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World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy
An urgent and illuminating perspective that offers a window into how the most pernicious aspects of the venture capital ethos is reaching all areas of our lives, into everything from healthcare to food to entertainment to the labor market and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
The venture capital playbook is causing unique harms to society. And in World Eaters, Catherine Bracy offers a window into the pernicious aspects of VC and shows us how its bad practices are bleeding into all industries, undermining the labor and housing markets and posing unique dangers to the economy at large. VC’s creates a wide, powerful wake that impacts the average consumer just as much as it does investors and entrepreneurs.
In researching this book, Bracy has interviewed founders, fund managers, contract and temp workers in the gig economy, and Limited Partners across the landscape. She learned that the current VC model is not a good fit for the majority of start-ups, and yet, there are too few options for early stage funding outside of VC dollars. And while there are some alternative paths for sustainable, responsible growth, without the help of regulators, there is not much motivation to drive investors from the roulette table that is venture capital.
World Eaters is an eye-opening account of the ways that the values of contemporary venture capital hurt founders, consumers, and the market. Bracy’s clear-eyed debut is a must-read for fans of Winners Take All, Super Pumped, and Brotopia, an appealing “insider / outsider” perspective on Silicon Valley, and those who are fascinated to look under the hood and learn why the modern economy is not working for most of us.
The venture capital playbook is causing unique harms to society. And in World Eaters, Catherine Bracy offers a window into the pernicious aspects of VC and shows us how its bad practices are bleeding into all industries, undermining the labor and housing markets and posing unique dangers to the economy at large. VC’s creates a wide, powerful wake that impacts the average consumer just as much as it does investors and entrepreneurs.
In researching this book, Bracy has interviewed founders, fund managers, contract and temp workers in the gig economy, and Limited Partners across the landscape. She learned that the current VC model is not a good fit for the majority of start-ups, and yet, there are too few options for early stage funding outside of VC dollars. And while there are some alternative paths for sustainable, responsible growth, without the help of regulators, there is not much motivation to drive investors from the roulette table that is venture capital.
World Eaters is an eye-opening account of the ways that the values of contemporary venture capital hurt founders, consumers, and the market. Bracy’s clear-eyed debut is a must-read for fans of Winners Take All, Super Pumped, and Brotopia, an appealing “insider / outsider” perspective on Silicon Valley, and those who are fascinated to look under the hood and learn why the modern economy is not working for most of us.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published March 4, 2025
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March 30, 2025
World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalising the World Economy offers great insights into the negative consequences of the VC mindset. Yet the book also is a lesson on how a potentially great book falls down by straying too far from its core message.
Catherine Bracy’s book starts well, succinctly motivating the author’s interests in VC as a source of societal harm, while justifying this book by pointing out that VC’s role in company failure is largely overlooked when set against the avalanche of reporting on failed companies (think: Theranos, FTX or MoviePass) themselves. The VC response to reasonable questions like ‘how can you invest in such obviously bad companies?’ is to retort that they are chasing a ‘power law’ return curve. Yes, many companies we invest in will go bust, but the handful that make it will make it big. These are the famed “fund-returners” that offset for all the other misses.
Bracy’s contention is that VCs are not simply operating a specific business model, attempting to spot ultra high-growth companies while inevitably investing in a lot of duds. Instead, they create the conditions for the ‘power law’ growth profiles of companies they claim simply to be capturing in their funds. How? Because so much money for early stage start-ups comes from VCs that these protocompanies know they must sell a vision of explosive, fly-wheel growth to their would-be investors or else fail to get funded. And, once invested in, they must follow their VC’s advice and take decisions to grow fast. The flip side being: lots of good businesses go bust before becoming sustainable while plenty of other viable, socially valuable businesses fail to get funded at all.
This is a vital message and one expertly told. The author goes through many examples of companies that attempted to fly to the moon but fell out of the sky, supported by interviews with VCs themselves as well as founders. This is perhaps best captured towards the end of the book:
The final chapters of the book explain alternative approaches to the canonical VC approach, such as alternative repayment approaches that award healthy profits to VCs without the all-or-nothing requirements of the current approach.
A great example Bracy gives is of two companies founded by the same entrepreneur, Thompson Aderinkomi. RetraceHealth offered subscription healthcare models to improve the patient experience, a clear example of a business trying to innovate in a socially valuable way. Aderinkomi sought VC investment of the traditional type, was pushed into taking on more investment and scaling faster than he wanted, and was rapidly pushed out of the company he founded due to differences in visions for the company. RetraceHealth shortly thereafter went out of business.
Aderinkomi subsequently founded a new health start-up, Nice Healthcare, and received new-style VC investments with optionality around either set repayments to the VC or the more traditional percentage return at a future exit point (a convertible note). This alternative VC approach allowed the company to grow more slowly, avoid pulling in too many unaligned investors, and actually ended up raising subsequent VC rounds in the standard way but without Aderinkomi ceding control of his firm; a win for all involved.
These sorts of stories are the book at its best, where it details the ills of current VC investing and outlining alternatives. The book falls down in the middle, however, with lengthy detours into VC and labour and VC and the housing market. The first chapter, on labour, details issues in the labour market through gig economy companies that are often invested in by VCs. However, the driving force of the legal changes that enabled companies like Uber to emerge were driven by large corporations like Google looking to push workers off their balance sheet. They were only subsequently exploited by VC. Similarly on the housing market, the real antagonist is private equity not VC.
Both chapters appear to be motivated more by the author’s desire to discuss social ills rather than maintain her focus on VC itself. Small changes here could have made a big difference. A narrower focus on how VCs exploited labour rules and a deeper description of how the power-law fixation combined with labour changes created social harms would have fit the book well. Similarly on housing, VC has a role to play and a few paragraphs on this would have fleshed out the central argument around how the VC mindset, that leads particularly to a fetish for scalable software at the expense of all else, has enabled exploitative practices, would have supported the book’s wider arguments.
Unfortunately, the two chapters comprise roughly the central third of the book. I found myself drifting off and re-reading passages to try and remember how VC was related to it. Which is a shame because of how important the core theme is: that “the venture capital mono-culture prevents good businesses - many of which could deliver breakthroughs on tough problems like the housing and climate crises - from thriving”. More nuance applied to the analysis of the VC methodology, less general discussion of societal ills only partially driven by VCs, and a deeper dive on alternative investing approaches would have turned this good book into a great one.
Catherine Bracy’s book starts well, succinctly motivating the author’s interests in VC as a source of societal harm, while justifying this book by pointing out that VC’s role in company failure is largely overlooked when set against the avalanche of reporting on failed companies (think: Theranos, FTX or MoviePass) themselves. The VC response to reasonable questions like ‘how can you invest in such obviously bad companies?’ is to retort that they are chasing a ‘power law’ return curve. Yes, many companies we invest in will go bust, but the handful that make it will make it big. These are the famed “fund-returners” that offset for all the other misses.
Bracy’s contention is that VCs are not simply operating a specific business model, attempting to spot ultra high-growth companies while inevitably investing in a lot of duds. Instead, they create the conditions for the ‘power law’ growth profiles of companies they claim simply to be capturing in their funds. How? Because so much money for early stage start-ups comes from VCs that these protocompanies know they must sell a vision of explosive, fly-wheel growth to their would-be investors or else fail to get funded. And, once invested in, they must follow their VC’s advice and take decisions to grow fast. The flip side being: lots of good businesses go bust before becoming sustainable while plenty of other viable, socially valuable businesses fail to get funded at all.
This is a vital message and one expertly told. The author goes through many examples of companies that attempted to fly to the moon but fell out of the sky, supported by interviews with VCs themselves as well as founders. This is perhaps best captured towards the end of the book:
How could someone who built a product that clearly met a need, and had figured out how to create a profitable business around it, ever think they were a failure? Something is deeply wrong with an economy where people … have internalized a notion of entrepreneurship that views anything other than multibillion-dollar outcomes as failure.
The final chapters of the book explain alternative approaches to the canonical VC approach, such as alternative repayment approaches that award healthy profits to VCs without the all-or-nothing requirements of the current approach.
A great example Bracy gives is of two companies founded by the same entrepreneur, Thompson Aderinkomi. RetraceHealth offered subscription healthcare models to improve the patient experience, a clear example of a business trying to innovate in a socially valuable way. Aderinkomi sought VC investment of the traditional type, was pushed into taking on more investment and scaling faster than he wanted, and was rapidly pushed out of the company he founded due to differences in visions for the company. RetraceHealth shortly thereafter went out of business.
Aderinkomi subsequently founded a new health start-up, Nice Healthcare, and received new-style VC investments with optionality around either set repayments to the VC or the more traditional percentage return at a future exit point (a convertible note). This alternative VC approach allowed the company to grow more slowly, avoid pulling in too many unaligned investors, and actually ended up raising subsequent VC rounds in the standard way but without Aderinkomi ceding control of his firm; a win for all involved.
These sorts of stories are the book at its best, where it details the ills of current VC investing and outlining alternatives. The book falls down in the middle, however, with lengthy detours into VC and labour and VC and the housing market. The first chapter, on labour, details issues in the labour market through gig economy companies that are often invested in by VCs. However, the driving force of the legal changes that enabled companies like Uber to emerge were driven by large corporations like Google looking to push workers off their balance sheet. They were only subsequently exploited by VC. Similarly on the housing market, the real antagonist is private equity not VC.
Both chapters appear to be motivated more by the author’s desire to discuss social ills rather than maintain her focus on VC itself. Small changes here could have made a big difference. A narrower focus on how VCs exploited labour rules and a deeper description of how the power-law fixation combined with labour changes created social harms would have fit the book well. Similarly on housing, VC has a role to play and a few paragraphs on this would have fleshed out the central argument around how the VC mindset, that leads particularly to a fetish for scalable software at the expense of all else, has enabled exploitative practices, would have supported the book’s wider arguments.
Unfortunately, the two chapters comprise roughly the central third of the book. I found myself drifting off and re-reading passages to try and remember how VC was related to it. Which is a shame because of how important the core theme is: that “the venture capital mono-culture prevents good businesses - many of which could deliver breakthroughs on tough problems like the housing and climate crises - from thriving”. More nuance applied to the analysis of the VC methodology, less general discussion of societal ills only partially driven by VCs, and a deeper dive on alternative investing approaches would have turned this good book into a great one.
June 17, 2025
Truly fascinating to read, as I don't share the optimism that Venture Capital can be made good, while also painstakingly describing how it is not like that. The advice is to think differently, some regulations. As of now, none of this will materialize. Maybe she can be an ally in the forthcoming revolution, as she is on the fence.
April 14, 2025
This is the book I've been looking for for years. I find the binary thinking about VC to be infuriating. Most books either celebrate VC as the solution to everything or critique VC as the greatest force of destruction we've ever seen. What this book does is showcase when and where VC is the right investment vehicle for enabling innovation - and where it's absolutely the wrong approach (for the business, for society, AND for investors). Perhaps the most compelling argument throughout the whole book is a fantastic diagnosis of all of the amazing kinds of novel and innovative businesses that have been destroyed simply because VC is not the right financial instrument to ensure those businesses' success. We need a broader array of financial tools to support different kinds of businesses. Even the recommendations are spot on, focused on offering a holistic approach to ensuring that innovation is possible.
May 7, 2025
I wasn’t a huge fan of how this book was written, but it was interesting. It’s about venture capital and how they incentivize startups to do things that are in interest of capitalism rather than the common good. It was cool learning about some of this stuff, but it just wasn’t all that engaging of a read for me.
April 17, 2025
8/10
Very well written. Easy to read, flows well. Very informative but not bogged down by statistics and data. Uses anecdtoes to help explain the problems with venture capitalism from the perspectives of people who have been burnt by it. A great, informative read about a type of economic investment that most people know vaguely about but not enough details to really pinpoint any specific problem with it assuming its existence will persist. I really like that Catherine Bracy spends a good amount of time discussing alternatives to venture capitalism and the people who are trying to engage in venture capital investing in healthier, more ethical ways. It helps show that we can make a difference one person at a time. There's too much doomerism right now in politics so it's really cool to see tangible, practical solutions to at least improving the system. The only thing I wish I got more of from this book is stories & examples of the real world harm venture capital-funded companies have caused, such as the damage FTX has done or the environmental damage some other company has done. We get plenty of examples of the monopolistic harm venture capitalism causes but we don't get much in the way of real world, human cost.
Very well written. Easy to read, flows well. Very informative but not bogged down by statistics and data. Uses anecdtoes to help explain the problems with venture capitalism from the perspectives of people who have been burnt by it. A great, informative read about a type of economic investment that most people know vaguely about but not enough details to really pinpoint any specific problem with it assuming its existence will persist. I really like that Catherine Bracy spends a good amount of time discussing alternatives to venture capitalism and the people who are trying to engage in venture capital investing in healthier, more ethical ways. It helps show that we can make a difference one person at a time. There's too much doomerism right now in politics so it's really cool to see tangible, practical solutions to at least improving the system. The only thing I wish I got more of from this book is stories & examples of the real world harm venture capital-funded companies have caused, such as the damage FTX has done or the environmental damage some other company has done. We get plenty of examples of the monopolistic harm venture capitalism causes but we don't get much in the way of real world, human cost.
December 18, 2025
Venture Capital sucks. You can trace a direct line from many of the current woes in the corporate world straight to VC.
Especially in technology - the entire industry has coalesced around this concept of unicorns and moonshots and that if your company can't make ten billion dollars then it's just not investing in. What nonsense. There shouldn't be anything wrong with a company that steadily makes $500 million. Or $50 million. Or $100,000.
But no. That's not the world we live in - everybody has to hyper scale their growth no matter whether their business or market can support it or else they can't get the investments they need. Even worse, VC has destroyed countless smaller firms that could have been small and sustainable by forcing them to pivot in an attempt to grow needlessly. It's such a waste.
The book explains the history of VC, how we got to the current point, what can be done about it, and some alternatives to help companies that don't fit into the VC moonshot rocket model. It's frustratingly light on options, since most real change would need actual policy issue adjustments. But it nonetheless is able to point people in the right direction and emphasize that options are there and available.
It is one of those books that may piss you off, because it lays bare just how bad things are. But it's totally worth reading and getting angry about.
Especially in technology - the entire industry has coalesced around this concept of unicorns and moonshots and that if your company can't make ten billion dollars then it's just not investing in. What nonsense. There shouldn't be anything wrong with a company that steadily makes $500 million. Or $50 million. Or $100,000.
But no. That's not the world we live in - everybody has to hyper scale their growth no matter whether their business or market can support it or else they can't get the investments they need. Even worse, VC has destroyed countless smaller firms that could have been small and sustainable by forcing them to pivot in an attempt to grow needlessly. It's such a waste.
The book explains the history of VC, how we got to the current point, what can be done about it, and some alternatives to help companies that don't fit into the VC moonshot rocket model. It's frustratingly light on options, since most real change would need actual policy issue adjustments. But it nonetheless is able to point people in the right direction and emphasize that options are there and available.
It is one of those books that may piss you off, because it lays bare just how bad things are. But it's totally worth reading and getting angry about.
February 22, 2025
Reading a lot about tech and startups, I long ago realized who was to blame for the abysmal state of the field: venture capitalists. This book confirms my diagnosis and provides strong evidence of the flaws in this institution. Here is just one example:
„Because so much money is chasing so few real opportunities that have the potential to deliver venture-scale returns, venture capitalists adopt a level of credulity that shameless pitch people like Adam Neumann and Sam Bankman-Fried are more than happy to exploit”.
Although the style can be a bit dry and academic, in this book you will find not only the theoretical explanations, but also many colorful examples. There is even an interesting chapter that offers some solutions, but I am afraid that due to the current political climate they may not be very realistic. Still, a lot depends on us - customers, consumers, investors - so I hope that exposing the mechanisms of the VC market can in itself help bring about some positive change.
Thanks to the publisher, Penguin Group Dutton, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
„Because so much money is chasing so few real opportunities that have the potential to deliver venture-scale returns, venture capitalists adopt a level of credulity that shameless pitch people like Adam Neumann and Sam Bankman-Fried are more than happy to exploit”.
Although the style can be a bit dry and academic, in this book you will find not only the theoretical explanations, but also many colorful examples. There is even an interesting chapter that offers some solutions, but I am afraid that due to the current political climate they may not be very realistic. Still, a lot depends on us - customers, consumers, investors - so I hope that exposing the mechanisms of the VC market can in itself help bring about some positive change.
Thanks to the publisher, Penguin Group Dutton, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
August 9, 2025
Worth a look if you’re skeptical of the hype surrounding venture capital.
Bracy clearly lays out the incentives that drive VC-backed firms to pursue the deleterious strategies that have become notorious over the last decade, and gives some recommendations about what can be done. It’s a nuanced analysis and she doesn’t claim to have all the answers, unlike the tech messiahs she’s critiquing.
Given the compelling structural problems driving the horrific negative outcomes that Bracy uncovers, I cannot believe she is able to maintain her commitment to the VC model. At the risk of sounding harsh, it seems naive. For example, her recommendations begin with an appeal to the better nature of limited partners to “change their behavior” which struck me as utterly out of step with the rest of the book’s description how this is unlikely/impossible (to be fair she does note that this is unlikely). Luckily, there’s more to it than “everybody should just be nicer…” and she includes reasonable ideas for Governments to step in as well. Great analysis, but I’m not sure these ideas are enough to address the problem she’s identified.
Bracy clearly lays out the incentives that drive VC-backed firms to pursue the deleterious strategies that have become notorious over the last decade, and gives some recommendations about what can be done. It’s a nuanced analysis and she doesn’t claim to have all the answers, unlike the tech messiahs she’s critiquing.
Given the compelling structural problems driving the horrific negative outcomes that Bracy uncovers, I cannot believe she is able to maintain her commitment to the VC model. At the risk of sounding harsh, it seems naive. For example, her recommendations begin with an appeal to the better nature of limited partners to “change their behavior” which struck me as utterly out of step with the rest of the book’s description how this is unlikely/impossible (to be fair she does note that this is unlikely). Luckily, there’s more to it than “everybody should just be nicer…” and she includes reasonable ideas for Governments to step in as well. Great analysis, but I’m not sure these ideas are enough to address the problem she’s identified.
September 24, 2025
Overall well-written, interesting, and a quick read. As someone who living in San Francisco and working at a tech startup, it's critical and refreshing to unpack the tradeoffs behind VC investment laid out so plainly. This book is especially timely in light of the staggering amount of money being plowed into AI today. If it accomplishes anything, it should help those in the startup ecosystem more practically evaluate VC and understand what it means to commit to "venture-scale growth".
The author does a good job hitting key points, including:
- which types of businesses/industries are NOT a fit for VC
- why investors should be scrutinized in the same way founders are
- the roles of LPs, government, startups, and VCs themselves must play in reshaping the system
Still, on certain topics, I felt the book needed to zoom out beyond VC. Systemic challenges like America’s housing crisis require a broader lens- the entrance of tech startups and VC is just one factor among many.
The author does a good job hitting key points, including:
- which types of businesses/industries are NOT a fit for VC
- why investors should be scrutinized in the same way founders are
- the roles of LPs, government, startups, and VCs themselves must play in reshaping the system
Still, on certain topics, I felt the book needed to zoom out beyond VC. Systemic challenges like America’s housing crisis require a broader lens- the entrance of tech startups and VC is just one factor among many.
May 13, 2025
I stand behind the mission Catherine Bracy is pushing here. She started off strong with calls to action and hard-hitting facts. I found as the book progressed, it was harder to stay with those convictions because that fearless call was not reiterated enough later on. Or frankly, got muddied in the waters of too much information in each chapter of the argument. Regardless of the reading experience, this is a very important book for where we must go to have investors incentives align to societal benefits.
December 5, 2025
4.5 stars. I gained a novel way of understanding current trends plus general exposure to finance topics. The thesis is much richer and more subtle than the title implies.
The pacing is a tad uneven, perhaps due to the dual purpose of serving as popular explainer and policy commentary geared at experts. This really showed up in the final two solutions and conclusion chapters, while a mix of principled explanations and compelling narrative examples made the first 2/3 a pleasant trot.
The pacing is a tad uneven, perhaps due to the dual purpose of serving as popular explainer and policy commentary geared at experts. This really showed up in the final two solutions and conclusion chapters, while a mix of principled explanations and compelling narrative examples made the first 2/3 a pleasant trot.
November 10, 2025
Compelling evidence for the trouble with VC and a few suggestions for alternative models. Enjoyed the examples of what's challenging and problematic, would LOVE to figure out how we channel this into supporting better funding models for a "lifestyle business"/practices that are sustainable and good for the world.
October 11, 2025
This is a very interesting explanation of how Venture Capital works in America and why it's so broken and destructive.
Unfortunately, I don't think any of the author's suggested "fixes" will come to pass.
Unfortunately, I don't think any of the author's suggested "fixes" will come to pass.
November 6, 2025
Great topic poorly executed. Author takes such a negative view of Venture. Used lots of examples of companies that were frauds (FTX) or companies that had nothing to do with innovative technologies Torture
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2025
Nothing revolutionary here, but still a tightly written reminder not to be pulled into the luster of profit maximization at high velocity.
May 27, 2025
Review to come...
June 24, 2025
I was unable to finish this book. Rather than presenting a balanced viewpoint, it was clearly left-leaning without presenting counter arguments.
July 24, 2025
If ‘investment’ and ‘handout’ have different definitions in your dictionary, this book is not for you.
July 29, 2025
I didn’t know about the contractor piece. There are definitely negative impacts of venture capital, which should be addressed and regulated.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 19, 2025
Good to know the world of VC
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