Me in Words

This is the summary of this essay from Forbes.

Many “tech companies” evolve into tech-holding companies, and we’ve finance-of-startups replace startups as the dominant power in the Valley. We’re at the point where interchangeable (or “commodity”) hustlers and tech co-founders and VCs and employees all size each other up and pair off and launch commodity companies working commodity ideas, while it’s possible to make a painful but semi-lucrative living, the creative magic is gone.

Intelligent tech co-founders have, become more mercenary. When you know that your labor is a commodity and seen that way on the other side, you’re a lot more willing to play the game solely for personal benefit. I think that the hustlers have realized the same: that their investors aren’t really mentors or partners and will drive them out if they think it will make them a profit (sometimes, even at the expense of the business, if it means giving away an executive position). The clueless, earnest ones at this point are the “true believer” engineers who work 70-hour weeks in exchange for 0.05% equity slices. They’re the chumps. Founders, at least, have the (relatively unlikely, but far from nonexistent) possibility of early retirement.

VCs and the climate of acqui-hiring have created an environment where most “entrepreneurs” are actually mid-level product managers, just now saddled with the additional expectation of taking a low or nonexistent salary while they raise money. This also means that connections trade at an all-time high, because no amount of hustle can make up for an inside advantage. Also, VC is these days completely about insider trading and market manipulation: it’s a “Wild West” market for private microcap equities where well-connected people deploy strategies that would have them in jail if tried on the public markets (because they work, in the sense of making money for those with the resources to pull them off, but make the world worse).