John Battelle on the open web, incubators and starting businesses (emphasis mine):

In the past few years, entrepreneurship seems to have become a profession, like acting or sales or architecture. On the one hand, that’s a good thing, it means more companies, more jobs, and more great ideas. On the other, something about it strikes me as a bit …forced. I can’t put my finger on it, quite yet, but it centers around the idea that we’re credentializing innovation. … I never saw starting companies as a career path.

I, too, have noticed a significant increase in people who are doing start-ups because they want to do a start-up, not because they have some burning desire to solve some problem that they won’t be able to solve working for someone else. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it isn’t. Maybe we have reached the tipping point of technology start-ups where people like me, us early doing-a-start-up adopters, are on the outside looking at an idea that has reached the mainstream. We are just curmudgeons who sit around saying, “Back when I did my start-up… .”

Then again, I can’t help but wonder how long these people will last. Doing a start-up sounds fun until the sine curve takes effect, until the money gets tight and the times get hard. Is “doing a start-up” a fad, or a long-term, populist movement? I have a hard time seeing these people who are doing this for the start-up lifestyle surviving for long.

(via Michael Mace)