Have you been following the Brit+Co saga?
Brit Morin — just 27 years old — has amassed $6.1m in funding for her start-up, Brit + Co, which is essentially Martha Stewart for people who hate eyes and have no hearts. Brit is one of Silicon Valley’s youngest upstarts / mover-and-shakers / people-who-need-many-slashes-when-you-describe-what-they-do-for-a-living. She left Google to start her own venture with her husband, Path CEO Dave Morin (who created social network Path for people who have no idea what social networks are).
To be fair to Brit for one short sentence, she’s managed to eek out a corner of the web for her and her alone, creating crafts and getting paid to do what she loves. That’s just great. And now to rip her apart: nine times out of 10 she’s taking other people’s ideas.
If you’re interested to see what $6.1m will buy you, look no further than the easily googleable “How to Make Cinco De Mayo Jello Shots” — a fancy-looking entry if there ever was one, but .003 seconds of searching will bring you “margarita jello shots.” All Brit does is repackage and reshoot other people’s ideas. It’s pretty gross that she’s getting paid ridiculous sums of money for ripping other people off.
Says the guy blogging for a living, but hey, at least I can sleep at night.
A friend of mine, sitting next to me as I write this article, was curious as to why I kept saying “Fucking shit, look at this bitch right here” every 30 seconds while googling the information for this article. I told her the story, and this — word for word — is what she said:
- “Everybody knows those tricks.”
- “She looks haggard. She’s really 27? Oh my god.”
- “I just got sent a link from a friend with better shit than this. I can show it to you if you want. Do you need it for your article?”
- “Wait, how much did she get paid?”
- “Really?”
- “Fuck.”
Internet Svengali Bobby Finger wrote:
Of the first 10 links, only one (“Upgrade Your Plain Old Hoops”) is original content created by Brit+Co employees. Those DIY Iron-On Patters she just blobbed about link to her site which then links to another site where you can find the stupid how-to.
It’s a shame . . . and pretty criminal . . . that an otherwise intelligent 27-year-old woman has to steal so much of other people’s content to steal so much of other people’s money.
