Behind the Startup

How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-0-520-39503-9
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 456 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shestakofsky, Benjamin

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Gewerkschaften, Industrielle Beziehungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Sozialpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Dienste, Soziale Organisationen
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Unternehmensfinanzen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Preface 

Introduction 

PART I San Francisco: Launching the Rocket Ship

1. Orchestrating Change 
2. Dreaming of the Future 

PART II The Philippines: Innovation’s Human Infrastructure

3. Working Algorithms 
4. All in the Family? 

PART III Las Vegas: The Call De-Center

5. Working the Phones 
6. Bearing the Burdens of Change 

PART IV When a Startup Grows Up

7. Growing Pains

Conclusion: Reorganizing Innovation 
Acknowledgments 
Methodological Appendix 
Notes 
References 
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Benjamin Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society.