It seems that cryptocurrency is the most overhyped trend for both founders and employees at startups. The information comes from First Round Capital’s annual State of Startups report.

Also receiving a disproportionate amount of interest from both groups were artificial intelligence/machine learning and virtual/augmented reality.

Optimism for Crypto Doesn’t Match Reality, According to Startup Founders and Employees

First Round Capital has just published its annual look the attitudes and values of those starting or working for young companies. State of Startups, which originally started as an experiment in 2015,  is now in its fifth year. The seed-stage venture firm behind it says that it has quickly become a “treasured tradition”.

The company asked 950 founders and employees at different startups for their opinions on a series of topics important to those doing business over the course of 2019 and into 2020. Most interesting to us here at NewsBTC was the question relating to how hyped different trends are at the moment.

Cryptocurrency emerged as a clear favourite amongst both founders and employees alike. However, founders were more likely to say that crypto was overhyped than workers. A total of 56.2 percent of those starting companies said that digital assets were talked about too much. This compares with 44.9 percent of employees.

The 950 startup founders and employees surveyed by @firstround believe that cryptocurrency is the most overhyped startup trend [editorial note: they’re wrong] https://t.co/1NLuJ7snRO pic.twitter.com/LEPBwAPnqy

— Mike Dudas (@mdudas) December 18, 2019

Also making the top three overhyped trends for startups this year were artificial intelligence/machine learning and virtual/augmented reality. Around 40 percent of founders and 19.8 percent of employees said AI was given too much attention. Meanwhile, 26.6 percent of founders and 19.4 percent of employees said that virtual or augmented reality was an overhyped trend.

This is the fifth year that First Round has produced its State of Startups report. In previous editions, crypto assets were not included under the section about overhyped trends. This makes it difficult to judge whether the hype amongst startups surrounding them is growing or not.

The wording of the question itself is also somewhat problematic. Rather than give respondents free reign over their answers, they were instructed to select three trends from a list of ten. Naturally, certain trends that people might think overhyped will not have been included and the results would probably be different if the multiple choice format was avoided.

That said, a previous edition of the survey did include blockchain in the possible answers to the same question. In 2017, a total of 48.5 percent of the 860 startup founders asked said they thought the technology behind crypto assets received too much attention. Interestingly, the following year did not include crypto, blockchain, or Bitcoin as a possible answer.

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