Book Review: Startup by Doree Shafrir

If you like your summer reads served with a hefty side order of tweets, selfies and slack channels, you will probably enjoy BuzzFeed writer Doree Shafrir's novel Startup, a darkly comic, smart and keenly observed cautionary tale set in New York's fast-paced, social-media-saturated tech startup world.

The novel opens at a booze-free, pre-breakfast Morning Rave in a gentrified factory in hinterland between Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The young, the hip and the tech-savvy are all there to dance, network and post hashtag-hijacked selfies to their Instagram accounts. Present at the party are two twenty-somethings: Mack McAllister, the ambitious founder of a fledgling startup called TakeOff, and Katya Pasternack, a budding reporter struggling to prove her worth at online tech news outlet TechScene.

Mack needs to secure investment to launch the new-and-improved version of TakeOff app, a mindfulness app that scans your texts, social media posts and other data, in order to anticipate how you might be feeling at a given time and offer motivational suggestions to improve your mood. However, scaling up a small business into a larger, slicker operation — especially in New York, thousands of miles from Silicon Valley — comes with its challenges, and Mack himself, as a high-profile figure in the industry who has grand, perhaps even hubristic ambitions, is just one inappropriate text or tweet away from a crushing fall from grace.

Meanwhile, the founders of TechScene want the reporters to stop going for the low-hanging clickbait stories that bring in a steep but transient spike of page views and seek out the stories that yield greater engagement: repeat visits, comments, social media shares and 'scroll depth'. This is no mean feat when you can spend weeks reporting on a story only to be scooped by a single tweet spoiling the take-home message if you wait too long before publishing.

Fate brings Mack and Katya together a Katya accidentally stumbles on a potential lead that could secure her future at TechScene while destroying Mack's career. But nothing is straightforward in the incestuous New York tech world, where a reporter's boss might be married to someone who works for the company the reporter is writing about, and where publishing the story might also harm the reporter's relationship with her own boyfriend, who also runs a startup.

Shafrir's novel is sharp, fast-paced and all too familiar — particularly for anyone who works in technology, new media, social media or digital marketing. The point of view alternates between several key characters (most of them female, refreshingly); some are more likeable than others, but most are convincingly written. Mack sees himself as Steve Jobs, but others are less confident in his leadership and talent. He reminded me more of Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network; at one point, he literally clicks refresh in an app waiting for a response, mirroring the final scene of David Fincher's film. Katya, as the young, solitary, single-minded hack, is a recognisable trope too, but Shafrir's writing brings verve and wit to the character.

I finished Startup in a single day and it's a tightly plotted, compelling tragicomedy of the digital age. It would also make a nice companion piece to Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed — or, of course, The Social Network, if you haven't already seen it.

Disclaimer: Startup was published by Little, Brown on 25 April. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Modern Love

From this week's Private Eye:

Cartoon from Private Eye 1307

If the Eye were a less old-fangled publication, the cartoonist would have referenced Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube or possibly even Pinterest, but blogs are probably quite modern enough.

"What Does 'Hubris' Mean, Man?"

I should really be vlogging this review to capture the feel of Chronicle, Josh Trank's Carrie-esque movie for the YouTube generation but, of course, I don't vlog.

At a high-school rave, loner Andrew (Dane DeHaan) is persuaded by his more-intellectual-than-thou cousin Matt (Alex Russell), and handsome, charming class-president-to-be Steve (Michael B. Jordan) to go and film some freaky goings on in the woods. Andrew takes his video camera everywhere and films everything, from the mundane to the inappropriate. The three go down into a cavernous hole in the ground, where they are endowed with telekinetic powers by bright, flashy and creepy but otherwise unspecified forces. As they are 18, initially, they use their powers to lift up girls' skirts and dominate at beer pong, but it turns out that telekinesis is "like a muscle," which becomes stronger if exercised, so before long, they are moving people's cars around in car parks and flying. At first they get nosebleeds (the blood looks about as realistic as the corn syrup in Carrie), but these too diminish with practice. Matt and Steve want to keep their mad skillz to themselves but Andrew, who seems to be overwhelmed by having two whole friends, keeps taking things further, "pushing" a car off the road because the driver (who ends up in hospital) was annoying him and because, it seems, he liked the idea of capturing the crash on his camera.

The whole movie consists of video footage from Andrew's camera, from the camera of a girl vlogger they know and from CCTV cameras. Some have said that the "found footage" concept isn't really necessary here and to some extent I agree, but I think Trank is also trying to make a point about Gen YouTube and the growing tendency for people to chronicle vast chunks of their life via YouTube videos. Often, the daily vlogs are pretty boring--do we really need to see people shopping for groceries or trying to decide which movie to stream on Netflix?--but some go to the other extreme, capturing on camera events that people used to want to keep private.

And indeed in Chronicle, we see Andrew filming: at a funeral; while he is being verbally abused by his father (apparently an alcoholic; I say "apparently," because most of the film is shown through Andrew's camera and it is his edit--his take on things); and while his mother, who is seriously ill, coughs alone downstairs. Andrew is not a nice guy. He isn't nice when he's a loner and he doesn't become any less of an asshole once he has made some friends and developed super powers. Matt, who likes to use fancy words, especially those of Greek etymology, warns his cousin of the dangers of hubris, but Andrew remains oblivious and as he becomes more powerful, will Matt and Steve be able to control him?

Chronicle is pretty silly, which is fine, although the last 20 minutes disappointed me. I mean, there's silly and there's batshit crazy (and then there's Carrie 2: The Rage). For a fun, concise examination of one of those "what would you do if...?" thought experiments, though, Chronicle does the trick.

Running Club Almost 2.0

I can't remember where I first read about NikeTown's free running club last week (possibly one of the free newspapers on a day when I was too tired to say non) but there was also a piece in this week's TimeOut. I got quite excited because you go to the Nike+ website, create a profile and then book into one of their organised runs on Mondays (gals only) and Tuesdays (mixed), with options to run three, four or seven miles. You can check in a coat and a bag to the Oxford Circus Niketown store and they provide you with a reflective vest (in sexy grey and silver not Philippe Starck-esque yellow) and give you designer water afterwards (Vitamin Water in my case). They also give you a chip to lace onto your trainers so that when you sign in, you just scan your shoe in one of their registration points to show that you have registered online.

There were probably about 100 runners tonight, although only four of us were running the whole seven miles. The route involves running up Great Portland Street and then doing two laps of the Outer Circle. They tell you there will be NikeTown folks around the course encouraging you and making sure you don't get lost (I know: it's a circular route, but still). I also assumed that with so many runners there would be other people around for most of the route. This was not the case as the seven mile group set off first: one girl was much faster than me, but the other three were much slower so for the majority of the course, I was flying solo. I'm not sure if this is a good thing--I'm not a big fan of running by myself in the dark and the rain but then my competitive spirit would probably insist on keeping pace with someone slightly faster than me, even if doing so meant I overdid it, especially with my cough.

I joked about the inability to get lost when running in a circle--actually, more of a very squat, slightly rotated, almost isosceles trapezium--and yet it is actually quite disorientating running around in circles when it is dark and when you aren't entirely familiar with the buildings. So, during my first lap, I thought I was already running along the "top" of the circle but actually had got onto the straight between two bends. Similarly, running down the south side of the circle, I hadn't the slightest idea when the end of the lap was or whether there was even going to be a NikeTown person there to direct me (there were two NT staff per group, although ours disappeared pretty sharpish and I only saw them at the end). In the end, the guy was waiting on the "corner" where we had to turn and run down to Portland Place, except I was so disorientated, I was confused to see the Marylebone Road and couldn't recalculate my mental map of the area between Regent's Park, Great Portland Street and NikeTown. I got there in the end, though, and picked up my VitaminWater (I don't care about the "vitamins" but it did taste good after a good run).

As Nike also sells some kit called Nike+, which is a chip for your trainers and a gadget to stick into your iPod Nano so that you can get info on the distance, time and pace of your runs, as you run, and then upload it to the Nike+ website afterwards to track your runs long term, and as this information is displayed when you sign up for the Nike+ account you need to register for the NikeTown Runners, I naively assumed that the chip they were giving me would do the same thing (even though it was attached to the laces and not placed under the heel)--my estimation of technology is obviously too optimistic. I was therefore very excited about coming home to find out how far I'd run and how fast, only to realise that to do this, I would need an expensive kit upgrade (especially as my running iPod is now a Shuffle). 

Still, I probably ran almost eight miles because at my moment of nearing-end-of-run space-out/geographical catastrophe, I had to retrace my steps to find the Nike people and get them to redirect me (even then, I'm not convinced they sent me the most direct route). I was also going faster than usual, I think, probably due to the influence of others--early on, at least. Then, of course, there was the one-mile "warm-up" jog from my flat to NikeTown (when I realised I was running late) and the one-mile walk back home afterwards. It's no wonder my thighs are feeling as though they've had a very good work-out today.

All in all, the NikeTown Runners club is definitely not bad, for free (compared to, say, the Serpentine Running Club, which I had been thinking of joining). The free drinks and the no-fuss online booking and electronic sign-in are good (if I didn't live so close to the shop, I would probably find the bag/coat check facility more useful) and the 6.30 p.m. start time on Mondays suits me pretty well. They say you get a free t-shirt after three runs, which would be nice. However, I would like to be more reassured by the staff that I am going the right way and that they will come and find me if I get mugged and/or lost. Maybe there is more of that in the three and four mile groups but for the effort it takes getting down to Oxford Circus, four miles is barely worth it. It would be nice having someone setting the pace--maybe I'll just have to find a running buddy because it's really not a good idea for me to try to keep up with the really fast girl who, for a while, was tantalisingly close.

Wherefore Art Thou @?

It occurred to me earlier while catching up on Jezebel posts earlier (no, I don't subscribe to it on account of its excess productivity at the expense of mine), that I'd never really complained about the use of the at-sign in blog post comments with the rough meaning of, "in response to Bexquisite wrote in comment higher up in this thread" (e.g. @Bexquisite: Well, clearly, it's all just a massive conspiracy against you, isn't it?). It annoys me because it stands for a lot of what is wrong with such - ah hem - heated debates: people don't talk to or with one another; they talk at each other. Isn't it great that the internet provides such a great medium for us to cooperate and collaborate rather than talking over or at one another?

Actually, I don't really mind that much because whatever its etymology (semiology?), it is quite a useful little device and it certainly seems as though it's going to stick, so I'll just have to pretend that I really am typing out "in response to X's earlier comment" in a way that is more convenient both for me and for the reader.

For such a small symbol, @ (or "the at sign") has a pretty long Wikipedia entry; I did know that it was used to stand for that favourite vowel of mine, schwa, when the reader/recipient may not have the IPA font downloaded (philistines!) to their computer and I had forgotten some of @'s affectionate sobriquets in foreign languages: most of them focus on the snail metaphor (Italian chiocciola, Belarusian сьлімак, and Welsh malwen) but there were some more creative ones in there too: the German Klammeraffe (spider monkey - isn't it great how German makes even the most charismatic little critter sound ugly?) and the Tagalog (pronounced tuh-GAH-log) utong (nipple; well isn't it?!).

The French stole theirs from the Spanish - arobase, which, according to La Trésor de la Langue Francaise (France's less-easily searchable but free equivalent of the OED, etymology-wise), is:

Ancienne mesure de poids (variant de 11 à 15 kg) et de capacité (valant de 10 à 16 litres), encore usitée en Espagne, au Portugal et dans plusieurs pays d'Amérique latine

i.e. It's an old measure of weight (around the oh-so-precise 11-15 kg) and of volume (bizarrely, 10-16 litres), still used in places more peasanty than France Spain, Portugal and parts of South America. The word - and the measure - comes from Arabic, originally. In other words, @ originated as a typographical convention, invented to make the lives of scribes and merchants a lot easier as it meant that they wouldn't need to write out arrobe each time. The same is true for ampersand (I don't buy the explanation that "&" looks a bit like a lower-case epsilon and a lower-case t, i.e. et; my capital es are very curvy indeed and I still can't get my ets to look anything like an ampersand); and who would doubt the validity of the £ sign? Not moi, and I'm sure that in time, I will grow used to bloggn @ ppl. Maybe. I'm sure I will never grow used to txtspk, though; I hope not, anyway.

Paradisical Radio

As most of my recently acquired new music has come from "recommendations" from The O.C. I hadn't listened to Radio Paradise for ages and I had forgotten how awesome it was. It is a "listener-supported" internet radio, with a "pay as much as you can/as much as you like" non-subscription policy. But it's not just any old internet radio station; it is as though someone has taken the contents of my iTunes directory and created a constantly streamed playlist of these and similar artists, all intermingled with the gravelly, soothing voice of Bill Goldsmith who only occasionally reminds listeners that any (monetary) support is very welcome. February is their fund-raising month and they have set a target of $100,000; by the middle of the month, they had reached $40,000, which isn't bad. I must remember to donate...

As the station is just run by Bill and his wife Rebecca, they do need to set up the playlists in advance and if you listen over a period of a few weeks, you will definitely notice that the same segues come up a few times, but that's okay because they are usually so well chosen in the first place. I have just finished listening to R.E.M. (So. Central Rain), followed by Radiohead (I Might Be Wrong) and the Doves (Darker), all of which I already like, and these were segued by a song called Wonderful Wizard by the Guggenheim Grotto, which I've never heard of before but which sounds like my kind of group! I guess it is this combination of great songs that I already know I like (but may not have heard for a while) and suggestions for other songs, which I haven't heard of but which are definitely my style. Even in the case of songs to which I listen all the time, there's this certain thrill about hearing a song you like played on the radio, although I'm not sure why; maybe it's because you know then that lots of other people will be listening to the great song at the exact same time as you - that's kind of nice, I think.