The following excerpt is from a special series I’m running on “Ahead of The Curve,” which documents tales and experiences from a two-year journey at the Harvard Business School. Learn more here.
As venture capital has become institionalized, the people in it have become less venturesome. Those who visited campus were overwhelmingly male and either white or Asian. Some had worked at a real company before becoming capital providers, but that was no longer necessary. Most had degrees in sicence, engineering, or business. They liked to think of themselves as renegades and rule-breakers, and yet they struck me as a hardened monoculture. when one of them took up bicycling on the weekend, they all did. If one had pale blond wood in the conference room, they all did.
In the HBS classroom, the future VCs all affected a similar manner, speaking in a measured monotone, keeping their notes in a leather portfolio, wearing chinos, tucked in dress shirts, and baseball caps. The comments they made were never surprising, sticking close to the frameworks we were taught. Whereas the bankers were often argumentative and difficult, the VCs like to affect calm under pressure. They loved to poke holes in business plans by saying things like “I’d like to see more customer data” or “Iquestion the founder’s motivation.” They enjoyed sitting in judgement and looking terribly pleased with themselves, to the point where all you wanted to do was slap them to life and demand they do something.
For a long while, many have thought there to be a sexist bias in the realm of venture capital. Racist, too? What do you think? Any experiences?
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200 % agreed. If you look little harder silmiliar monoculture exist in internet entrepreneurs too. Herd mentality and inertia exist in every system and culture and that why ‘new new thing’ is always exciting. True VCs are now indangered species and vc culture is daying slow death. We need ‘new new VCs’ phenomenon.