> It feels like the majority of venture firms can rationalise away their position as doing good for the world but when you start to dig into it, the sole goal is making money and who they make money for isn't always the most righteous of people or entities.
Sorry but this is dripping with immaturity and naivety.
"It feels" - speak like a grown up, and provide actual examples. If you wanted to, e.g., call out VC firms that had funded specific defense/military projects for example, that would be a conversation (not that those are inherently bad).
"Sole goal is making money" - do you understand that capitalism and advancing business capabilities of a society is the driving force that's brought the most people out of poverty, ever? Making money, and helping people make money, is good. It means bringing to market products that others want, ergo products that help and enrich others.
Can there be questionable counterexamples? Maybe, but you didn't reference any, and it still doesn't negate the fact that VC is not an inherently unethical industry, which you seem to believe for some reason ("Are there any ethical VC funds?" as if they are unethical until proven otherwise).
> Even then many of the individuals at firms can be questionable, involved in scandals. And the things invested in, while there can be a thematic preference, often everything is thrown out the window in the pursuit of greed or missing out on a deal.
My issue with your post is that you throw around vague ideas and accusations with zero examples, and have a 'guilty until proven innocent' mindset for an entire industry which has helped create immense value.
Are you really so blinkered that you are surprised to learn that people on the outside often have a negative view of VC?
The horror stories are legion. It's much harder to find the stories of ordinary or good people in the industry. Silicon Valley (TV) was barely fiction, because it didn't need to be.
The quotient of decent people to snakes in VC is lower than most people encounter in their ordinary life. Someone who doesn't know how to navigate this industry is entirely justified to ask questions like this.
There are good people. Probably even most. But still well-below what an ordinary person expects to find in a random sample of humanity.
Do you have any exposure to venture capital or are you just taking a position on the wording of the post? I didn't name names for a reason. This is about ethics on a broad scale. VC is an industry that has to collaborate and cooperate, meaning people are fully aware of the compromised and storied nature of many of these firms and partners, as well as the incentives that drive them. I used a broad brush to generalise the ethics of it but essentially VC is about return on investment regardless of the "funding tech for societal good". I don't have to give the examples because they are in broad daylight and in techcrunch articles every other week. I will admit there are some, even many, investors I have met who I highly respect for their knowledge and experience and on the surface level it seems as though they have good integrity but even they have faltered in the face of difficult decisions. So the question was honestly, where are the ethical VCs, because the values seem to bend and break when push comes to shove and money and returns have to be put front and center.
Sorry but this is dripping with immaturity and naivety.
"It feels" - speak like a grown up, and provide actual examples. If you wanted to, e.g., call out VC firms that had funded specific defense/military projects for example, that would be a conversation (not that those are inherently bad).
"Sole goal is making money" - do you understand that capitalism and advancing business capabilities of a society is the driving force that's brought the most people out of poverty, ever? Making money, and helping people make money, is good. It means bringing to market products that others want, ergo products that help and enrich others.
Can there be questionable counterexamples? Maybe, but you didn't reference any, and it still doesn't negate the fact that VC is not an inherently unethical industry, which you seem to believe for some reason ("Are there any ethical VC funds?" as if they are unethical until proven otherwise).
> Even then many of the individuals at firms can be questionable, involved in scandals. And the things invested in, while there can be a thematic preference, often everything is thrown out the window in the pursuit of greed or missing out on a deal.
My issue with your post is that you throw around vague ideas and accusations with zero examples, and have a 'guilty until proven innocent' mindset for an entire industry which has helped create immense value.