[simplekoala]

The structural and core part of the issue gets muddled due to poor education/know-how among engineers (partly due to excellent marketing by VCs). See below an excerpt from Alex Payne's article at https://al3x.net/2013/05/23/letter-to-a-young-programmer.htm...

" ... As a VC at a top-tier Sand Hill Road firm told me during a pitch several years ago when describing a conceptual feature in Simple that would let users easily and regularly donate a portion of their savings to charity, “let’s not waste time on that stuff; we’re here to make money” ... ".

There are a breed of VC's who project themselves as if their sole purpose in life is to help entrepreneurs realize their dreams and that there is a higher purpose for their VC avatar. Some believe it and mean it, and some pretend (It is important to keep up the pretenses in this business lest you get shunned by all starry-eyed entrepreneurs who come to valley to change the world). VC's exist to help their investors make money. They have a fiduciary duty to do so. When you are giving away a good part of your life (sleep, money) in pursuit of a dream, and getting into a financial transaction with VCs to do so; It is vital for you to understand how they operate, how they make decisions, are incentivized to behave, and also be cognizant of their true (ulterior?) motives. VC's are a vital part of the startup eco-system. I am not against them or how they operate. They are smart enough to be politically right and make themselves desirable to entrepreneurs. All I am trying to say there is usually information/knowledge/expectation asymmetry (as pointed out in the article) when engineers are getting into financial transactions with VCs, and that they need to be cognizant and work on ways to mitigate this. [Edits for typos/grammer. Added two sentences at the end]

[ganeumann]

Well, funny you used that example because I was the first venture investor in Simple. I invested because of the founders' passion to change the world and rid us of the evil banks. But I knew that if they even made the slightest progress towards this worthy goal we would all make money. Making money and making customers' lives better go hand-in-hand, in the long run.

Anyway, that digression aside, I am not sure if the information asymmetry is the whole story here. These articles (and books and talks and etc.) meant to educate founders so that VCs don't screw another generation of them have been written since, at least, the 70s. Either nobody reads them or it just doesn't matter when they do. If the latter, maybe we need a better understanding of the problem so we can solve it.

[rfrey]

The underlying cause isn't attention deficit or information asymmetry. It's opportunity asymmetry.

That could be disproved if it turned out serial entrepreneurs have bad experiences at similar rates to rookies.

[ganeumann]

I buy that. How do you fix it?

[simplekoala]

I think the situation has started to get better with software start-up infrastructure costs going significantly down, angels and incubators eating traditional VC's lunches (to a point where firms like Sequoia had to initiate stealth scouts program so they could get in early into potential killer startups), founders getting better terms, a healthy founder friendly eco-system nurtured (carefully?) by newly minted successful entrepreneur turned angles. I am optimistically hoping that "Shark VCs" are a dying breed. Not sure how long have you been a VC; You probably have a better handle on this, and privy to a lot more than what keeps getting written. Not to put too much pressure on you but frankly I was hoping you would have a thesis on how to make it even better for engineers/budding-entrepreneurs.

[ganeumann]

My thesis is to try not to be an asshole and to hope that somehow not being an asshole leads to returns good enough that I can keep investing.

I don't think that's enough of a manifesto to inspire systemic change, though.

[simplekoala]

Thank you for making the valley a better place (and hope you make a good return on your investment in the process)

[zachrose]

One day, you could all make money by tracking user's projected income tax bracket and charitable donations, telling you the result of an $X or $Y contribution to organization A or B.