How Venture Capital Shapes Technology Design, Development, and Use

Benjamin Shestakofsky is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a faculty affiliate of AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality, was published in 2024 by the University of California Press. Benjamin has written on topics including the social factors shaping AI development, platform governance, platform work, software automation, the labor behind AI systems, the sociology of AI, and qualitative research methods. His work has been published in journals including Big Data & Society, International Journal of Communication, Socio-Economic Review, Theory and Society, and Work and Occupations. Benjamin’s research has received financial support from the Russell Sage Foundation, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. His research and commentary have appeared in media outlets including the New York Times, National Public Radio, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Fast Company, Los Angeles Review of Books, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Tech Policy Press.

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Abstract: This talk presents findings from my recent book, Behind the Startup. I draw on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley company to illuminate the relationship between financial systems and on-the-ground processes of technology design, development, and use. Venture capital investors push nascent tech firms to scale as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. I show how investors’ demands systematically generated organizational problems that managers addressed by

combining high-tech systems with a low-wage, globally distributed workforce. With its focus on the financialization of innovation, Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by tech startups are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs, leaving workers and users to bear many of the costs and risks associated with technology development. To promote innovation that benefits the many rather than the few, I argue that efforts to build more equitable technologies must be complemented by changes to the organizational, financial, and policy infrastructures that support them.