I’ve been in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and New York in the last month, and the techlash is a real thing.
People used to love Silicon Valley and look to it as a global leader in innovation and to ethically grow economies while improving our collective future. That’s changing rapidly.
The privacy fiasco’s of Google, Facebook and the techbro culture of Uber and the like have been causing people to rethink how we do tech and tech capitalism.
There’s 10,000 new millionaires that have been created in San Francisco this past summer during the recent batch of IPOs, and at the same time there are 10,000 homeless in the same city. There is something wrong with that.
Sadly, I’m not hearing anyone in tech or Venture speak out and start to suggest solutions to systemic problems.
We need to invest in companies building solutions to real problems in climate, housing, water, environment and sustainability and not simply chase the next unicorn.
We need to invest in companies led by someone other than white and Asian dudes.
We need to invest and build companies globally not just companies within a 20 minute drive of Palo Alto or San Francisco.
We need to work towards collaborative capitalism increase ownership across the board as we create wealth and value.