> I have argued that the rise of founder-friendliness in startup funding is not just an idiosyncratic matter of philosophy, but a structural matter of negotiating power: If good ideas are rare and valuable, and capital is cheap and plentiful, then people with ideas will be able to extract whatever terms they want from people with capital.
That really gets at a deeper trend. Ben Thompson observed that Benchmark Capital took a huge gamble by suing Uber's CEO, as founder-friendliness is currently a large denominator in how promising companies choose funding sources. This acquisition company wants to leverage these same forces to put the companies first at the expense of IPO middlemen, which may be pointless if it ends up actually costing more.
That really gets at a deeper trend. Ben Thompson observed that Benchmark Capital took a huge gamble by suing Uber's CEO, as founder-friendliness is currently a large denominator in how promising companies choose funding sources. This acquisition company wants to leverage these same forces to put the companies first at the expense of IPO middlemen, which may be pointless if it ends up actually costing more.