A comment on VC-funded companies with products in the fediverse:
My company, StatusNet, ran identi.ca for a long time on VC funding.
It's hard to get a 10x return in markets where open standards prevail. But it's fine to try.
There are other ways to fund services in the fediverse. https://cosocial.ca/ is a cooperative, for example.
If the fediverse remains diverse and competitive, and community, coop and family servers have a place, I'm not opposed to VC-backed companies participating.
@evan - Venture capital is poison. VC's job is always to extract wealth rather than build value; big returns are the enemy of "making good things."
This isn't entitlement, it's observation, based on the companies I've worked for and with. As soon as VC gets involved, growth and return on investment become the only things you can talk about.
I'll not welcome it into a space I came to specifically in an attempt to flee the corrosive effects of corporate greed.
@kevinswiber@hachyderm.io@bluewinds @evan @thisismissem A related take… If I were investing venture capital, I would hesitate to invest in a market that values social goodwill over capitalism. There are other financial vehicles that make more sense, but VC is fundamentally about profit. I don’t think early social media users understood their data would fuel an ad platform to make companies rich. We know the model now and have choice.