Being a Startup Founder is a minimum wage job — Here’s the proof

In the 1980s, a venture capitalist could truthfully say their investment was the difference between life or death for an important, generational technology company. Funding such companies, in this way, was absolutely a good quest. But today there are more people "helping the builders" than actually building, fighting one another in a zero-sum game

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But today there are more people "helping the builders" than actually building, fighting one another in a zero-sum game for allocation in competitive deals. Incredibly, being an investor has become one of the highest status jobs in Silicon Valley — higher even than playing an important operating role at a great company. This has led to an over

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In the past, there have been many attempts at disrupting venture capital:

• The proliferation of angel investors (AngelList, 2010)


• Enactment and regulation of equity crowdfunding (Jobs Act, 2012)


• Cryptonative crowdfunding via token sales (2013)

While many of these efforts were successful at generating a greater supply of passive capital for founders, the... See more

From our perspective, we see this increased bottom-up competition for the services radically improving the unit economics of venture capital in favor of founders and communities.  

Companies with poor unit economics found themselves propelled by aggressive venture dollars (which themselves were propelled by a low-interest-rate environment). Those companies then turned those dollars into aggressive customer acquisition. Until recently, the market rewarded growth at all costs.

Sure, macroeconomic conditions change and the cost of capital underpins everything loss-making, high growth start-ups are valued on. It just feels a bit tough on founders like Teo, who now had to fire 44 people to fit a growth profile that, until two months ago, was likely the apple of her VC investor’s eye.