Why Startup Founders Fail: The Hypocrisy Excuse

Career-killing lessons from anti-heroes!

Joe Procopio
4 min readApr 13, 2023

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image taken from the Replacements’ official twitter

The Replacements were the last best band of the 1980s.

And if you’re still reading, I realize I have work to do to connect to anything you care about. So stay with me.

If you’re in business because you love what you do, you’ll want to read at least two-thirds of this post. You don’t have to know who the Replacements were, because you probably don’t.

The 1980s were, in retrospect, one of the most disparate periods in popular music history. Cultural shards and sonic anomalies converged across the entire spectrum of genre and classification.

But at any given time, there were mega-successful acts that everyone knew. Michael Jackson, The Police, Prince, U2, Madonna, and Run-DMC all spent time as the biggest pop act in the world for an extended period.

Then in 1989 (I think), splashed across the cover of Musician magazine (I believe), was the headline “The Last, Best Band of the ‘80s” and a photo of the Replacements.

Who?

Exactly.

I see startup founders and other business visionaries with all the talent in the world fail because they can’t get out of their own, altruistic way.

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Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com

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