Impatient venture money produces many startup failures and few big wins

Evidence

Studies of pre-bubble investment patterns showed a “big-score” mentality in which bad results tended to stimulate increased investing as funders chased the belief that some young company would suddenly discover the elusive business model destined to turn all their bets into rivers of gold. Startup mortality rates in Silicon Valley outstripped those for other venture capital centers such as Boston and Washington, DC, with impatient money producing a few big wins and many losses. Impatient money is also reflected in the size of Silicon Valley startups, which during this period were significantly smaller than in other regions, employing an average of 68 employees as compared to an average of 112 in the rest of the country. This reflects an interest in quick returns without spending much time on growing a business or deepening its talent base, let alone developing the institutional capabilities that Joseph Schumpeter would have advised. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 228

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Finance funds commodification experiments where only a few ventures succeed — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 457; Gig platforms will collapse or become luxury services when venture funding dries up — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 96; Early Silicon Valley startups IPO’d more but achieved profitability rarer than elsewhere — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1840 (+1 more)