What do you call the culture that values waste as a marker of success? VC culture?
asteele
· 1 year ago
Actually, I tend to be friendlier towards the VC world than many of my technical colleagues, because my very first experience at a VC-backed company (eRoom Technology) was enormously positive both professionally and financially. So I have seen the model work. I have seen it fail since then in lots of interesting ways too, but my views will always be colored by that first success.
VC culture (the good kind, at least) is totally explicit about the waste inherent the process. You can read dozens of VC blogs right now that will tell you in plain english that at least half and perhaps as many as 8 out of 10 investments will more or less go down the toilet, translating into billions of dollars in "waste". Yet without that system, there would have been no eRoom Technology for me and I might well still be working at a large technology company instead of having been involved in a series of far more exciting startups.
My theory about the truly egregious cases of waste involves mistakenly applying outdated industrial investment, governance and management practices to modern technology businesses, but I'll save that for another post :)
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VC culture (the good kind, at least) is totally explicit about the waste inherent the process. You can read dozens of VC blogs right now that will tell you in plain english that at least half and perhaps as many as 8 out of 10 investments will more or less go down the toilet, translating into billions of dollars in "waste". Yet without that system, there would have been no eRoom Technology for me and I might well still be working at a large technology company instead of having been involved in a series of far more exciting startups.
My theory about the truly egregious cases of waste involves mistakenly applying outdated industrial investment, governance and management practices to modern technology businesses, but I'll save that for another post :)
from here:
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/200...