18-02-2025
Venture Capital Kills ‘More Value Than It Creates,' Author Says
Go Big or go home. Move fast and break things. Winner takes all. In a new book, Catherine Bracy argues that this ethos underpins much of what's wrong with venture capital. In search of grand slam investment opportunities, VC investors choose startups according to what's known as nature's 'power law,' the tendency for outliers to have undue impact—in investing, astronomical returns. (And the vast majority of startups fail miserably.) Despite their oft‑repeated, and much ridiculed, claims to 'make the world a better place,' VCs either avoid addressing societal problems or, in their push for breakneck growth, make them worse, according to World Eaters: How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy, out in March.
Bracy calls herself a civic technologist. She's the founder and chief executive officer of TechEquity, a nonprofit advocacy group in California focused on the tech industry's impact on housing and workers. (Funders include the Ford and MacArthur foundations, as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropy of Meta Platforms Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.) Bracy, who opened Barack Obama's technology field office in San Francisco during the 2012 presidential election cycle, started TechEquity after seeing the unequal social impact of the tech boom in the Bay Area. She spoke with Bloomberg Television's Sonali Basak in January. Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
