Don’t Go to Davos: There is an Expiration Date for Everything

For those of us active on social media, it’s been incredible seeing the flurry of pictures and such all over social media bragging about being at Davos. Flexing. Yet it’s funny that it turns into a counter indicator. You think you are showing how connected and cool and awesome you are. All I see are a bunch of clueless “mids”. Davos used to be relevant prior to 2020 but so much has changed. 

The WEF Davos event has gone the way of The Summit Series, SXSW, TED and Forbes 30 under 30 for tech people. Some would even argue Burning Man is one of these events that is past due. Super relevant and cool a long time ago. Now out of touch and soon to be buried in the past, taken over and inhabited by only the laggards and grifters. Or maybe just mainstream and thus not COOL or leading edge anymore. 

Everything has a season. Everything has an expiration date. Countries. Companies. Even people. I saw a very relevant tweet from Dare Obasanjo: 

“Startups tend to have 3 generations of employees 

1. The 1st batch: A random mix of talented and mediocre people. 

2. The pioneers: The nights and weekends crew who believe in the mission. 

3. The settlers: The 9 to 5 crew who are attracted by the success the pioneers created.”

At the 3rd stage things start to go down fast. I saw this in Yahoo! The people who joined from 2009 onwards were pretty crap. You could argue Google started to go downhill 9 years ago and we are seeing the bloat really impact the business in 2020. Even formerly dominant VC funds prior to 2020 are now sucking wind badly. 

What was a positive indicator before can quickly turn into a highly negative signal. The point of this is not to just bag on Davos and other Silicon Valley events and phenomena. The point I am making is that things change so quickly now, consumer behavior, cycles turn fast. 

Jumping on trends is dangerous especially when it is at peak cool. The secret is doing something or joining something when it is not cool or known. Easier said than done. But the alpha is in doing something uncool which will become cool.