Ep. 24: Catherine Bracy, founder and CEO of TechEquity and Author of World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy

Dec 11, 2025

Catherine Bracy, founder and CEO of TechEquity and author of World Eaters, dives deep into the pitfalls of venture capital, especially its impact on climate tech. She sheds light on how VC incentives often lead to systemic harm, urging founders to rethink their funding strategies. Bracy critiques the blitzscaling playbook and emphasizes the need for a shift in entrepreneurial mindsets. She also illustrates the dangers of excessive focus on AI, warning about its resource consumption and societal effects. A thought-provoking discussion on balancing profit with social responsibility!

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Power Law Shapes Tech Funding

Venture capital relies on a power law where a tiny number of startups return outsized gains.
That power law now shapes how technology is built and financed across industries.

INSIGHT

Finance Drives Business Strategy

VCs reverse-engineer company strategy to chase power-law returns rather than backing technologies.
That incentive structure creates many of the societal harms attributed to 'tech'.

INSIGHT

Blitzscaling Harms Non-Software Sectors

The blitzscaling playbook pushes companies to grow fast and dominate markets regardless of fit.
Applying that software-born playbook to non-software sectors creates large mismatches and harms.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Like so many things in Silicon Valley, venture capital investment in climate tech is cyclical. Climate tech first gained attention from venture capitalists starting around 2006, thanks in part to legendary venture investor John Doerr. After initially seeming to fizzle, climate tech VC bouced back. In 2021, at least $49 billion of climate tech VC investments were made, which PWC estimates at 14% of the year’s total. Since then, climate tech VC fell again—along with overall venture capital investing, which was hurt by the spike in interest rates that started in 2022.

Yet climate tech investment has continued to make up 10% or more of total venture funding. Even that significant proportion greatly understates the tremendous attention and optimism that climate VC funding continues to attract. Partly this is because Silicon Valley has an outsized influence on our national economy, culture, and discourse. The valley’s can-do attitude, outside-the-box thinking and record of transforming society have generated justified optimism that tech entrepreneurs can help drive progress on climate.

Yet silicon valley’s monomaniacal pursuit of unimaginable profits have sometimes caused its leaders to betray their vaunted ideals of social progress. And tech firms in recent years have often burdened workers, communities, and the broader society with devastating and persistent side effects of the next big thing.

My guest today is Catherine Bracy, founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization TechEquity. She’s also the author of World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy.

I sat down with Catherine to talk about her insightful book and related work. Although her work doesn’t focus primarily on climate tech, her perceptive critique of Silicon Valley’s excesses and venture capital’s pathologies provided for me a new way to think about the consequences of VC as a driving force behind climate tech.

Additional resources: