[rchaud]

VC capitalism over the past decade resembles the free spending era of Communist central planners tasked with rapidly industrializing their economies.

1) Dump enormous amounts of zero-interest capital into {{ sector }}

2) Entrust leadership to charismatic politicians rather than domain experts (Adam Neumann)

3) Craft a PR narrative emphasizing innovation and diminishing critics (Softbank "Vision Fund", "swinging for the fences", "transformational" )

4) Construct Potemkin villages to show the world that all is well (going public)

5) ...followed by eventual rapid decline and collapse

WeWork is the most egregious example, but the same fate awaits the likes of UberEats and Lime and what have you.

[JumpCrisscross]

It makes sense to divide late-stage, large-cheque VC from classic early-stage, small-cheque VC in the same way we separate money-losing, unlevered PE from classic cash-flow positive, leveraged PE. (Hint: the latter are the same.)

[shrubble]

Your accurate post made me think of a great blog title... "A Canticle For Potemkin"

[thisgoesnowhere]

The similarities are startling, it's all a consequence of reducing power to a small set of people who progressively lose touch with what the market actually needs.

It doesn't matter if its "public" or "private" it's the concentration that causes the negative effects.

Made more annoying by how difficult it is to explain that simple concept to the pseudo libertarian crowd that tends to congregate here.