Startups have become one of the defining features of the 21st-century economy, celebrated as engines of innovation, meritocracy, and social mobility. Entrepreneurs—from Silicon Valley to Bangalore—are increasingly influential in shaping not just markets but also political discourse. Governments around the world areinvesting heavily in building startup ecosystems, often presenting them as neutral, technocratic spaces of economic growth and opportunity.

In this conversation with Hemangini Gupta, we complicate this optimistic narrative. Gupta explores how startup cultures in India—often hailed as symbols of democratic opportunity and disruption capitalism—are in fact deeply shaped bycaste, gender, and labor hierarchies. Drawing on her book Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India (University of California Press, 2024), Gupta critiques the myth of meritocracy and masculine genius thatdominates tech cultures in Bangalore, seconded and supported by deeply racial structures of tech production in the Silicon Valley. Instead, she reveals how these “disruption capitals” reproduce exclusionary norms of heteropatriarchyand caste privilege, challenging the idea that innovation and entrepreneurship naturally align with democratic empowerment. Her work raises urgent questionsabout the relationship between entrepreneurialism and democratic life: Can startup cultures be reimagined as spaces of collective belonging and resistance, or are they fundamentally aligned with individualism and exclusion?

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