Has VC killed more value than it’s created?

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• Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I don’t think VCs have “killed” value per se, more that they established conditions which were ultimately unsustainable and resulted in inevitable enshittification.

  The 00’s and 10’s were absolutely riddled with tech companies that had seemingly limitless volumes of VC funding. They were not profitable in the slightest, but the funding kept coming because they got so big, they had potential, and everyone wanted a piece. The big companies wanted to use the advantage of basically “free” money to kill any and all competition before their VC funding was burned up, so they all offered “too good to be true” services that we all got used to which no one else could compete with.

  Eventually the VC money began drying up as the economy got worse and firms began opting for safer investments. But the threshold has been crossed: the big players became entrenched and competition was eliminated wherever possible. No new competitors can grow because the same conditions fueled by VC funding will likely not happen again. Meanwhile, the big companies that spent years operating in the red now need to turn a profit, so they start working on ways to further capitalize on their products and services. Hence we see rapidly rising subscription costs, paywalls, more ads than content, newer products that are worse than preceding ones in many ways, user data collection everywhere, mass layoffs/abusive working conditions, etc.

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