| I care about frat boys being funded at the expense of people with actual ideas. I care about a generation of technologists that has been sold out because a bunch of smooth-operator, manipulative invaders have come in and outcompeted true technologists for funding and coverage, and the VCs have let it happen. If they were worth their millions per year, they simply wouldn't. If they could actually spot talent sufficiently well to justify their obscene salaries, they wouldn't be funding frat boys. I react strongly because this nonsense is very bad for the world. As much as I wanted to believe in this vision, I've realized that the sole purpose of a so called Venture Capital Company is to provide an investment upon which they expect a large return. This usually entails all manner of searching and sifting (YC, etc.) to find the best potential status signallers, which can then be presented to Wall St banks who put on the finishing PR touches before a big IPO for the ignorant masses. We are both technologists at heart Michael. That's why we have to leave SV behind. A long time ago, during Shockley and Wozniak's era, it was about science and technology. That has changed, and it will won't return for a long time. Today, progress in science and technology is in the dilapidated workshops, the ignored academic labs, and the rare R&D corner of a dying company. It's not in SV. I've always taken an evolutionary perspective to life, but it wasn't until I spent a few years in the "workforce" that I truly understood man's depravity. Your writing was therapy for me, but also a resounding validation of my evolutionary perspective on humanity's behavior. It is the rare individual that manages to understand his biological impulses and how deeply they affect his behavior, and attempts to transcend it. The vicious lifelong status hierarchy battles, the ruthless mate seeking, the negative sum destructive competition. It's the law of the land. You and I, and others like us, will forever be outcasts. I consider myself a curious traveler, put into the body of a primate so that I may truly empathize with their struggle. But I can never be one of them, because I see the futility of it all. I see that the only purpose of our species is to transcend our limits through deeper understanding of our universe, and to build more powerful tools and technologies which serve us in achieving this end. Alas, it was not meant to be Michael. See us for what we are, and let go of the hatred for our collective failures. Instead, live life in the footsteps of those great travellers who came before us [1]. Take heart, for we are not alone [2]. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tijxMHhuwGQ 2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/ |
I don't believe that to be at odds with what we want to see. I think that the VCs would see better profits if they went back to Real Technology. As an asset class, VC has been underperforming for more than a decade, and the funding of Spiegels and Duplans is the reason why.
The problem is that some of the investors care more about becoming celebrities and "virality" than the laborious process of building real technology companies and getting rich slowly.
Venture capital isn't more broken or evil than any other industry. What happens in any organization or ecosystem is that, over time, the influential players end up being the ones who are good at playing the politics, not the ones who are good at their jobs or ethically sound. The ones who get to the top are those who value nothing other than personal advancement, because caring about anything else would slow down their political ascent.
In the case of VC, there are a lot of good investors, even now. I wouldn't be surprised if the good ones outnumber the bad ones. The problem is that the ones who become most influential are the ones who seek risk for its own sake, focus on "virality" rather than lasting value creation, and engage in collusion that hurts the ecosystem immensely (and that would be illegal on any public equity market).