Startup L: Online wit or just another nitwit?

BENGALURU: Unicon Baba, Next Big Twat and StartupKant are some of the Indian avatars of Startup L Jackson, the pseudonym that US angel investor Parker Thompson used for four years to tweet anonymously about startup stuff.

The Startup L Jackson twitter handle had acquired a formidable following of close to 80,000 and followers included investor Marc Andreessen, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Twitter founder Evan Williams, and Slack creator Stewart Butterfield, all thanks to the seemingly perceptive observations that Jackson was making, and often with great wit. Last week, he disclosed his real identity.

The Indian avatars are nowhere in that league. Next Big Twat has the biggest following --4,300. Unicon Baba, a play on unicorn (private companies valued at $1 billion or more) and which seems to have been inspired by Startup L Jackson considering it started the day Thompson revealed himself, has gathered 208 followers in four days. That isn't bad.

The Indian copycats tend to take potshots at startups, the ecosystem and venture capitalists (VCs). There's less of the more insightful observations. For that reason, not everybody in Indian ecosystem is charitable towards them. Some say the tweets tend to be more slanderous than funny.

Freecharge co-founder and CEO Kunal Shah follows Next Big Twat. He told TOI that he initially found the tweets funny, but over time he realized that anonymous accounts have become platforms for bashing people. “In today's world, it is cool to be associated with startups. If you can't build one, bashing big ones makes you famous.”

One of Unicon Baba's tweets tagged former Canaan Partners executives Alok Mittal and Rahul Khanna and said: “Meeting two jokers today in Gurgaon who have only lost money in life @alokmittal001 @twtrahul.” The VC firm Canaan had shut down a couple of years ago. Khanna now runs a venture debt company and Mittal has become an ent repreneur again.

Khanna said as long as it is the truth and laced with good humour, there is nothing wrong. “We are grown-ups,” he said. However, Mittal felt hat such Twitter accounts seem to be driven by the agenda to run people down. “Kashyap Deorah (entrepreneur & writer) writes insights laced with humour, while others use fake identities. I block them and move on,” he says.

Unicon Baba also took a potshot at Vishal Gondal, who previously founded Indiagames and is now the founder & CEO of GOQii fitness bands: “#Happyfeet asking @vishalgondal @GOQiiLife why you are still fat?” Gondal isn't amused. He says he has run 13 half marathons and is planning to trek to the Mt Everest base camp this year. “This is a form of sophisticated trolling, spewing nonsense under anonymity. Media should ignore them and any stories on them give unnecessary attention and provoke them to continue on their path.”

Sumanth Raghavendra is an entrepreneur and a prolific Twitter persona. He has almost 3,000 followers and criticizes the ecosystem and the culture openly. “These (anonymous) accounts start with the idea that they could be fearless. They are usually people in the margins, not getting attention, or a group of people using one handle,” he said.

But Abhishek Goyal, founder of startup data firm Tracxn, said he follows many such accounts and find them really funny. “Overall, the quality is good and quirky, and most times they are true too,” he said, adding that unless they are anonymous they would not be able to express themselves.