Thread by @Pinboard

I want to amplify this because as an independent developer, this stuff makes me really angry. The volume of venture capital that pours through the industry makes it almost impossible to compete the way a free market is supposed to work—on the strength of your product or service

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1319049611512844289

I can stay afloat because social bookmarking is too niche an activity for VC-funded startups to target (though every two years or so there is a fly-by). But it also means that I can't hire help in the US or afford to pay contract workers, who are bid up by VC-bloated startups

The current VC ecosystem amounts to central planning—you have a small, socially incestuous coterie of people directing a fortune to pet projects and ideas, hiring their friends, and in general doing all the stuff the flames of a competitive free market are supposed to incinerate

With regard to Quibi, we've known for ages that short-format video is really popular. But how does a company that could do it competently stand a chance against a competitor willing to burn this kind of money for nothing? Ditto so many other areas where innovation has died

When something clever does break through, the only question becomes which of the big 5 tech oligopoly will acquire it, usually to shut it down. Ask yourself when the last genuinely exciting and cool thing came out of this industry, and how that compares to monopoly consolidation

If you put Meg Whitman at the helm of the Titanic she would find a way to miss the iceberg and sail the ship into a volcano, because that is how powerful a failure magnet she is. But I expect a big future for Team Quibi in the next lavishly funded startup, and the next after that

Re-watching Meg Whitman's 2010 campaign ads is a real eye-opener. Imagine anyone trying to campaign on making politics more like Silicon Valley today