What Mr. Ekimmu had said came to pass; the business was sold, and at a premium.

Everything went right for some time and the business became truly online, but one day, the new owners thought the revenues were not high enough. To make a long story short, the same consultant helped them sell the business as a “social trading platform”, after adding an open-source twitter-like module where people could follow each others’ buy and sell orders. Once again, it sold at a premium.

Then one day, the original owners’ morning walk took them near the old office and they learnt from someone about the new sale and felt envious. Why didn’t they wait until they sold the “social platform”? So, they called the consultant. “Why didn’t you do the same for us?” moaned the aging couple.

“You should start a startup”, he answered.

“What is Startup?”

Mr. Ekimmu readily explained:

It is a young company that Offers or intends to offer a new product or Delivers an existing product in a new manner.

“Must it be young?”, the old man and woman asked. “Can’t we buy a real, existing and functioning business?”

“No, you can’t.

“The times have changed.” — Mr. Ekimmu shook his head — “Today, if you are planning to sell some unpalatable but vegan-friendly yogurt, frozen with liquid nitrogen, it is a startup, and you will get the funding at a valuation, based not on how much money the company will make but on the precedent of: “Look, someone for some reason has paid for a startup in the same industry sector $XXX, so we value ours the same, weight coefficients applied”.

“But if you acquire a cafe” — the consultant continued with a heinous sneer — “that offers tasty ice cream, you’re not a startup and no one cares about you”.

So they shook hands and continued on, got some funding, and registered a handful of branches on several tiny islands so the company could be branded as “Global” and “International”. They introduced a bunch of in-house-cooked CFDs, pseudo-ForEx pairs, and binary “options”. After all, the consultant had advised them to “keep costs low and attract a diverse target audience”. They were online, and they were social, and they were mobile. They paid a prominent vlogger and marketed the thing as “renowned among the elite”.

From this time forth, things went virulent. Before reaching break-even, ill-startupers faced ICOs coming into full rage. Although coin trading comprised only a small percentage of the market, it had outsized visibility. The miserable couple’s business has stalled. They added the word “blockchain” to all the slogans and teasers, but it was too late and unconvincing. They tried to quickly “tokenise” themselves in real life, but spent all the money they received from the business sale a decade ago and ended up deep in debt.

Desperately, they reached out to the consultant, “Why has this happened?! What should we do?”

“The world is on fire since just before we first met.” Mr. Ekimmu said without sympathy and certainly not offering them a seat. “And at least you have the honor of burning along with it”.

He continued,

“What, do you think you’re the only one? Absolutely not. Legions are sweat-busy burying their respective industry sectors alive. Some start with a motto to connect and discover, but end up dividing the entire nation. Others promise to deliver the knowledge to all, in the most distant latitudes and longitudes of the globe, but end up with mobs of uneducated and confused flat-earthers all over.”

“What can we do to fix it?!”, the old couple cried.

“Your job now is not to fix anything, but to keep ruining things, particularly the retail investing”, Mr. Ekimmu said in cold voice.

“I will feed you middle-priced food and pay your basic bills, while you must flourish the same cancer you have fed for so long, under my supervision.”

“Keep harming the general image of the financial industry” ordered Ekimmu. “It’s not too hard, even for losers like you, since many can’t tell the difference between real services and the online trash.”

He lectured on.

“Not only must you destroy clients’ wealth, you have to suck off as many people as possible from healthy job market and entrepreneurship. Instead of doing something meaningful, your victims must either gamble your “financial instruments” or work for gambling houses like yours.”

Darkness started to blanket the eyes of poor old man and wife as Mr. Ekimmu continued:

“Don’t be lazy, look into adjacent sectors. The “innovative”/startup agenda has facilitated the whole new realm of parasite “jobs”, where endless services that only help consume and re-consume boil with crowds of coders, affiliates, and designers. The people you picked on in high school end up as someone you work for as an adult. They never stopped being schmucks, but the mighty Geek God we serve is strictly anti-real business.”

Mr. Ekimmu lowered his voice a whole octave,

“Like yourself, sellers of normal functioning businesses obviously lost the competition to startup opportunism. I bet, in this century, you never heard about a team of young talented former classmates who accumulated resources to acquire a meaningful real local service or production. I worked hard, now you must protect this status quo.”

The old man was now standing on his tiptoes, lurching, and peering at his woman, straight in the jugular vein, emptied-eyed. She was doing the same. Gone were dreams of happiness, leaving nothing but destitution. But Mr. Ekimmu didn’t find this unpleasant and continued with ease,

“Go and tell people that although there are many functioning businesses listed for sale, there is absolutely no rationale to the terminology, asking prices, and financial information.”

“Tell them that regardless of how many inquiries they submit, they will receive very few ans…”

Teeth of two pair of jaws clacked through the veins simultaneously.