How much evil is … enough?
In 2025, that’s a particularly dark question, but on this episode of The BetaKit Podcast, we’re going to try and keep it light. Today we’re talking to Alistair Croll: entrepreneur, event and community organizer, and co-author of Just Evil Enough: The Subversive Marketing Handbook alongside X’s Emily Ross.
“ Subversiveness is a way of changing the system. And I think what we’re seeing right now is that all systems are changing.”
Alistair Croll
The book argues that the standard rules for go-to-market strategies need to be bent (or rewritten) to win the attention economy. I’m wondering if that might be a Pyrrhic victory. But I’m also wondering why Canadian startups are just so bad at this kind of stuff.
Croll offers two reasons, noting a lack of Canadian “disagreeableness” and an unwillingness to subvert current systems to achieve desired outcomes. Both criticisms should broadly ring true to most consumers of this podcast, and Croll backs it up with personal anecdotes and a brief history lesson on free throws in the NBA.
Jumping from the 1960s NBA to the present day prompts the question of whether “disagreeableness” and “subversion” are concepts we should be uncritically promoting in 2025. That conversation takes us to a lot of interesting places, including an overview of what’s motivating the existential and market responses to China’s DeepSeek LLM.
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But it isn’t entirely uncritical. Croll notes his new book has a chapter dedicated to being too evil, and as he explains, he’s fighting for the user, not the system.
So just how evil should Canadian tech companies be?
Let’s dig in.
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Edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy Alistair Croll.