It's such an ignorant, yet arrogant way to run a business, especially considering many of these startup founders were likely pretty young with little to no industry experience.
Having an experienced business owner running an actual, profitable business in your midst should be treated as a gold mine of information.
I have actually seen an attitude of "don't listen to or hire industry veterans because they are stuck in the old way of doing things and if they knew any better, they would have already disrupted the industry."
Few if any highly successful "disruptive" companies completely reinvented their segment.
Uber wasn't the first taxi company, it wasn't even the first ride sharing company. Heck, they weren't even the first app based taxi service. Airbnb was preceded by VRBO by about 15 or 20 years.
The people with current industry experience have techniques and knowledge about running a profitable and sustainable business. That doesn’t get you hyper growth. That gets you a solid business.
You get this kind of growth from accidentally finding the magic formula that creates massive growth. You actually want someone that doesn’t know what they are doing because they are more likely to trip over the answer that most people were smart enough to avoid.
You want people that will make mistakes. Successful startups are as much happy accidents as they are talented people performing hard work.
When I read you're comment, I am not getting many positive vibes about those startups.
Contrast the language. With traditional businesses you have positive terms like profitable, sustainable, and solid. With the startups you evoke terms like hyper growth, magic formula, and (from other people's posts in a similar vein) disruptive. It makes the traditional businesses sound like they are directed towards long term objectives as well as societal needs like stable employment and viable products. It also makes the startups sound self-serving. These are people who take a gamble for a disproportionate return. They are primarily interested in the short term, so they end up being parasitic. They aren't providing society with things like stable jobs or products that will have a lasting impact. Claiming that a business is disruptive does not really fix that, since a business can only be disruptive if the gamble pays off.
Perhaps society should be looking towards more traditional approaches to entrepreneurship if we are to have a chance to fix our woes. Yes, I understand that it had its issues. On the other hand, these gambles on hyper growth are consuming a significant amount of investment dollars for outcomes that are of dubious merit.
Edit: made the second half of the second paragraph less of a grammatical mess.
Couchsurfing was a completely different arrangement though and that's why it was free. It's like comparing staying at your aunt's house for a weekend to booking a room at a motel, the expectations are just a lot different.
Having an experienced business owner running an actual, profitable business in your midst should be treated as a gold mine of information.
I have actually seen an attitude of "don't listen to or hire industry veterans because they are stuck in the old way of doing things and if they knew any better, they would have already disrupted the industry."
Few if any highly successful "disruptive" companies completely reinvented their segment.
Uber wasn't the first taxi company, it wasn't even the first ride sharing company. Heck, they weren't even the first app based taxi service. Airbnb was preceded by VRBO by about 15 or 20 years.