Behind the Startup : How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality

As dreams of our technological future have turned into nightmares, some blame harmful algorithms or greedy CEOs for the negative consequences of innovation. Behind the Startup takes a different approach. Drawing on 19 months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, this book examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it. Investors push startups to 'scale' as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. I show how these demands created organizational problems that managers could only solve by combining high-tech systems with low-wage human labor. With its focus on the financialization of innovation, Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by Silicon Valley companies are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs. Readers will come away from the book with the understanding that if we want to promote innovation that benefits the many rather than the few, we need to focus less on fixing the technology and more on changing the financial infrastructure that supports it--

Author: Benjamin Shestakofsky

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Publication Date: Mar 19, 2024

Number of Pages: 326 pages

Language: English

Binding: Hardcover

ISBN-10: 0520395026

ISBN-13: 9780520395022