Disrupted : Ludicrous Misadventures in the Tech Start-up Bubble

Dan Lyons was Technology Editor at Newsweek Magazine for years, a magazine writer at the top of his profession.One Friday morning he received a phone call: his job no longer existed.Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was unemployed and facing financial oblivion.Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion.Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital.They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the nebulous role of "marketing fellow." What could possibly go wrong? What follows is a hilarious and excoriating account of Dan's time at the start-up and a revealing window onto the dysfunctional culture that prevails in a world flush with cash and devoid of experience.Filled with stories of meaningless jargon, teddy bears at meetings, push-up competitions and all-night parties, this uproarious tale is also a trenchant analysis of the dysfunctional start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them.It is a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to cash out with a fortune.