• Yes, it wasn’t always the case. I was in the Silicon Valley in the 2000’s and it was full of techies who really believed in the open web, and even Google was a proponent of open standards.

    A few years later it seems like the tech matured enough that being technically savvy was no longer necessary to be a successful founder. Slowly it stopped being about technical innovations and became about raising money, product marketing, A/B testing, etc.

    • Selling dreams to VCs has long been the game, but VCs started getting dumber and greedier as all the low hanging opportunities were used up. So tech startups had to make sillier and sillier claims and business plans to keep raking in VC dough.

      Subscriptions have been big VC keywords for the last 7-8 years, as data harvesting started to be monopolized by a few big owners. Ads are trying to make a comeback as subscription fatigue sets in, which is why blockers are being targeted lately.

      I’m not looking forward to the next method of extracting wealth from the masses in trade for VC investment. Probably another form of slavery or subjugation they haven’t found a way to hide yet.