I'd say the problem VCs have now is that the decade of nearly-free money is over and everyone has 5% risk-free return investment opportunities. At the same time

I'd say the problem VCs have now is that the decade of nearly-free money is over and everyone has 5% risk-free return investment opportunities. At the same time the sky-high valuations of many startups were based on dreams that never panned out, and exits are both sparse and unlikely to match values of 2 years ago. So as an asset class, VC is much less appealing than it was before. It's fun to see articles like this one popping up more frequently now that the market has shifted, which amount to a "back to basics" entrepreneurship push. In contrast, the last ten years saw tons of articles pushing founders to raise as much as possible as fast as possible.