I'm writing a book

a book about start-ups

*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•

Happy New Year, friends, and thank you for reading Erin Griffith’s Tribute to the Heroes of Business™.

Some news: I’m writing a book about the ZIRP era.

ZIRP stands for zero interest rate policy. So on some level it is technically a book about interest rates.

But really it’s a book about start-ups.

In recent years the term “ZIRP phenomenon” has become shorthand for 2021’s specific flavor of financial irrationality. As I wrote at the time:

It’s all part of our wild new YOLO FOMO LOL economy, where stonks only go up, memes count as financial advice and stimmies buy Hemis. It’s not particularly rational, but neither is a year of pandemic isolation and burnout, a money-printing Fed and a K-shaped recovery with the potential new Roaring ’20s on the horizon.¹

But the ZIRP era really started back in December of 2008, when interest rates went effectively to zero and hardly budged for more than a decade. During that time, the money pouring into start-ups went from just $37 billion to $330 billion in 2021. The number of billion-dollar start-up “unicorns” went from a few dozen to more than 1,200. The financial press went from worrying about zero-revenue venture fundings to zero-revenue IPOs. Ambitious millennials went from wanting to work on Wall Street to wanting to work at the next Uber or Airbnb. Start-ups went from a quirky niche thing to a central feature of our economy.

So really, it’s a book about the unicorn era. It’s about start-ups in the 2010s in all their disruptive, mission-driven, cash-burning glory. Michelin-starred cafeterias. “Winning” SXSW. Celeb VCs. Hustle culture. Pepper the robot. Narrative violations. Juicero. Yo. The golden age of tech blogs. The millennial lifestyle subsidy. ICOs. Scooters. All the people who got unfathomably rich and all the ones sitting on worthless RSUs from six different start-ups. Daily deals, sharing economy, gamification, the Internet of Things, DTC, meal kits, big data, the quantified self, the metaverse and anything “as a service.”

I’ve been doing this for a long time! A lot of very silly and wonderful art has been commissioned as a result.

Please reach out if you want to reminisce about the ZIRP-iest start-ups, school me on macroeconomics, or share anything else that feels at all relevant.

Just to make it official:

Important Business Matters

Startup everyone’s into: A.I. is disrupting church and churches are hiring turnaround artists.

Startup everyone’s over: Bench has imploded.

Reason to go on living: Everyone can go back to not caring about Adrian Dittman, he’s just a guy named Adrian Dittman.

Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: Tesla can remotely unlock your car.

Latest crush: Beyonce’s pickup truck made of jeans.

Latest heartbreak: Democracy can’t function without a free press.

Latest dramas: SF Burger drama. Hollywood drama.

Latest thing the kids are into: Babies born this year will be known as GENERATION BETA?!?! Really?

Latest thing the olds are into: Sex!

a dall-e summary of this newsletter:

“stonko!”

*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•

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1. We wanted a new Roaring ‘20s, instead we got an SVB bank run, amirite?