Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

ISBN 10: 1478939435 ISBN 13: 9781478939436

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2016

Synopsis

For years Dan Lyons was a leading tech journalist-- until the Friday his Newsweek boss called. His job? Gone. Fifty years old with two kids, Lyons was screwed. Then an idea hit. For years he'd seen people strike gold in the start-up boom. Why not him? One tech company, flush with $100 million, offered a pile of stock options. What could go wrong? His new employer made the world a better place-- by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: shower pods became hook-up dens, nerf-gun fights broke out at lunch, and absent bosses specialized in cryptic, jargon-filled emails. In the middle of this sat Lyons, old enough to be his coworkers' father.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Lyons is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He is a co-producer and co-writer for the HBO series Silicon Valley. Previously, he was technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of the groundbreaking viral blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." He has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired. His fiction has earned both a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship and the Playboy College Fiction Prize. He has a BA from Bradford College and an MFA from the University of Michigan.

Review

New York Times bestseller
Wall Street Journal bestseller
San Francisco Chronicle bestseller

"Using his trademark wit and clear-eyed analysis, Dan Lyons has delivered a much-needed referendum on the current state of Silicon Valley. In wildly entertaining fashion, Disrupted explores the ways in which many technology companies have come to fool the public and themselves. Lyons has injected a dose of sanity into a world gone mad."―Ashlee Vance, New York Times-bestselling author of Elon Musk

"Dan 'Fake Steve' Lyons runs such a savage burn on his ex-employer, HubSpot, that the smoke can be seen clear across the country in Silicon Valley. Disrupted is fun, compulsively readable and just might tell us something important about the hypocrisy and cult-like fervor inside today's technology giants."―Brad Stone, New York Times-bestselling author of The Everything Store

"Dan Lyons goes deep inside a company that uses terms like 'world class marketing thought leaders' to show us how ridiculous, wasteful, and infantile tech start-ups like this can be. And best of all, Lyons does this with his trademark pejorative and hilarious tone."―Nick Bilton, New York Times technology columnist

"Troubling but funny ... [a] coolly observant book ... [with] a splendidly weird coda ... You couldn't have written a tastier ending, even for HBO."―Dwight Garner, New York Times

"Disrupted by Dan Lyons is the best book about Silicon Valley today.... Simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, Disrupted is an insider's look at a technology start-up from an outsider's perspective. Yet it's more than a chronicle of Lyons' tenure at one company, but a broader commentary on a business culture that often appears to be built on financial quicksand."―Los Angeles Times

"As the writer behind the satirical blog Fake Steve Jobs, [Lyons] could not have imagined a place so ripe for parody as HubSpot. Every detail of the hip office space, incompetent management, and delusional workforce described by Lyons in his hilarious and unsettling exposé is like something out of a scripted comedy (the author writes for HBO's Silicon Valley) ... An exacting, excoriating takedown of the current startup 'bubble' and the juvenile corporate culture it engenders."―Kirkus Reviews

"Scathingly funny .... Like the show 'Silicon Valley,' Disrupted nails the workings of spastic, hypocritical, delusional tech culture."―New York Post

"Laugh-out-loud funny."―Newsweek

"Read this book if you work or invest in tech and, in particular, tech startups. And not just for the tales of corporate intrigue, hypocrisy, and ridiculousness that have caused HubSpot and its allies to get so hot under their collective collar.... [Lyons] makes a strong case for how all of that young labor, when increasingly wrapped up into an over-arching 'corporate culture,' creates subtle age discrimination that these employees won't recognize for years to come. This not only is a real (albeit virtually ignored) issue at tech companies today, but is going to become a much larger one as digital natives continue to age."―Dan Primack, Fortune.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1478939435
• ISBN 13: 9781478939436
• Binding: Audio CD