I’m a VC and agree with much of this. The mega firms have totally warped VC and the desire for massive cash appreciation has led to a host of bad characters getting involved. I still love working with early stage companies but it is hard to cut your own lane when these mega groups control so many aspects of the stack and have such outsized capital and political influence. There are so many issues destroying early stage VC right now. We need major policy change / guardrails but that won’t happen.

▲ sneilan1 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Is it possible to list the mega firms?

	▲	bix6 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There’s lists out there but it’s $10B+ AUM like Andreeseen, sequoia, GC, etc.

▲ cjkaminski 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Based on my experience on the fundraising side, I'm inclined to agree with your perspective. One small nit to pick: I think policy changes can happen. However, it's hard for me to imagine meaningful change occurring before a catastrophic event. How big would the blast radius be? Obviously no one knows, but I hope it's closer in scope to "The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank" as opposed to "The Collapse of Lehman Brothers".

	▲	bix6 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don’t really have hope because big money controls politics. Everything gets steered towards capital’s interest instead of humanity’s.
	▲	watwut 4 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Apparently The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is not enough to force change. The Collapse of Lehman Brothers is also not enough for long term change, also apparently.

▲ exceptione 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

  > but it is hard to cut your own lane when these mega groups control so many aspects of the stack and have such outsized capital and political influence

Are you able to shed some light on this? It would be interesting to hear what people like you come across.

	▲	bix6 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There’s a lot so we would need to talk in person. But basically the power law is way too powerful right now. The impact that a small group of people can have is too much and it’s distorting things. This is not unique to VC, the concentration is insane right now across the board.

▲ Henchman21 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Y'all need ethics is what ya need.

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bix6 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I agree. Ethics is at the forefront of everything I do both personally and professionally. I used to serve on an ethics in business council. All the investments we make are grounded in genuinely improving the world. It’s unfortunate that so much money flows to certain VC firms when people like me exist since I reckon I’m much more aligned with what the general population wants.

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bluefirebrand 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

> It’s unfortunate that so much money flows to certain VC firms when people like me exist since I reckon I’m much more aligned with what the general population wants.

You sound like a pretty good dude

The study of Ethics is such a double edged sword. On one hand you have people who study ethics to think about how to treat people well, on the other hand you have people who study ethics in order to treat people as poorly as possible while still being "ethical"

I don't have a ton of firsthand exposure to the decision making process of huge corporations, but I imagine they mostly listen to the second group of ethicists

	▲	bix6 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I’m trying. I love startups and want as many good entrepreneurs to succeed as possible. All the VC drama causes people to forget the whole point. It’s inherent with true capitalism. You have to be willing to forego some profit to actually treat people right and for some that’s just too much.

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pixl97 20 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Ethics are always forced. In a society that does not force ethics in one way or another they will cease to exist.