The author attended an "American Idol" for startups. It's hip to have a startup. The names of said startups may as well be gibberish (yet they attempt to explain the meaning behind them). Pitches consist of ridiculous buzz words and maketing speak to cover up the fact that none of these ideas are solving problems or something that people want.

tl;dr of my own reply: Have you seen that movie Idiocracy? It's like that, but startups.

It's got what entrepreneurs crave.

He went to Startup Riot, saw a bunch of consumer internet startups pitching their product.

Complained about the names, the language used to describe the ideas ("content" vs "text", "consume" vs "read", etc) and the ideas themselves.

Half of the article sounds like sour grapes, half is legit criticism.

Eh, I don't know. I think it's wise to take a step back and listen to yourself from time to time. When you set out to do something, you start by learning, then by doing, then you recyle that process over and over. You entrench yourself with like-minded individuals, and everything starts to become second nature.

This is the exact moment that you should take a step back and read a piece like this. In the process of trying to succeed, there's a very good chance that you're going to pick up some habits from those around you. Some of those habits are good and will contribute to your progress, but many of them are just useless baggage.

When I read this piece, I thought to myself, "My god, we sound just like the Six Sigma biz-ops guys we make fun of." That's an insight I wouldn't pass up, even if it means feeling a little sting of broken pride.

Yep, I'm right there with you. I enjoyed this piece, and that's why I said half was legit criticism.

If I hear a startup unironically use the term "leverage" or "pivot" one more time...

I think it is allowed if they are engineering some sort of giant pivoting lever.

The author is somewhat disgusted at these people for paying $40-80 to spend a (nice) day inside, listening to each other's powerpoint presentations about startups with weird names which don't really solve anybody's problems.

Part of the hyperbole is normal for articles in The Stranger.

I think sometimes we need a Debbie Downer to critique a party. Imagine if a similar article like this was written in the late '90s ridiculing the excesses and frivolity of the dot-com boom. Perhaps even when things are going great, we should take a step back and think if we're really going in the right direction?

Even if the economics are better this time around, the aesthetics could be better as well.

I don't see how you get "sour grapes" out of this unless you know some backstory.

Ah, yeah, sour grapes was probably the wrong phrase. I was paraphrasing quickly.

I just meant a certain amount of pre-conceived, baked in "anti tech startup" mentality. It didn't seem like this guy was going in with a very open mind.

So what I meant is basically, half the article is legit criticism (ridiculous names, using ridiculous buzzwords and generally untenable startup ideas) - and half just sounded like some guy going being angsty against tech startups "just because"

The problems that startups are trying to solve are too small and too uniform, possibly because marketing language used to define those problems sounds good but means little.

shaaaaark tank

Come on, is about ten short paragraphs. In the time taken to post that and then go through the summaries, you could have read it.