My full-time job is fighting for tech accountability. As SMC’s Director of Gen Z Advocacy, that work has never felt more urgent. But I also have a deep passion for musical theater — and those two worlds rarely intersect. So when I discovered Patrick McAndrew’s The Startup, I was genuinely surprised, and genuinely thrilled.

Through sharp writing, humor, and original music, The Startup offers a compelling exploration of Big Tech’s influence — not just on society at large, but on our individual identities, relationships, and sense of agency. It’s the kind of project that leaves you questioning the platforms you use every day, while also reminding you of something we don’t talk about enough: storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have for critique, reflection, and change. As someone who spends her days in policy briefs and platform accountability battles, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting a musical to stop me in my tracks. This one did.

McAndrew’s journey with The Startup began nearly a decade ago. In 2016, after reading Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, he began to more deeply interrogate the role technology was playing in our lives. What struck him most was not just the scale of digital influence, but its quiet reshaping of human connection — the way screens had begun to substitute for presence, and engagement metrics had begun to substitute for meaning.