A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.
March 2nd, 2026
Welcome to the 90th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Startups. In this edition, Graham analyzes how startups could evolve in our world of AI and agents; Adrian ponders whether working as a software engineer in a fast-paced startup is worth the effort; in our Vidéothèque section, we watch "The AI Startup Grift is Getting Worse" on the futureform channel; and in the Library section, we review "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries, and "Founders at Work" by Jessica Livingston.
by Graham Lee
We are at a point in history where, for the first time, it is possible for the tech startup as we know it to become a thing of the past. Of course, other kinds of startups are already things of the past, so it is not the most momentous of historical events. Software unicorn mega-deals are out, Forbes tells us, and VC-funded AI startups are in. Medium-sized deals are more likely to be funded by risk-averse private equity than by venture funds, and small seed deals have all but disappeared.
by Adrian Kosmaczewski
The word "startup" became popular during the 1990s web craze. I do not remember it being a thing in Europe or Latin America before that time; of course that does not mean that startups did not exist, just that they were not in my radar as possible employment options for my adult life. They were certainly not in my parent's radar, but somehow the press frenzy around the future being made in a proverbial garage called their attention.
To say that we live in a pivotal moment in tech history is such commonplace that you would think it would be unworthy to use such an epithet in this journal. Yet we do think that, but we are very aware that it will be only a decade or so before we can perform a conscious analysis of the various messes of our era (if this magazine is still around, that is). In the meantime, we have hunch feelings and commentators.
What if I told you that your startup can avoid making a product, it just needs to suggest that it might make a product and see if anybody agrees to buy it? You might think your humble author to be mad. What if I told you that a former CTO of a startup that never managed an exit wrote that on a blog, and then again in a book? OK, now the idea is plausible!
In many ways, the year 2007 was a crossroad in tech, and this has much more to do than just the introduction of the iPhone (although, by all means, that was quite a watershed moment). 2007 was the last moment in time our software workmanship operated without Git or GitHub. Without the Go programming language. Without Y Combinator. Without Stack Overflow. Without Android. Without new JavaScript frameworks every weekend. Without Twitter. Without DevOps. Without Palantir. Without Instagrams influencers. Without Docker containers or Kubernetes. Without Claude Code. Such was l'air du temps captured in the pages of one of our Library choices for this month: "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" by Jessica Livingston.
