Harvard Shows How Stupid Most Startups Are & How Much Harvard Wants To Be Dartmouth

"A group of grad students from Harvard's Innovation Lab have come up with a start-up to help people unplug from the daily grind. Getaway builds and rents tiny homes that they place in the Massachusetts wilderness and rent out. While feeling like it's in the middle of nowhere, its only about two hours away from Boston, making it the perfect weekend escape." Business Insider courtesy of @scttdvd

A huge percentage of all startups are just the stupidest, most pointless, uninspiring ideas people are trying to get rich off of. No one just invents anything good anymore. They instead come up with ideas, make apps for them, beg for funding from people, try and get meetings with higher-ups in the startup chain, then try to sell their "businesses" as soon as they have any relative success. Notice how much I use the word "try" here. It's because startups are by and large such try-hards.

I'm not saying all startups are dumb; some of them are brilliant and have earned their huge profits or buyouts. However, most startups are as useless as tits on a boar and consequentially worth diddly squat. When you get down to it, most startups are like most twitter jokes: they're not good enough to be in real venues (be it businesses or comedy shows), so they instead get used on a throwaway, unprofitable stage. That's to say that Twitter provides an unpaid stage, not to say that Twitter isn't profitable. Although its recent stock profile suggests otherwise.

South Park perfectly nailed what's so dumb and hilarious about startups and startup culture (as well as the Washington Redskins):

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da1a6bb/a-4-step-startup-plan-for-every-aspiring-founder-according-to-south-parks-eric-cartman.jpg

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da1a6bb/a-4-step-startup-plan-for-every-aspiring-founder-according-to-south-parks-eric-cartman.jpg

Startups are in general a bunch of silly people with silly ideas trying to make silly amounts of money. It's not this money aspect that is stupid--making money off ideas is one of many things that makes this country great. What is stupid is just how lazy and dumb a lot of the ideas actually are.

The cream of the stupid recent startup crop is this Harvard one. Scott is exactly right, they're trying to make money off of cabins. They're claiming to have startedup or startupped or startedupped cabins. They essentially say it in the video. What are these guys thinking? It's not even an original name, "Getaway." Do they seriously think they can Getaway with denying the prior existence of resort and cabin culture, a staple of this country for oh, I don't know, most of the time it's existed? Holy crap is this just the most moronic.

Most of the time I expect eons more out of Harvard, but with this specific idea, I'm not the slightest bit surprised. Everyone knows most Harvard kids in their hearts are just Dartmouth wannabes. They were smart enough but not nearly fun, cool, or outdoorsy enough to make it at The College on the Hill. They have such a mental block and inferiority complex about it that they literally pine to be the Lone Pine. I'm not saying that Dartmouth invented the cabin--no, we just build a ton of them and they're fricken' sweet, way better than these piece of crap Harvard ones--I'm just saying these Harvard kids' startup is a cry for both financial and identity help. Think I've gone overboard? You know what else is about two hours away from Boston? DARTMOUTH.

Classic stupid startup and classic lame Harvard. Next thing you know, Harvard is going to launch a pong startup and act like they invented that, which everyone knows Dartmouth did. Sorry for preaching so much veritas, but this is just such a sad vox clamantis in deserto.