We're Selling Entrepreneurship Short

Key Highlights

• For large VC funds, a $1 billion outcome is now meaningless. To hit 3–5x returns, a partnership needs startups that go public at north of $50B. Only 48 public tech companies in the entire universe are valued above that.
• By the math: 15 companies per year (~0.004%) will drive 95% of the entire venture industry’s value. This warps the entire model.
• Stanford (a major LP) responded to the imbalance not by diversifying but by concentrating capital into existing large-fund relationships — the opposite of innovation.
• The VC model of blitzscaling “was not delivered from the mountain on stone tablets. We can change it, iterate it, and experiment with it.”
• The promise of seed investing when it started was to be a low-end disruptor to large VC — “but it’s impossible to ignore the changes underway” as seed funds now chase the same outlier math.
• The venture market is fickle: “one day everyone is chasing crypto then they’re hunting AI the next.” Founders reliant on outside funding are exposed to those waves; founders who control their destiny can press toward the future regardless.
• Indie companies that stayed profitable have had real optionality: “repurchasing equity, merging with VC-backed companies, getting acquired, or raising growth capital from traditional VCs.”
• “Too many of the same dollars chasing the same deals and, naturally, seeing the same results.” Prices skyrocket, ownership shrinks.
• Opportunity: a wave of entrepreneurship built around broader base of entrepreneurs who are non-consumers today — people who never saw venture as a path.

Connections

• Venture Capital — the model under critique: large funds now need $50B+ public outcomes, warping incentives for everyone downstream.
• Capital Allocation — the piece is fundamentally about how the same dollars chase the same deals, shrinking ownership and returns.
• LP — Stanford, a major limited partner, concentrated into existing large-fund relationships rather than diversifying, reinforcing the imbalance.
• Private Equity — the profitable, founder-controlled alternative Roberts advocates sits closer to traditional buyout/cash-flow logic than to blitzscaling venture.
• Crypto — cited as an example of the market’s fickleness (“one day everyone is chasing crypto then they’re hunting AI the next”) that funding-dependent founders are exposed to.