We also like to call them the Boys of Summer – those unicorn tech super founders, that is.

As the New York Times noted, The Boy Bosses of Silicon Valley Are on Their Way Out, dismounting their unicorns and heading for the hills, with their largesse in tow and never mind the layoffs and loss of shareholder value that they’ve left in their wake.

 

The Boys of Summer is a reference to the Don Henley song about aging out of youth, as happens to us all.  Here we use the phrase to mean that the sun seemed to always shine on the tech boy bosses/bros, as they got whatever they demanded from investors – or so it went as long as the sun shone on Silicon Valley and truth be told, most tech stocks were overinflated. In this case, as always, with age comes responsibility and that gets old fast, what, eh, boys? What to speak of the fact that the waiter always comes around with the check.

 

But back to our story: as The Times pointed out, it started with that apotheosis of the genius and seemingly infallible tech founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who “demanded investors let him keep a controlling interest in Facebook as it grew, ushering in today’s era of “founder-friendly” deal-making. Young, ambitious men like Mr. Zuckerberg received similar protections and leeway as venture capital firms rushed to appear as accommodating as possible, lavishing the entrepreneurs with perks (dinners, jets, celebrities) and services (recruiting, public relations, design)…

“They stayed in the top jobs, even when the companies outgrew their skills as managers. And they kept their companies private for as long as possible, avoiding pesky business realities like turning a profit. They were given the benefit of the doubt — something female founders rarely got.”

 

And therein lies the rub. Women founders seldom attract the investor money that male founders at least formerly did. Women are more cautious – and budget-conscious – and in those halcyon days that have disappeared since the market downturn, women were still receiving less investment money than men, even as the investment dollars to men were rising.

 

“In recent weeks, Ben Silbermann, a co-founder of the digital pinboard service Pinterest, resigned as chief executive; Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of the home rental company Airbnb, announced his departure from the company’s leadership; and Apoorva Mehta, the founder of the grocery delivery app Instacart, said he would end his run as executive chairman when the company went public, as soon as this year.” Now Ben Chestnut is stepping down as CEO of Mailchimp 21 years after cofounding the company, and moving into a founder-advisor role.

 

Might have been interesting if The Times article had also mentioned women who were exiting their leadership roles. We haven’t seen anything on that lately or at all.

Of course, how often does the tech press ignores the elephant in the living room?

 

Even Zuckerberg is having challenges pivoting his company and staying relevant. Then again, This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion – supposedly private text messages between mother and daughter. But not to worry. Said Business Insider, “Facebook rolls out new privacy test for messages after facing backlash for handing over chats to Nebraska police of girl accused of having an illegal abortion,” including end-to-end encryption on Messenger. At the same time, we learned that Facebook can track your Internet history and credit card number on other websites. Meta is reportedly ‘rewriting’ websites visited by its users and tracking them across the web to find out what they look at – it apparently ‘monitors all user interactions’ for advertising.

At this juncture, all we can say is ‘ostensibly.’ Given his history, at this point, most feel that he can just stick it where the sun don’t shine.

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Still, you have to love the optics and speaking of optics and the boy bands, as they’re on their way out of their respective doors, “Leaving as billionaires,” as The Times noted, “they have emanated Silicon Valley’s relentless positivity. Pinterest “is just getting started,” Airbnb “is in the best hands it’s ever been in” and Instacart has a “enormous opportunity ahead,” the founders wrote.”

Having a hard time believing you all these days…

 

Given the massive hiring that went on during those halcyon days – get funded, spend, spend, spend! Increase body count and no pay no attention to either that man behind the curtain with the MBA, or to the bottom line. Hire more people, get more headlines and you do have to wonder how complicit the tech press was in what led to the current tech downturn.

 

Were any of the unicorn darlings paying attention to operations at all?

Brad Hargreaves, co-founder of General Assembly and more lately founder and CEO of Common, is yet another one stepping down from the executive role. “The market downturn factored into Mr. Hargreaves’s decision,” said The Times. “In flush times, he said, it’s good to have a founder at the top of the company who can sell investors, employees and customers on a grand vision. “Operations don’t really matter that much,” he said. “No one’s really watching the bottom line.”

And there you have it.

 

Tough times call for wartime CEOs, not media/investor darlings, and that’s precisely what we’re seeing play out. The boys of summer are clearly not up to the job – nor did they ever bother to acquire the skill sets to help them to navigate through challenging times. Said Kevin Werbach, a professor of business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to The Times, “If you’re as already rich, famous and successful as these guys, there usually comes a point where staying in the saddle is less appealing than riding off into the sunset.”

 

Especially given that after all this time, considering the Silicon Valley playbook which they all seemed to have followed, chapter and verse, it might all have added up to little more than mechanical bull. Onward and forward.