What he's describing is a feudalistic, dysfunctional reputation economy. I wish there a way to make everyone realize this at once, so we can abandon this mess

What he's describing is a feudalistic, dysfunctional reputation economy. I wish there a way to make everyone realize this at once, so we can abandon this mess wholesale and come up with something else. The reputation factors dominate in light of the realization that the current Bay Area "tech" scene is built on taking behaviors (insider trading, market manipulation) that would lead directly to jail if done on public markets, and applying them to unregulated private equities. Since the people getting burned the hardest on the investment are young employees, no one seems to care, though. This is also why there will probably never be a competing VC-driven tech hub, and why VC will always be extremely local. The VC business is that way because so much of the note-sharing and market/reputation manipulation is borderline unethical and it would be suicide to put too many of the conversations that actually matter in writing.