Anil Dash: Understanding the rise of 'Cancer Capital' and how VC stopped being VC
tlhunter · hn · 2026-09-03
Blogger Anil Dash argues that venture capital has drifted from its original mission of backing long-term innovation into what he calls "Cancer Capital" — capital that extracts short-term returns while hollowing out startups and the broader ecosystem. The essay traces how this shift happened and why it matters, sparking discussion on HN about VC culture in the current AI boom.
More from Venture
- Social Bid lets brands bid to sponsor X profiles while creators keep 80% — alexmacgregor__ · 2026-09-05
- Founders Struggling to Raise Should Switch to Making Money — arian_ghashghai · 2026-09-05
- Zhipu monetizes compute at $8-10M/MW, 5x below Anthropic and OpenAI's $40-50M/MW — zephyr_z9 · 2026-09-05
- Awesome-finance-skills: open-source agent skills turn LLMs into Wall Street analysts — tom_doerr · 2026-09-05
- Cathie Wood: Block's product velocity is phenomenal since Jack reorganized around AI — CathieDWood · 2026-09-05
- Rebutting Lessin: enterprise AI is servicizing products — we're getting digital teammates — arieljalali · 2026-09-05