I am simple: any demonstration of productive risk-taking impresses and inspires me. I believe that anyone who believes in him or herself enough to quit a job and work on a business idea deserves credit and respect.

So this is my rant against those who are trying to make “startups” (or Silicon Valley, or entrepreneurship, or whatever) into a clique.

First Issue: How do you know if you’re being clique-ish?

I think there are two signs:

You believe there are rules for how to “do startups”, and

You judge the shit out of anyone who doesn’t do things according to those rules.

Some examples of ridiculous behavior:

First example: I sent an intro this week to a BD person (let’s call him “Bob”) at a decent-sized startup that hasn’t found its killer use case yet. So he needs help. I sent the intro during a coffee with the guy I wanted to introduce to Bob, so I just shot a quick email saying “you guys are both in BD, you’re both in cool startups, you’ll get along, so you should meet.”

My expectation was that Bob would go to coffee with my friend, they’d chat, and they’d sort out whether they could work together. At a minimum, they can probably help each other out.

Instead, I got a long email response from Bob lecturing me on “blind intros” and how they are a pet peeve. This included links to some popular tech blogs on whatever a “blind intro” is supposed to be. What. The. Fuck?

Here’s a sign of reading too many tech blogs: when you start using vocabulary that no one else understands, then presume it is widespread “startup etiquette,” and then decide it so fully applies to your life that you should send people links to those blogs when they don’t behave as the blogs tell you to.

Get over yourself. Like 99.9999% of the planet, I don’t read your silly tech blogs. Just get the coffee and try to be classy about it.

A second example: using the word “startups” as if it were an industry all to itself.

Dear Silicon Valley: we are not all doing the same thing, and none of it is world changing. We are just doing what business people have been doing since the dawn of capitalism: trying to make a profit.

Quit talking about “startups” like it’s this special, exciting new world with its own set of rules. The problems you face are no different than those of any profit-seeking enterprise you deal with on a day-to-day basis, like the 7-11, or Starbucks, or the folks who change your oil.

Side note: I guarantee you that the gal who opens a Rosetta Stone kiosk in the mall knows more about making money, and what a “business” is, than 95% of us in the Bay Area. Especially MBAs.

A third example: using the word, and especially writing about, “wantrapreneurs.” These articles are what I’m talking about.

You shame yourself by thinking that you have the right to decide who is a “real” entrepreneur and who isn’t. Doing so is a strong indicator that you don’t have the first clue how to create a profitable enterprise from scratch. Also, no one has heard of you.