For well over a decade, I have been a huge, huge advocate of technology and startups being an amazing equaliser for society and kryptonite to inequality/poverty.

Tbh, I'm really now thinking I was wrong, it's actually mostly the polar opposite.

There's way too many wolves in sheeps clothing (politicians) trying to inflitrate, speak for and represent the ecosystem, when in reality they just want to control it and manipulate the direction of innovation to align with their hidden agendas.

All these supposed gatekeepers everyone pussy foots around, fear upsetting or disagreeing with.

Entrepreneurs are supposed to have balls, speak their mind. It's all getting way too corporate, false and cuckold for my liking.

Nobody has balls anymore.

I don't rate it at all.

Big Tech do whatever they please, abusing laws, building absolute monopolies across nearly all verticals and that moat almost always kills any viable innovation.

Everybody dick rides them because they are LP's and have influence.

When you check it out, yes there are many people who are decent and well meaning, but often they haven't got the confidence to be authentic, so just add to the echo chamber, praising whoever raises the most $€£ that week on @TechCrunch or whoevers vanity project makes noise.

I'm personally not easily impressed. I couldn't give a shit anymore about all that stuff.

As I get older, I'm becoming much more mission driven by making this world a better place for my children to grow up in and also fighting for those who are unheard/fucked over/expolited.

I also used to believe in critical mass being key for an ecosystem, but now I really believe the opposite.

Stay away from and don't look up to these politicians/quangos/busybodies.

Get your head down and execute your mission.

You don't need them, they don't want you to win.

I can see through agenda, politics & motivation, so sometimes I will engage with/support things & even people I don't rate that highly, if I see it will have a positive impact.

So strong opinions, loosely held and all that.

But I think ecosystems are mostly cult like nowadays.