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The Crisis of Venture Capital: Fixing America’s Broken Start-Up System - American Affairs Journal

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You have reached your limit of 1 free article this month. Please subscribe to receive unlimited access to this site. Already have an account? Sign In. American Affairs Journal D espite all the attention and investment that Silicon Valley’s re­cent start-ups have received, they have done little but lose mon­ey: Uber, Lyft, WeWork, Pinterest, and Snapchat have consistently failed to turn profits, with Uber’s cumulative losses exceeding $25 billion. Perhaps even more notorious are bankrupt and discredited start-ups such as Theranos, Luckin Coffee, and Wirecard, which were plagued with management failures, technical problems, or even out­right fraud that auditors failed to notice.1 What’s going on? There is no immediately obvious reason why this generation of start-ups should be so financially disastrous. After all, Amazon incurred losses for many years, but eventually grew to become one of the most profitable companies in the world, even as Enron and WorldCom were mired in accounting scan

Spring 2021 / Volume V, Number 1 D espite all the attention and investment that Silicon Valley’s re­cent start-ups have received, they have done little but lose mon­ey: Uber, Lyft, WeWork, Pinterest, and Snapchat have consistently failed to turn profits, with Uber’s cumulative losses exceeding $25 billion. Perhaps even more notorious are bankrupt and discredited start-ups such as Theranos, Luckin Coffee, and Wirecard, which were plagued with management failures, technical problems, or even out­right fraud that auditors failed to notice. 1 What’s going on? There is no immediately obvious reason

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