you're soooo into living in the Bay Area and soooo glad to be working with so many rilly rilly smart and cool people and everything ... and you're growing sideburns and a soul patch, or getting your clit pierced and experimenting with bisexuality and taking up snowboarding with a bunch of other faux dykes at Alpine Meadows ... but take some advice from an old guy. You're working a little too hard at showing the world how much fun you're having, okay? You're putting in just a little too much effort at seeming hip. You don't need to make out with other chicks in public to shock us. We've seen it before. And with hotter chicks. And it's not shocking. What is shocking is that drunk, dopey expression on your face and that fugly orange thrift-shop dress and that freaky high-waist gray stretch skirt. Ditto for the big fur coats and indoor bicyle helmets (which yes, do make you look frigtarded) and the conspicuously doofy hat and the beatnik beard which I guess is supposed to make people not notice you're fat.
Look. I know you're trying to come across as hip and bohemian so that people will forget that you're basically nice middle-class kids from the East Coast or the Midwest. I know you don't want anyone to think that you're just as desperately greedy and materialistic as your parents, and that you're secretly hoping to make huge amounts of money to get back at them, and that you're deeply, deeply insecure because your only previous work experience involved typing up the school lunch menus for that local weekly back in Connecticut. But just ease up a bit. Seriously.
So, is there a bubble? Well, I'm no economist. But kids, I wouldn't throw out those Burger King uniforms just yet.
And to all you institutional investors that are pumping your pension fund money into Bessemer Venture Partners, that 100-year-old, very blue blood, very prestigious venture firm that is a lead investor in Yelp, well, the kids out here in the Bay Area just want to say, Thanks, grandpa. Rilly. We're having an awesome time with your money.
(Please note: Both of the above photographs of drunken Yelptards and all of the other fine photographs that are linked in this item were taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. FSJ thanks Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. When this item originally appeared it did not credit Mitchell Aidelbaum and also failed to include a link to Mitchell Aidelbaum's flickr page. FSJ regrets the error and apologizes to Mitchell Aidelbaum for this mistake.)
Monday, August 14, 2006
Hey, Jeremy Levine at Bessemer Venture Partners, here's your money at work
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26 comments:
Well said Steve. Try to hard to look hip and needless to say, wind up doing PR for Dell. Please people, value your McDonalds hats and Blockbuster keys ... and maybe one day, just maybe, you *could* work at the GAP. You're not getting into Starbucks I'm afraid, and don't even think about serious promo work. But never fear because you can always still have the latest iPod.
Bubble 2.0
Hey, isn't that Ellen Feiss?
Oops, try again: Hey, isn't that Ellen Feiss?
No way dude, here's our Ellen in her movie debut. Putting on those cycle helmets inside is beneath the contempt of an actress of her status! ;-)
Fake Steve said: Kids, you seem like a nice bunch, and you're not bad looking, at least by San Francisco standards (in NY or LA people would just laugh).
Hah. That's true. :)
with pupils dilated like that, she's on more than just cold medication . . .
oxymoron: San Francisco standards
and those freaky high-waist stretch pants.
I think that's a mistake. No pants but a skirt.
sharp eye dude. fixed it.
Damn, Fake Steve, you're on a mean streak today. Two people write on your white board recently and bam, all of your good energy is gone.
Poor Fake. Having a dry spell?
Hate to say it, but as one of those kids (and bummed that I didn't RSVP in time to get into that party and instead was at the much more tame Flickr event a mile away), that does really describe the scene here in the bay area these days.
Thanks, I become a designer because I was no good at anything else, only to check other mistakes. A curse.
FakeSteve, you're brilliant, writing about an event you didn't attend making personal attack on people you've never even spoken with. Maybe you don't even have a vendetta or personal agenda with such posts, i dunno.
"Not bad looking" = "not ugly", which is still something in SF (sigh).
I thought you were being pretty nice.
re:"I know you're trying to come across as hip and bohemian so that people will forget that you're basically nice middle-class kids from the East Coast or the Midwest."
Larwence Kansas - William S. fucking Burroughs. Ever HEARD OF HIM? Oh I'm sorry there are no bohemians in flyover country. Just like there's no artists outside of NYC.
If you're gonna take pot shots at me, at least use a funnier picture. I think this one is much better, personally.
Much Appreciated,
Beatnik Fat Dude
Wow, jealous much?
I worked the first boom, now I'm working the second boom (was 21 then, 29 now) and I'm totally enjoying myself. Not sure what the point of hating is, except that you didn't get an invite to the party and it makes you feel left out. Aw.
Both of those chicks graduated from Harvard and are models... this is not a joke... both of their e-mails end at harvard.edu. I think you shouldn't be so quick to judge people.. everyone gets drunk and makes mistakes. Maybe you should try talking to them before you write such a horrible post about people who you have never even communicated with.
i don't know, i think those chics are pretty friggin smoking hot. don't know what you've been doinking lately though.
Wait -- Why are dumb girls always assumed to be PR bimbos? Why can't they be HR bimbos or finance bimbos? These chicks aren't even gainfully employed. And now you need to take it back, Steve. Take it back.
SF tech workers should be beaten with a rusty nail-encrusted 2x4.
Regularly.
And BTW, the term "PR Bunnies" is more accurate, and evocative.
Hehehe, this article was hillarious!
For good or bad, I'm one of those kids (although I didn't go to the party coz I'm lazy bastard and don't enjoy public displays so much, plus I don't necessarily enjoy just drinking til I get stupid type parties), and in many of those photos were some of my friends, heh, BUT I must say the descriptions are very very accurate FSJ, even when you don't know any/many of them (I'm assuming here, but what do I know?)
Of course some of them have made it (there's at least a couple of millionaires in those photos, sorry, can't disclose), but then again, what's really _making_ it? Like you said, compared to LA/NYC scene and big $$, it's nothing. But more importantly, I can't say that the money made much of them, as far as people that is (not the specific ones in the photos, but the Bay area tards)...
Anyways, I'm sure the humor from FSJ was not ill-meant, as some of the posters took it... (further proof that they're from the mid-west, hahaha! and believe me... I "lived" there many a year...)
Cheers y'all, and may we all "make it", and some continue to be fools, while others take advantage of that and get the hell outta here and go for some good ol' world-traveling (and lots of eating!) fun! :)
PS. FSJ, I know you've got millions, but I'm wishing you multiply it and share with us all :)
"both of those chicks graduated from Harvard and are models... this is not a joke... both of their e-mails end at harvard.edu."
So that gives them license to make complete asses out of themselves and we have to look away and pretend they didn't do it. Liek we give GW "Bring it on, Mission Accomplished, ignore teh Constitution" Bush cuz he's an "upper crust" spoiled brat. On the other hand, if they'd gone to Chico we could tar and feather them? What kind of elitist frigtard are you? You know they still have royalty in the Uk so you can go over there and boot lick you way to sycophant nirvana. Friggin' LUZOR.
Friggin hipsters. They'll all end up unhappy bitter mediocre lamelords.
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