It became less cool when it started attracting big money. The VC industry incentivizes exponential growth via privacy intrusion, so that's what most startups pu

It became less cool when it started attracting big money. The VC industry incentivizes exponential growth via privacy intrusion, so that's what most startups pursue. Building a useful technology is only the bait to onboard the chumps (which includes both clients and employees); once enough chumps are onboard the incentive structure changes to exclusively "moar growth, moar privacy intrusion, moar rent-seeking" until the company crashes and burns and then we do it all over again. I despise the incentive structures modern VCs create. Exponential growth is always inherently time-limited and thus it's fundamentally at odds with building a sustainable company that creates great technology over the long term.