On venture capital
By Doug Scott with Claude Opus 4.7 (writer). AI-generated, no human expert review. The frames evaluate the system. The verdicts, where given, are the publication's own. The reader is invited to disagree.
Featured pieces
-
The 33%
Cooper, Woo and Dunkelberg surveyed 2,994 entrepreneurs in 1988. Thirty-three percent rated their probability of success at one hundred percent. They were not failing at probability theory. They were correctly registering the signal of the messaging environment they were immersed in. This piece is what that means.
Read the article → -
Why Fund Economics Need Overconfident Founders
A typical early-stage venture fund makes about twenty-five investments. Its returns to limited partners depend almost entirely on whether one or two turned out to be extreme outliers. What that math forces, in three steps, is the part this piece is about.
Read the article → -
What the Natural Experiment Shows
The US, UK, and EU run variants of the same venture model under different conditions. Comparing the three lets us ask which features of the system are intrinsic to running a venture model at all, and which are local-design choices that could be different. The line between the two changes what reform is possible.
Read the article → -
Both Halves of the Headline Are True
Venture capital is good for society and bad for most founders. Readers who hear that sentence often assume one of the two halves must be wrong. Both are documented in the empirical literature. The trick of holding them at the same time is the work the longer pieces do; this piece is the door.
Read the article → -
Venture Capital Is Good for Society and Bad for Most Founders
Venture capital is good for society and bad for most founders. Both halves are documented in the empirical literature. Most writing about VC handles one half or the other; this piece handles both.
Read the article → -
The Wrong Winners Write the Books
Founder advice is not only survivor-biased. It is filtered toward the survivors most certain that their outcome was repeatable. The classic survivorship filter is well known: failures do not write the books. Two further filters operate on the survivor cohort itself — and they are what give the recruitment narrative its tone before any individual VC, accelerator, or founder-coach does anything. This piece names all three.
Read the article → -
For Prospective Founders — What the Recruitment Narrative Does Not Say
For a reader weighing whether to enter the venture system as a founder, an early employee, or an investor of personal savings into venture funds. The strongest single argument the publication has on this topic, made as its own piece because it deserves to. With primary sources you can verify.
Read the article → -
The reality of being a founder — what the data actually says
Most of what is published about being a founder is recruitment material — accurate enough on the survivors, silent on the rest. This is the picture you would see if the data were not filtered. Most fail. Mental-health conditions are more common in the population than in the comparison group. Both halves are well-replicated. With primary sources you can verify.
Read the article → -
The Power Law and What It Forces
Returns to venture investments follow a power-law distribution: a small number of extreme outliers carry the whole. From that single empirical fact, the moral pattern of the venture system — the deal-flow imperative, the rejection of the merely-good, the founder selection criteria, the recruitment narrative — falls out as a structural consequence, not a choice anyone made. The piece sets out the chain in five steps and then asks what would change the pattern if the math changed.
Read the article → -
VC across the US, UK, and EU — a jurisdictional reference for prospective founders
The operational counterpart to the main analytical piece. Side-by-side comparison of structural features (LP base, founder tax regimes, exit market depth, employee equity treatment, 2025-2026 regulatory changes) across the US, UK, and the major EU venture markets. Practical reference for founders deciding where to incorporate, fundraise, or relocate. May 2026 snapshot.
Read the article →
Deep versions, alternative versions, and engagement-with-critique
The longer-form pieces, the predecessor synthesis, and the publication's engagement with substantive critiques received on this body of work.
-
VC: most fail, most suffer, some win lots — does society win or lose?
An open question on venture capital. Seven analytical frames in parallel, evidence labelled by strength, anchored in US/UK/EU as a natural experiment. A short prologue addresses the reader directly: the entire messaging environment around venture capital is engineered to make you, specifically, believe you will be the winner. The frames evaluate the system. Evaluating yourself is a different exercise the document cannot do for you.
Read the article → -
From talent to transaction — twenty years inside an accelerator program
The predecessor synthesis on accelerators, useful for readers interested in how accelerators relate to the broader venture-capital ecosystem. Treats acceptance into an accelerator as a structural moment that reshapes a founder's twenty-year arc — the cap table becomes a moral document, mentorship becomes entangled with deal flow, failure is metabolised as portfolio churn, the grammar of relationships changes. Person-by-person ramifications across founders, employees, capital, infrastructure, and the public.
Read the article → -
Common Reactions — VC: substantive critiques and the publication's responses
Six substantive critiques the publication has received on the venture-capital pieces. Where the critique is right, the publication agrees. Where the deep version already treats the point, the publication says so. Where the publication thinks the critique misreads what the pieces are doing, the publication pushes back.
Read the article →