The venture capital playbook, which has become dogma not just in tech but increasingly across the entire economy, causes unique harms to society, the economy, democracy, and in the lives of everyday people. Like late-stage capitalism on steroids, it calls for companies to seek total domination and to do it as fast as possible. What follows is a cascade of negative outcomes for society as a whole and the economy at large. Uber and Lyft steamrolling regulators. Facebook and YouTube relying on a revenue model that optimises for misinformation and radicalisation. The intractable diversity problem in the tech industry. Worker exploitation. These threats on their own are bad enough. But the practices of the venture capital world have begun to bleed into the rest of the economy creating staggering inequality, vanishing competition, and a redefinition of American entrepreneurship that shoehorns many founders with good ideas into an ill-fitting VC model, which can push their startups to failure before they even get off the ground. Luckily, it isn t all doom and gloom. There are investors and founders, like Indie.vc and the companies aligned with the Zebra Movement, who have proven that another path is possible. But how do we create the conditions so that their version of capitalism - one that fosters competition, innovation, sustainability, and inclusive growth - can thrive? What regulatory guardrails do we need to implement to prevent not just the worst behaviours of Facebook and Amazon but the rise of the rest? Readers will come away with deeper insights into the urgent decisions we must make about how to regulate tech. There is a future where a growing tech sector is welcomed as a boon for everyone rather than a threat to our economy, our public health and democracy as a whole. But to get there, we need to reckon with venture capital and the corrupted system it has created.
