Cargo culting seems very prevalent in the current startup culture -- especially in those that are "playing startup".
These founders see all of these external things that startups do and assume they must be necessary for success -- or that they will at least will help cover up any problems they have.
Unfortunately this is just like carving wood into the shape of a radio and expecting it to work. It might look the same but it has none of the things that make it a radio. You can even attach a real antenna to it, but it is still just a block of wood.
Actually I think cargo cult thinking is more of a problem at the accelerator/angel/VC level than at the startup level. We have all these funders copying the YC model and relatively few trying to do things differently. We need much more diversity in funding and acceleration models. All roads might lead to rome, but we don’t all need to travel there on the same bus.
Cargo culting seems very prevalent in the current startup culture -- especially in those that are "playing startup".
These founders see all of these external things that startups do and assume they must be necessary for success -- or that they will at least will help cover up any problems they have.
Unfortunately this is just like carving wood into the shape of a radio and expecting it to work. It might look the same but it has none of the things that make it a radio. You can even attach a real antenna to it, but it is still just a block of wood.