> This, in the long run, is very bad for startups. The incentives for founding a company do still remain. ... The people who are getting screwed, however, are the folks who were never necessarily going to get rich — that’s reserved for founders, and appropriately so — but who could justify rolling the dice on a positive outcome as long as they had downside protection in the form of guaranteed employment with a Big Tech company if things didn’t work out.
It's not clear what Matt means by "who could justify rolling the dice on a positive outcome no as long as they had downside protection in the form of guaranteed employment with a Big Tech company if things didn’t work out" since as a class employees of a startup don't get guaranteed employment at a Big Tech company when things go south.
But this is feeling like the startup equivalent of spaghettification when black holes of incredible monetary gravity open up. The only ones who matter are the heads and the VCs who have sponsored them. Practically, it's a new front in how the existing ecosystem is anti-competitive.
As a VC, maybe I should just treat a graduating class from a top-tier school like a kind of investment, fund their academic research projects like they were a startup, and by so increasing their value to a Google or Microsoft participate in their additional worth at hiring time.
pinewurst•3h ago