Sarah Drinkwater

The second structural problem with the VC industry is that most venture firms are selling a product that is fundamentally an undifferentiated commodity — capital.

Open source projects, the infrastructure of digital public goods, have long relied on unsustainable funding sources like Github Sponsors, Open Collective, or Buy Me A Coffee. Besides the very few that have reached commercial success by transforming into enterprise SaaS, the vast majority of projects failed to find adequate funding.

Dunbar actually doesn’t say that we devote “grooming time” to the whole social group of 150. Rather he says that the 150 is made up from welding together much smaller “primary networks”: coalitions, friendship groups. Intensive grooming (language, for humans) is reserved for close friends. Our intimate group is very small, averaging just five.