Disrupted: We Read It So You Don’t Have To

By


The putative book of the moment in tech circles is Disrupted, journalist Dan Lyons’s chronicle of his short, unsuccessful stint at HubSpot. Fortunately that moment will pass as soon as more people are exposed to it. Disrupted might be a moderately entertaining read for someone who’s never worked at a startup or has never spoken to anyone who worked at a startup, much like Lyons’ Fake Steve Jobs character engaged people who didn’t know much about Steve Jobs. Disrupted is filled with cliched language and pretend revelations (“50 is the new 65”) that someone as savvy as Lyons certainly realized long before he took a gig with the marketing-software firm. Lyons is a 30-plus-year veteran of the tech business. His professed shock at how startups are run rings false and makes one question pretty much everything else here (I can’t believe the real-life Lyons is as green as the one portrayed here). It feels like Lyons created an exaggerated, fictionalized version of himself, conceived with a movie option in mind, rather than shared what really happened, how he really felt, and what he really learned, if anything.

Leave a Reply