This morning I was reading Shira Ovide’s article about Silicon Valley’s Meh Middle and nodding my head vigorously. Having been a survivor of some of those very meh startups, I understand how often they’re overlooked. Not everyone is a superstar. And not everyone fails miserably, no matter how often people tell us to Fail Forward. A lot of startups, well, they’re right in the middle. And they tend to be forgotten.
Failure and the Meh Middle
Sometimes I think of the meh middle as large airliners that float down slowly. They don’t go down in flames in a Grey’s Anatomy-styled dramatic crash. Neither do they land perfectly. Some startups might land slightly off the runway and slide into the water. And we never hear from them again. We might hear about them when they’re young companies, but later? Nothing. Nada. Zip. By the way, you might like this article about failure: Is Failure Mandatory on the Road to Success?
Where do the Meh Middle companies go?
Those meh middle companies do not go gentle into that good night as Dylan Thomas said. It’s more like they fade away. Their inventory is sold one day and like an old, sad Blockbuster store, they turn into a place that sells Bundt cakes. Maybe there are a couple of employees in the back, working to clean the place up. Maybe there’s just a guy with a shopping cart taking the used laptops out to the trunk of his SUV, hoping to sell them on eBay. And make a few bucks.
Nobody writes about the Meh Middle guys
Can you imagine a movie or novel about the meh middle guys? It would be like one of those performance art pieces where you watch someone sleep for eight hours. Chris Burden and Andy Warhol both actually did that, but that’s a story for another day. I’m not sure that with social media, people have the capacity to watch someone sleep for very long. We can’t stand to be bored for very long, can we? Even ten minutes of watching would be too much! Personally, I’m a big fan of learning from failure. You might like What Happens When You Focus on Failure and Creativity?
Not minnows, but not whales
As Shira Ovide says these meh middlers are not minnows. But they’re not whales either. They’re sort of like those child actors that you remember every once in a while in the shower. But where are they now? Luckily we have Google to help us remember and unearth photos of what they’ve been doing. We may not always have an accurate record of the companies that slide into oblivion, however. Is it too painful to focus on the startups that are neither dramatic successes or crazy failures?
Why should we care?
Like the dramatic failures, there’s gold to discover in the Meh Middle. If we forget what happened, we could repeat history. Because there were moments where something wonderful and good could have happened. And sometimes those in-betweeners turn things around and become glowing successes. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to have a record of those companies, what went wrong, and what could have been?
Speak Your Mind