Startups - the latest hot ticket item for journos...

Despite the name of this blog, it's no longer summer, and we're almost beyond fall, on the cusp of winter. But I'm back and still blogging! It's been a while since the last post, for a few reasons. Workload is a pretty boring excuse and I do have a better one - Blogger changed their interface and during the interchange I somehow lost a post, which was really annoying. I was so pissed off that I am only now returning, after a brief flirtation with Tumblr.

There is a lot going on in the tech startup world here. Many of these themes seem to resonate with the media and it's amazing to me how often startups and Silicon Valley feature in serious sections, such as the Sunday Business section of the New York Times. Michael Ellsberg's article on whether "Dropouts will save America" was interesting. The Times also recently ran a feature on Andrew Yang, who is starting Venture for America, a "Teach for America for startups". I saw Andrew speak at the TiE FORSE conference in Boston and his idea is compelling. There are at least seven journalists with different slants writing on startups in the Small Business Blog and this is just the Times. We knew that startups had truly gone "Hollywood" after The Social Network hit theatres, but this cultural phenomenon was formalized when newspapers started covering which stars were investing in which new companies (in case you're curious, Leonardo Di Caprio invests in Mobli; for more gossip on which stars invest, read this Mashable article.) News vehicles from USA Today to the Wall Street Journal have been hitting the startup beat. Check out this article from Bostinnovation which associates entrepreneurship with being sexy.
The flavor of the moment is that startups are saving America from the recession and that we need to invest in entrepreneurship to drive our economy. Entrepreneurs are the new heroes because they are creating jobs. It's a hot ticket to be writing about startups, at the moment - which I love! However I can't help but feel unease at the bubble that seems to be growing around the startup sector, and the expectations that come with large IPO's like those of LinkedIn, Groupon (and maybe Facebook, sometime next year.)

I'm hoping to find the time and discipline to write more posts on the themes I've seen emerge in startup through my role at Catchafire. Tomorrow's post will be about curation: how it's emerged organically over the past few years and how entrepreneurs are taking it to a new level by building businesses purely on the basis of curation, or taste.

Picture courtesy of dierken on flickr