705
Hey tech billionaires, if you want to talk about radical change, let’s abolish venture capitalism
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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The concept of loaning money to start a business is just fine.
The culture of venture capital, especially as exemplified by bloody dochebags like Marc Andreesen, is what’s toxic and should be stamped out.
Venture capital isn't "loaning money" though. The structure of the deal is fundamentally different from the terms you'd get from the bank. The bank wants principal + interest. VC wants people in your boardroom and a share of the company itself.
IDK if this difference seems subtle, but it's massive when it comes to the outcome of any company that currently makes a decent product and then gets tainted by the VC poison.
And yes, I agree that a standard loan is perfectly okay. Without that share of the company on the table, the lender can't steer the company off a cliff to increase its profits.
Yeah you’re quite right. Money is given in both cases but what’s expected in return is quite different. Bank debt needs to start getting paid back immediately. Venture capital is potentially never paid back.
The annoying thing about VC is how they fund 20 different things expecting 19 to fail and 1 to grow 100x. They either want to see you grow 100x or die trying. This does not create healthy businesses and in fact encourages finding ways to raid certain areas of the economy for a quick capture of wealth.
As a simple example, I work on a very large app that provides a key service that unlocks access to wealth. We spend a lot of time trying to ensure we serve people equitably. Sometimes this means not just doing the thing that the wealthiest and most powerful 20% of people want, but also serving the other 80% of people. Other times it means not settling for something that’s good enough for the 80% of people who are easiest to serve, but also paying attention to the other 20% of people and their exceptional, hard to solve needs.
VCs don’t want you to do all that. They want you to get into bed with the wealthiest 20% of people and serve 80% of their needs, and then leave.
If your service provides value, doing this reinforces existing power structures. Of course the wealthiest and best enabled people make the most lucrative customers. Serving only them makes them even MORE wealthy and enabled. It’s a bad spiral.
VC doesn’t give a shit. They live to feed that spiral and run away with the cash.
If you really want to see where the poorest and least enabled 20% of people go to get their needs met, it’s the government and public trust. Not fucking big tech. Where’s the big tech VC venture that’s going to solve homelessness, Marc??? Show me the money on that one.