Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality

Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality

Shestakofsky, Benjamin

Hardcover

General SociologySocial Movements

ISBN10: 0520395026
ISBN13: 9780520395022
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: Mar 19 2024
Pages: 328
Weight: 1.25
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Readers . . . will find a real-life 'The Office, ' Silicon Valley version, alternately comical and poignant.―New York Times​

This systematic analysis of everyday life inside a tech startup dissects the logic of venture capital and its consequences for entrepreneurs, workers, and societies.

In recent years, dreams about our technological future have soured as digital platforms have undermined privacy, eroded labor rights, and weakened democratic discourse. In light of the negative consequences of innovation, some blame harmful algorithms or greedy CEOs. Behind the Startup focuses instead on the role of capital and the influence of financiers. Drawing on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, this book examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it.

Investors push startups to scale as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. Benjamin Shestakofsky shows how these demands create organizational problems that managers solve by combining high-tech systems with low-wage human labor. With its focus on the financialization of innovation, Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by these companies are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs. To promote innovation that benefits the many rather than the few, Shestakofsky compellingly argues that we must focus less on fixing the technology and more on changing the financial infrastructure that supports it.

3 different editions

Also available

Also from

Shestakofsky, Benjamin

View All

Also in

General Sociology

View All