An Engineer’s View of Venture Capitalists

IEEE Spectrum, c. 2000. Surfaced 2026-09-01 by Michael Jackson (VC) on LinkedIn, who called it “two and a half decades old, but a lot of it still rings true” and credited Dan G. with digging it up.

Provenance note. Reached here by resolving the lnkd.in/e4DtRyu4 shortener in Jackson’s post — recorded so the citation no longer depends on a LinkedIn interstitial. The lines below are the ones Jackson quoted; the article itself is the durable source.

The quoted passages

Jackson’s pull-quote, which is why the piece is in this wiki:

“The VC connects wealthy investors to nerds… answering to their investors contributes to a sheep mentality… mostly, they aren’t engineers — even the ones with engineering degrees… the VC’s version of a pet is the ‘executive in residence.’”

Why a 25-year-old article is worth keeping

Three claims, all of which are still arguable today and none of which have been settled:

• The intermediary framing. “Connects wealthy investors to nerds” is deliberately unflattering, and it is also just a description of the business — the question it forces is what the intermediary adds beyond connection.
• Herding is structural, not personal. The article locates the sheep mentality in answering to LPs, not in individual timidity. That is the same mechanism Gil Dibner describes from the other end 25 years later (megafunds lowering the bar for everyone), and the same one The Big Sort (Strange Loop Canon) frames as institutional insecurity.
• The credential/practice gap. “Even the ones with engineering degrees” — the claim is that having trained as an engineer and currently thinking like one are different things, and venture selects against the second.

Connections

• Feeds Venture Capital Exceptions via the note “Venture Capital Needs a New PR Strategy.” The draft’s useful angle is the dateline: an identical critique in 2000 and in 2026 means either the criticism is wrong or the industry is structurally unable to answer it — and that is the essay, not the complaint itself.
• Pairs with Jackson’s own “80% of venture firms sit in strategically challenged positions” post and with the Vinod Khosla material on juniors joining boards.