[dredmorbius]

The risk-tolerance of startups is illusory.

The risk is being managed at the VC/investor level, by diversifying investment bets over numerous early ventures.

The death of any one of those isn't a concern for the VC, if the portfolio performance is sufficient. Of course, for the individual venture and employees, that risk is disaggregated.

More rigorous systems practices are seen as an impediment to early growth with any potential problems either something that can be ironed out later, or simply a post-liquidation concern that doesn't factor into the investors' interests at all.

[gfrff]

The risk tolerance is there result of not potentially taking out $1T of additional value if you f-- up a small project at a mega corporation.

At a mega corporation, you can't take risks which make complete sense for the project you're on independent of uncapped liability for the mothership.

There are misalignments like the one you describe but that's not what I'm talking about.