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Startups Can't Explain What They Do Because They're Addicted To Meaningless Jargon (qz.com)
Josh Horwitz of Quartz, who is attending RISE Conference, has an observation to share about the startups he is seeing at the event: As startup culture has gone global and transcended stereotypes, though, one of its defining traits has stuck around. Startup jargon is alive and well, and it seems to be getting worse. "Content." "Platforms." "Synergy." "End-to-end." "Solutions." It's nearly impossible to find a startup at the conference that doesn't resort to jargon when describing itself. These words sound technical and informed. But they mean nothing, and they make it difficult for ordinary people to understand what a company actually does. In an effort to either sound smart and attract investors, or to simply dress up an otherwise boring product, startups that rely too much on jargon end up alienating the users they want to attract.Also in the report, Horowitz talks about an app called Cubes, and how it was pitched to him. "We visually organize your email and cloud-based content for ultra fast access. It's visual storytelling with any type of content." The app essentially retrieves non-text attachments from one's email or Dropbox account, takes screenshots of those things and bundles them together in a standalone app.
I'm afraid that "We visually organize your email and cloud-based content for ultra fast access. It's visual storytelling with any type of content." was perfectly clear to me.
I think I've spent too much time absorbing technical buzzwords.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem is that many startups don't do anything of value. A lot of those terms suggest to me they're either middlemen or advertisers. If you have a truly innovative product, it should be easy to describe. The word "content" isn't necessarily bad, though. If I'm writing articles and creating videos about a topic, it might be easier to say I'm producing educational content.
...you forgot "Disruption" as part of the used jargon.
It's a whole-home item aggregation service where the user can organize and prioritize deficit values to leverage on-demand expenditures.
-- grocery list
Add yours below!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
To call the type of cutting edge thought leadership that we do in our particular paradigm landscape nothing more than jargon is simply unsubstantiated. By leveraging the de-facto enterprise-ready solutionspace that your clients are already engaged with, we enable your company to provide truly agile customer-driven projects that have a low ready to market to headcount ratio.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
One of the best things you'll ever read
Chip Morningstar is an author, developer, programmer and designer of software systems, mainly for online entertainment and communication.
Wow I can't stand that word. If that word comes up in your pitch im walking away right then. Not going to say anything just turn around and leave.
But you can't move forward with shifting paradigms without realigning synergies!
I have done proposals to VCs with the produce displayed in simple, terse sentences. The original draft got snubbed, because the would-be funders wanted to see words like "cloud based", "hyperconvergence", "deperimeterization", and other puffery. It almost is a different language, where just stating that "this is something that does 'x'" has to be obfuscated into paragraphs of fluff.
Weird Al's Mission Statement.
Simply crib and your next status report is done.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For your amusement, I present to you the Startup Generator.
Love sees no species.
My general theory, which has served me great for academia, and the business world, and probably applies to startups just is well is:
If someone can't explain something very well in plain English, its almost certainly because they don't understand it very well themselves.
Will you also streamline production and maximize shareholder value?!
If you ever hear "realigning synergies" in relation to your job it means your getting fired.
A foreign language has been creeping into many of the presentations I hear and the memos I read. It adds nothing to a message but noise, and I want your help in stamping it out. It's called gobbledygook. There's no shortage of examples. Nothing seems to get finished anymore it gets "finalized." Things don't happen at the same time but "coincident with this action." Believe it or not, people will talk about taking a "commitment position" and then because of the "volatility of schedule changes" they will "decommit" so that our "posture vis-à-vis some data base that needs a sizing will be able to enhance competitive positions." That's gobbledygook. (February 19, 1970)
Also on topic: the turbo encabulator.
This is not a new phenomenon, unfortunately.
Seriously, tell me WTF this company does:
Gina’s Ink, Incorporated has created a platform called the Change My World Now Initiative, which engages, educates and empowers American children, facilitating their ability to reach out and in turn, empower children in countries around the world to move beyond their present circumstances and to find the independence and dignity that education can provide.
The Change My World Now Initiative transforms the conversation that children are having with themselves, their peers, their parents and their community. Instilling the ideas of self-reliance, self-worth, tolerance, and self-acceptance early in life will have a radical effect on children, their future, and their circles of influence, creating a cadre of young leaders, truly...Changing the World One Bright Light at a Time.
The issue is that many times they think that they won't be taken seriously if they don't use a bunch of jargon. I run into this type of thinking all the time within my field. Customer documents that read like they were written by the devil spawn resulting from a threeway between a lawyer, an engineer, and a marketing executive. It's a hard habit to get out of. People think if you use simple language the customer won't think you are good at what you do. I have to remind people that the document is for reading, not trying to show how smart you think you are. Plus, if the damn thing is actually readable, it might actually get read. Nothing sucks more than generating a 200 page document that it exists solely to check off a deliverable checkbox.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
All you need to know about jargon Weird Al sums up nicely in this music video.
And has he gotten a job with this consulting company?
That is a HORRIBLE surrogate metric for determining quality.
The competency of their marketing department has no bearing on the competency of their engineering department.
I have seen brilliant, and innovative things totally hamstrung by lackluster marketing, and I have seen total filth that isnt worth even a cursory examination being presented in brilliant marketing materials.
How well they transcribe into obscure verbiage is a talent of the marketer. I can see wanting to make sure their marketing department is up to the task, since good products fail from bad marketing, but determining the value of the product from the marketing pitch?! What are you smoking?!
I need to work the word "splagnic ganglion" into conversation somehow.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps
Silicon Valley was so right. My Sig other has learned more about the Silicon Valley watching this show (and Office Space) than any other method...
Bullshit. Some people don't know what a null pointer means, but it does actually mean something.
Synergising canine gonads into a polycultural chromatic win-win narrative doesn't mean anything to anyone, anywhere.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Synergy used to have a specific meaning in business; it pertained to mergers and acquisitions. The point of a merger was to achieve 'synergy' because the two companies owned or produced something that would improve the overall product in some way.
Now, of course, it means fuck all.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Hey, that is my job description you insensitive clod.
Synergising canine gonads into a polycultural chromatic win-win narrative doesn't mean anything to anyone, anywhere.
I assumed it was curried dog testicles in an italian marinara sauce served on hokkien noodles.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The language in academic papers is inflated because the authors are afraid they don't have enough to say. The exception is that rare, rare animal: the seminal paper; papers that really changes things fundamentally in a field. Those are almost invariably written with stark simplicity. You can usually give them to beginner students in the field and they'll have no problem following.
Are papers seminal because they're clearly written? I don't think so; I think what a seminal paper does is communicate a naked simplifying insight that strips away a lot of confusion. The straightforward language is a kind of brash advertisement of that fact.
The reason I think that is that not hacking your meaning into semantic gobbledygook is almost seen as posing. I worked with some Harvard researchers on a grant proposal, and when I sent the draft of my bits to the Harvard team they sent them back butchered into jargon word stew. "This is terrible writing!" I said. "Yes," the researcher said, "it's deplorable. But trust me, it'll play well." And dammit, it did.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Patents Can't Explain What The Invention Is Because They're Full Of Meaningless Jargon
That's my experience, at least. The failing is mine however, as while I can't understand what patents try to say it seems plenty of other people can. I wonder if "Startup Speak" is a similar situation - people who work in that realm understand the language, but just because those of us outside that realm don't grok the language doesn't necessarily mean it's meaningless...?
Are you leveraging crack?
You reap what you sew.
You reap what you sow.
You rieve what you sew.
(Rieve once meant "to pull a thread through a hole" - OK, that usage is about 4 centuries out of date, but it's the only joke I have here.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
My company is not a startup, but back in 2000 when it was, I had a really simple three-word description of what we did:
We stop spam.
And I'm convinced that having a clear understanding of what we were doing and a clear way to communicate it was a factor in our success.
Starting 1996 investors have been knocking on my door begging me to give them a chance to participate in the then dot com boom
I looked around, the price they were willing to pay was ridiculous
I knew something had gone terribly wrong so I started selling
By end of 1998 I sold off 80% of the startups (plural) that I owned (or co-owned) for great sum of $$
Then came the crash
I came back to the scene by mid 2001 or so, and this time around I came back as an investor, picking up valuable pieces (we insiders knew which one is worth how much, not the outsiders), as well as funding some new startups, not only those in the Valley but also the ones in other 'silicon clones' throughout USA
By 2004 I started looking outside of USA. Went first to Germany, made some investments there, then I went to the Far East - Taiwan, Korea, Hongkong, and finally, China
By 2008 the asking price of startups in the Valley got to the ridiculous range again, and I knew something was again amiss, but this time they were BIG NAMES in the sugardaddies list (including a certain multi-billionaire from Hongkong), so I figure the trend could go on a little while longer
But anyway, I started selling, again
By 2010 looking over the newer crop of Valley startups I could only sigh
By 2014 I attended some of those 'sessions' in the Valley where startups tried to impress investors I nearly fainted
Those kids simply do not have anything in common with us
We are nerds, we are geeks, we have a mission, we have a goal, we want to make something, we want to become useful
These kids? They are slick, - too slick , - and their only goal is to dupe the investors
Make no mistake, I still have operations in the Republic of California, but they are for the long haul
I am no longer interested in the 'startups' scene anymore because it has become too toxic for me
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !