newyorker--2020-01-20--Is Venture Capital Worth the Risk?

Is Venture Capital Worth the Risk?

For a certain sort of nineteenth-century person—the sort with high risk tolerance and little revulsion to brutality—a natural career lay in whaling .
The odds of success here were , by almost every measure , poor .
An expedition first needed to find whales in the vastness of the oceans .
If it succeeded , it had to approach the whales in silence , with a small craft ; strike with a harpoon ; stay afloat , intact , engaged , and oriented as the poor creatures thrashed about , sometimes for miles through iceberg-laden water ; row back to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harvest the baleen and render the oil ; and survive the journey home .
“ On the eve of a Nantucket voyage , I regarded those marble tablets , and by the murky light of that darkened , doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me , ” Ishmael says , in “ Moby-Dick.
” “ Yes , there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity .
But what then ?
” For those who made it through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in tow .
A captain ’ s cut of the takings ranged from five to twelve per cent ; a first mate ’ s , three to seven per cent ; and so on , down the line .
A captain with some skill could spend a few years leading expeditions and retire rich .
In 1853 , the Times described the whaling town of New Bedford , Massachusetts , as “ probably the wealthiest place ” in the United States .
The people on the boat , however , weren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voyage cost between twenty and thirty thousand dollars , a small fortune in the mid-nineteenth century , and an industry emerged to get these expeditions off the dock .
Specialized agents in whaling-industry towns invested their own money , pooled cash from rich investors , did due diligence , and worked with captains to develop winning strategies and to plot uncrowded routes .
In most cases , their efforts were fruitless : data from a couple of whaling ports in Massachusetts in 1858 suggest that fully two-thirds of returning expeditions were unprofitable ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the whale ships in the New Bedford fleet never made it home .
A lucky outing , though , could return with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in goods , a fortune several times the outlay , and for many investors this was enough to justify the risk .
In “ V.C .
: An American History , ” the Harvard Business School professor Tom Nicholas sees whaling as the first practice of what we now call venture capital : collecting large pots of money and using it to invest in young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their management , in the hope of guiding growth and generating huge returns .
Venture capitalists fill these cash pots , or funds , with money from large-scale investors—foundations , pension funds , university endowments , and other passive contributors .
They take a management fee , drop a bit of their own money into the mix , and , like the whaling agents , promise expertise .
They , too , make predominantly bad bets : about eighty per cent of venture investments don ’ t pay off .
Occasionally , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , since the nineteen-seventies , such successes have transformed American business .
Venture capital backed Apple and Intel .
It funded Google , Amazon , and Facebook before any of them turned a profit .
In principle , venture capital is where the ordinarily conservative , cynical domain of big money touches dreamy , long-shot enterprise .
In practice , it has become the distinguishing big-business engine of our time .
Can it offer both returns ?
Much as a private table at the Casino de Monte-Carlo is off limits to those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chips , venture capital is off limits to most of us as a direct investment .
Funds typically have at least a million-dollar buy-in , available only to accredited investors , so unless you ’ re the Monopoly Man you ’ ll be unable to put your daughter ’ s college fund into some of that .
Yet most of us now have daily contact with the world of venture capital , because its sphere of influence has exploded .
Once , venture capital was sought by risky startups needing lots of up-front @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Genentech had to fund academic-grade research before it had a product to bring to market ) or for essential leaps in scale ( Uber is appealing only if it ’ s big enough to get a car to you quickly ) .
Such financing seemed especially suited to proprietary technology , which was expensive , hard to seed into the market , and yet , if things went right , extremely lucrative .
That has changed .
Since extending its focus to direct-to-consumer retail , venture capital has come to fund delivery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , shoe companies , office real estate , leisure real estate , coffee brewers , beer brewers , smoothies , razors , trousers , speakers , scooters , mattresses , toothbrushes , socks , and underwear .
This realm of direct commerce could be called Venture World .
You know what its businesses are like .
They appear suddenly , everywhere , with chatty ad campaigns on public transit starring cool , young people who were clearly nerds in high school but who have since mastered impressive dance moves .
They tell you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better ; they are simplifying the whole deal , changing how stuff works across society , and not a moment too soon .
If you are buying an actual object and live in a major city , you might find a brick-and-mortar storefront decked with ha-ha-clever wallpaper where you can hold the toothbrush of the future or try one of five purportedly game-changing eyeglass frames .
But the bulk of Venture World ’ s offerings are online , where they are hawked on bright , uncluttered sites that scroll down , down , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offering moving stories about one big idea that will change the industry , about community , about zero-impact supply chains , which , thanks to their backing , they can afford .
In Venture World , everyone seems to be more or less on your wavelength .
Its companies are geared toward unfussed people who keep their phones silenced and close .
Venture capitalism is behind most of the platforms on which people lament the gaucherie of “ late-stage capitalism ” ; it has become the chief industrial backer of the self-aware , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called woke .
A marriage between social enlightenment and manic growth defines the business of the past decade .
Venture capitalists , having helped officiate the ceremony , often find themselves in awkward standing when the marriage falls apart .
In the fall , WeWork , a venture-founded office-rental company , tried to enter the public markets with a forty-seven-billion-dollar valuation and the pixie dust of world-changing rhetoric , only to postpone the I.P.O .
indefinitely when the valuation dropped by about seventy-five per cent and its lion-haired C.E.O .
resigned amid disturbing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , there was Theranos , the fraudulent blood-testing company , which , despite the absence of evidence that it could do what it promised , raised a mint in venture-capital funding—then , on the basis of that , hundreds of millions more—and Juicero , which , before the company ’ s abrupt shutdown , in 2017 , had raised a hundred and eighteen million dollars for seven-hundred-dollar Wi-Fi-enabled squeezers of juice packets .
Last week , news broke that Zume—a startup whose business centered on pizza par-baked by robots , then loaded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finished each pie en route to its destination—had been compelled to lay off more than half of its employees because SoftBank ’ s venture-capital arm , which had already invested three hundred and seventy-five million dollars in the company , had backed away from further funding , wanting Zume to pursue more aggressive “ global domination ” in its pizza craft .
The startup ( which , despite its robust funding , delivered pizza to only a small portion of the San Francisco Bay Area ) is pivoting its business to “ compostable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moral to such embarrassments ?
Maybe occasional high-profile mortifications keep an essentially healthy system honest .
This is what a lot of wealthy entities seem to think , given recent record-breaking growth in V.C .
fund-raising : in 2018 venture capitalists , as a group , loaded more than fifty-six billion dollars into their funds .
“ And this is our youngest , Timothy , who ’ s starting at Hotchkiss this fall.
” And yet a seepage of doubt is spreading , notably among venture capitalists themselves .
“ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mile of this building , there are somewhere between five hundred and a thousand startups , ” a withered specimen of the old school told me a few years back , gazing out his window , across San Francisco .
“ But they ’ re not companies.
” Viewers of “ Shark Tank ” —the reality show on which entrepreneurs pitch to regal investors dressed in midlife-crisis clothes—could be forgiven for coming away with the impression , shared by many startup founders , that getting funded is itself proof of value .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent years , it has become common for venture-backed companies like Facebook and Uber to wilt in share value subsequent to their public offerings—which happens to be the period when many venture capitalists distribute their stake back to investors .
On the money tree of contemporary finance , venture capital comes off the branch of private equity : the buying and selling of shares of companies which aren ’ t publicly available , ostensibly to turn a profit while helping businesses thrive and grow .
When people speak of “ private equity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that move on mature companies , often with the goal of restructuring and selling them as if flipping a house .
Venture capitalists are different .
They buy equity from brand-new or young companies , and they generally can not get their money out until the startup enters the public market or is acquired by a larger company , like a herring being swallowed by a tuna .
This is what happened to Instagram , when it was bought by Facebook , or YouTube , upon its acquisition by Google .
Acquisitions are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of new startups , power in tech flows toward the giants at the top .
Another way that venture capital is unlike private equity proper , Nicholas explains in his first-rate history , is that the venture-capital industry was itself a product of speculative funding , tamed and coddled into being by the U.S. government .
It started , as most American things do , with excess .
By the late nineteen-twenties , one per cent of American families earned nearly a quarter of the United States ’ income and held half of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vehicles , some specializing in high-risk offerings .
Laurance Rockefeller , a grandson of John D. , began putting “ venture ” money into untested aviation companies .
Nicholas calculates that he could have made more in the stock market , but Rockefeller was undeterred .
“ Venture capital endeavors are not for the impatient , ” he remarked .
“ Nor are they for widows and orphans or people who can not afford to lose.
” During the Depression and the Second World War , patient , deep-pocketed investors were in short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progressive taxation , ” and it “ was frequently argued that this diminished the supply of entrepreneurial finance , ” Nicholas writes , sounding as scrupulously objective as the butler at a swingers ’ party .
Put more baldly , Franklin D. Roosevelt soaked the rich .
In 1935 , his Administration imposed a seventy-five-per-cent tax—then widely known as the “ wealth tax ” —on incomes greater than five million dollars .
A year later , it instituted a tax on undistributed corporate profits , in theory giving businesses an incentive to disburse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helped rebuild the American middle class in the depths of the Depression ; they also pinched super-rich parties trying to grow their wealth .
Nicholas quotes the then head of the Investment Bankers Association of America : “ No one in the high income tax brackets is going to provide the venture capital and take the risk which new enterprises and expansion require , and thereby help create new jobs , if heavy taxes take most of the profit when the transaction is successful.
” This was and remains a standard plea for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , during the Second World War , the government raised taxes further while plowing taxpayers ’ money into business growth .
Prospective innovators were paid four hundred and fifty million dollars—about five billion dollars in today ’ s money , by Nicholas ’ s calculations—in government contracts .
When the war ended , the G.I .
Bill helped talented people get technical training and social access , expanding the pool of potential entrepreneurs .
The war and its aftermath , which saw the growth and reimagining of such companies as I.B.M .
and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the jet engine , mass-produced antibiotics , and oodles more—was by most measures a golden age of American innovation .
It happened largely on the government ’ s tab .
Venture capital itself was a beneficiary of such support .
In 1958 , Congress passed an act designed to encourage small-business investments and loans .
If a small-business investment company could raise a hundred and fifty thousand dollars , the government would match those funds and lend more at a low rate , bringing the fund to at least four hundred and fifty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current dollars ) .
These investors received tax advantages , too .
The lure invited fraud , and the fund-matching program was brought to an end .
By then , however , the friendly financial loopholes were on the books , and a pool of interested parties had assembled .
Nicholas quotes early venture capitalists saying that they wouldn ’ t have got into the game if it hadn ’ t been for federal incentives ; venture capital transformed from the pursuit of a few ultra-wealthy scions into a true profession .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regulations—allowing pension funds to make high-risk investments , for instance—and lowered capital-gains taxes .
These changes , plus firms ’ embrace of limited partnerships , a legal structure that offered further tax shelters and protected passive investors , brought financial growth to the community that the incentives had founded .
For the first time , a few venture-capital portfolios began to outperform the public markets .
Many prominent venture capitalists now decry government controls and say they favor market meritocracy .
That ’ s ironic , given that their industry exists as such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actions taken by the government .
Did the government ’ s investment pay off ?
Yes , venture capital in the seventies helped bring us Apple , Atari , Genentech , and the like .
And , yes , in the nineties it was crucial to the launch of Netscape Navigator , Hotmail , and Google .
Now consider a few entities that got off the blocks without a penny from Papa V.C .
: Microsoft ( Bill Gates sold a five-per-cent share of his already profitable company in 1981 , solely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) ; the Mosaic browser ( federally funded and released free of charge ) ; and Craigslist ( which diverted an existing advertising market into its coffers ) .
Subtract venture capital from the landscape of late-twentieth-century innovation , and we would have reached the new millennium with roughly the same technological capacities .
Does this mean that the venture-capital industry itself was the ultimate frothy startup—a solution that we didn ’ t really need to a problem that we didn ’ t have ?
Not only venture capitalists would disagree with such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ venture capital is the case for ambitious risk-taking .
Sure , maybe we would still have ended up with a personal computer , a visual Web browser , and even an affordable cell phone without venture capital .
But we would have lost the big-risk-big-reward ethos that made these devices totemic innovations and inducements to further invention .
A thriving society needs moon shots , and , in the absence of a literal space race , only venture capitalists have the mandate to throw cash at an improbable success .
Traditionally , venture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ten investments will generate most of a fund ’ s profits .
A strong fund hopes to achieve a twenty-per-cent return , and so those two in ten winning bets must hit between twenty and thirty times the money invested in them .
Usually , returns do not come close .
As a whole , the venture-capital industry has significantly outperformed the public markets only in the nineties—a decade that , you will remember , ended with the so-called dot-com bubble bursting , a crisis that Nicholas attributes largely to venture-capitalist profligacy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kauffman Foundation in 2012 found that the average venture-capital fund in the previous two decades , far from delivering its promised returns , had scarcely broken even .
Laurance Rockefeller was right , then : what venture capital as a field provides is something other than a great way for investors to make money .
But , even if they didn ’ t prosper , you and I probably did .
We might lament the hegemonic power of Amazon or chortle at Pets.com , the dog-and-cat-supply startup whose insanely capitalized launch ended in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what about Groupon , which brought your family a nice dinner in hard times , or the popular vegan Impossible Burger , which purports to reduce animal cruelty but which also , somehow , bleeds ?
Try making that sales pitch to a government funder or a mainstream investor .
Venture capital has offered a path into the market for unsmooth operators and bizarre ideas .
For most of the late twentieth century , V.C.
’ s realm , like the Tiffany necklace , was a bauble that symbolized the capacities of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not really .
And yet a life of total prudence is no life : let ’ s have it .
Then , recently , something changed .
The bauble started to become the bank .
The Times journalist Mike Isaac , in his buoyant and well-reported new book , “ Super Pumped : The Battle for Uber , ” points to the advent of the iPhone as a crucial turning point in venture investment .
“ The App Store changed the model for software development entirely , ” he writes .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be served at a click .
What used to be trapped at your desk could be in your pocket , a huge scaling-up of market opportunity that paved the way for companies like Uber .
“ Venture funds began throwing money at twentysomethings , hoping to stumble into funding the next killer app , ” Isaac writes .
“ But the real winning apps were backed by top-tier venture capitalists , who made connections to potential partnerships with large companies , built pipelines to faster recruiting , offered strategic advice and , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions of dollars in funding.
” Spewing cash across the consumer market in pursuit of “ unicorns , ” venture capital expanded beyond a small corner of the finance world .
It became an option for anybody with a flashy-seeming new business who wanted—promised—to grow fast .
The pressure of scale fell hardest on startup founders .
When venture capitalists take board seats , they are supposed to help guide a company in the best direction .
By sheer necessity , though , their most immediate interest is seeing the company grow quickly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own targets .
For a young startup , getting bigger faster is not always the best directive .
( A thirtyfold return on an investment of several million dollars , we might think , is a lot to ask of a company that specializes in delivering underpants through the mail . )
One trend in Venture World has been growing valuations , which in median last year reached a five-year high .
Another has been undesirable treatment of employees , who may find themselves overworked , underpaid , or verbally abused .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boss if the people who invested millions in your company are pressuring you to grow , grow , grow or deliver ever-greater efficiencies—or be fired yourself .
It doesn ’ t even take a hard-nosed venture capitalist to whip a startup into such a state , because pressure is built into the system itself .
Valuations and the economics of dilution ( the portion of ownership that entrepreneurs must sell in order to bring more money on board ) are spurs to faster growth .
Hence WeWork : a company that absorbed billions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of subletting office space , had to bail on its I.P.O.
, and cut loose its offending C.E.O .
with a severance package of more than a billion dollars .
The WeWork debacle is illustrative not because it ’ s a case of foolish investment and unchecked mismanagement ( life at sea ! )
but because the company gained value during these shenanigans , at least until it filed for I.P.O.—which startups are doing less often than they once did .
To understand why , we can return to the high-stakes room at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re a venture capitalist , you are , like James Bond , playing mostly with other people ’ s money .
Unlike James Bond , you ’ re taking a fee to do it : the more money you start out with on the table ( the larger the fund ) , the more gets slipped into your pocket—and that ’ s before you play your hand .
Now imagine that there are two ways to turn your chips back into cash : either you can go to the guy at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ value them ( like a startup readied for an I.P.O . )
, or you can rake all your chips into your hat and sell the whole lot to another player , who may overpay a bit to sweeten the deal and get that lucky je ne sais quoi ( like a startup ’ s being acquired ) .
Occasionally , venture capitalists sell shares in a secondary market , too .
Two things should be clear .
First , it can be less appealing to cash out at the window : an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hoops , and other requirements that are designed to protect investors like you and me from the WeWorks of the world .
Why go that route if you ’ ve got other options ?
( In the case of WeWork , the push to I.P.O .
seems to have been a financial necessity . )
Startups hoping to be acquired have less incentive to plan for a lifetime as healthy businesses ; like the playboy burning through his savings on fast living and gorgeous suits , they have to keep it appealingly together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spouse-patron .
Second , if you ’ re a venture capitalist you know that you will not be the one to go broke .
You might lose all your investors ’ chips , but you still have fee money pooling in your pocket , and that ’ s more than most people involved in the deal get .
Startup founders make big money only if their efforts succeed .
End investors get rich—or richer—if the funds in which they have invested yield a good return .
Venture capitalists , on the other hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and some firms purporting to prosper through their “ carries ” —their share of returns—are swelling up mostly on fees .
A few successful venture capitalists get ribbed for their grandstanding , dubious blog pontifications , and general “ Shark Tank ” -ing .
But who can blame them ?
If your business depends on bringing in more and more investment , isn ’ t your first priority burnishing your public image for having special skills and insight ?
In venture capital , as in a growing number of enterprises , reputation is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is whether venture capital has become too large for its own good .
In his book , Nicholas quotes a prominent venture capitalist saying , “ This business is just not set up for big bucks.
” As funds grow , successful venture-capital firms have been moving outside their traditional province .
Andreessen Horowitz ( which , admirably , reinvested much of its fees to support services for entrepreneurs ) last year expanded its range of investment , and announced that its largest new fund would be directed toward “ late-stage venture ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proven success—creeping up on the work of mainstream private equity .
First financings across the field have been declining since 2014 .
Big risk capital , with more money in the balance , is quietly stepping away from risk .
What does this make it ?
Chiefly , a great business for some venture capitalists—especially those in firm control of startups being sent toward cash harvests in the pre-dawn of the private markets .
Champions of regulating the sphere of private equity , most prominently Elizabeth Warren , have suggested that such models @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basis of risk-reward odds—who is bearing the risk and who is reliably extracting significant wealth—this is a hard claim to dispute .
One might wonder why entrepreneurs and investors keep lining up for the privilege of being channelled into what has become a vast financial threshing machine .
They do it in part from competitive pressure : if your rivals are growing wildly at an early stage , and with good hookups , you ’ re obliged to play the game in order to keep up .
But they also do it for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have only become bigger as venture capital has grown overcapitalized ; last year exit values , the proceeds from selling shares , topped two hundred billion dollars for the first time .
Institutionalizing venture capital has had good effects .
For all its swagger about finding diamonds in the rough , the industry has always been largely about whom you know and what narrative you fit , with firms notoriously favoring socially maladapted young white men .
This tendency has begun to change as its costs , financial and social , come to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women in tech—Jennifer Brandel , Mara Zepeda , Astrid Scholz , and Aniyia Williams—put up a widely cited blog post called “ Sex & Startups.
” “ Startups , like the male anatomy , are designed for liquidity events , ” they wrote , suggesting that women—at that point the recipient of only three per cent of venture funding—fight the tyranny of venture capitalists ’ hockey-stick growth drive and work to fund companies whose successes were more sustainable .
A year later , they formalized the idea in a manifesto supporting multicolored and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Unlike unicorns , zebras are real.
” ) A new generation of smaller-scale venture capitalists are indeed focussing resources on startups led by people underrepresented in tech leadership , and , for the first time , Venture World is starting to pay attention to the interests of everyone it serves .
Other perils remain unaddressed .
It ’ s nice that we ’ re able to get cheap or free stuff from wildly scaled-up unprofitable startups with venture backing .
( Recall the brief , bright age of MoviePass . )
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago , it was widely understood that , if you wanted to get quality news on your doorstep , you had to send a subscription check through the mail ; if you wanted to see a great new movie , you had to fork some bills across the box-office window or the video counter ; and if you wanted to take a cab uptown you had to pay the driver the standard fee , plus tip .
Venture World has weaned us off these habits of direct exchange .
Now we expect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surely a wealthy , ambitious funder somewhere will be picking up the tab .
It is true that we get goods and services on the cheap thanks to venture capitalists pouring money into “ pre-revenue ” companies .
But we also learn to value them less .
The American whaling industry ended largely because the most valuable of those creatures were hunted almost to extinction .
In the venture-capital realm today , the risks of fishing out the sea are no less real .
Nicholas writes of early venture capitalists ’ sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he means that they didn ’ t regard growth toward profit as their primary goal .
Making the planet a better place gets a lot of discussion in Venture World , but it is sometimes as simple as constructing a company that is useful and sustainable , and that treats its employees well .
Venture capital , once a small and chancy field , is now a profit machine for its managers , with all that entails .
Poorly designed for its scale , rote and entrenched at the higher echelons , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of change : disruption by a bright , daring idea .
♦

For a certain sort of nineteenth-century person—the sort with high risk tolerance and little revulsion to brutality—a natural career lay in whaling. The odds of success here were, by almost every measure, poor. An expedition first needed to find whales in the vastness of the oceans. If it succeeded, it had to approach the whales in silence, with a small craft; strike with a harpoon; stay afloat, intact, engaged, and oriented as the poor creatures thrashed about, sometimes for miles through iceberg-laden water; row back to the main ship with the carcasses; harvest the baleen and render the oil; and survive the journey home. “On the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me,” Ishmael says, in “Moby-Dick.” “Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then?”
For those who made it through the earthly trials, there could be riches in tow. A captain’s cut of the takings ranged from five to twelve per cent; a first mate’s, three to seven per cent; and so on, down the line. A captain with some skill could spend a few years leading expeditions and retire rich. In 1853, the Times described the whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts, as “probably the wealthiest place” in the United States.
The people on the boat, however, weren’t the largest earners. Dispatching a whaling voyage cost between twenty and thirty thousand dollars, a small fortune in the mid-nineteenth century, and an industry emerged to get these expeditions off the dock. Specialized agents in whaling-industry towns invested their own money, pooled cash from rich investors, did due diligence, and worked with captains to develop winning strategies and to plot uncrowded routes. In most cases, their efforts were fruitless: data from a couple of whaling ports in Massachusetts in 1858 suggest that fully two-thirds of returning expeditions were unprofitable; another study found that a third of the whale ships in the New Bedford fleet never made it home. A lucky outing, though, could return with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in goods, a fortune several times the outlay, and for many investors this was enough to justify the risk.
In “V.C.: An American History,” the Harvard Business School professor Tom Nicholas sees whaling as the first practice of what we now call venture capital: collecting large pots of money and using it to invest in young companies, while also getting involved in their management, in the hope of guiding growth and generating huge returns. Venture capitalists fill these cash pots, or funds, with money from large-scale investors—foundations, pension funds, university endowments, and other passive contributors. They take a management fee, drop a bit of their own money into the mix, and, like the whaling agents, promise expertise. They, too, make predominantly bad bets: about eighty per cent of venture investments don’t pay off. Occasionally, though, there is a wild success, and, since the nineteen-seventies, such successes have transformed American business. Venture capital backed Apple and Intel. It funded Google, Amazon, and Facebook before any of them turned a profit. In principle, venture capital is where the ordinarily conservative, cynical domain of big money touches dreamy, long-shot enterprise. In practice, it has become the distinguishing big-business engine of our time. Can it offer both returns?
Much as a private table at the Casino de Monte-Carlo is off limits to those who can’t pony up for chips, venture capital is off limits to most of us as a direct investment. Funds typically have at least a million-dollar buy-in, available only to accredited investors, so unless you’re the Monopoly Man you’ll be unable to put your daughter’s college fund into some of that. Yet most of us now have daily contact with the world of venture capital, because its sphere of influence has exploded. Once, venture capital was sought by risky startups needing lots of up-front cash, whether for research and development (Genentech had to fund academic-grade research before it had a product to bring to market) or for essential leaps in scale (Uber is appealing only if it’s big enough to get a car to you quickly). Such financing seemed especially suited to proprietary technology, which was expensive, hard to seed into the market, and yet, if things went right, extremely lucrative. That has changed. Since extending its focus to direct-to-consumer retail, venture capital has come to fund delivery services, financial services, car companies, shoe companies, office real estate, leisure real estate, coffee brewers, beer brewers, smoothies, razors, trousers, speakers, scooters, mattresses, toothbrushes, socks, and underwear.
This realm of direct commerce could be called Venture World. You know what its businesses are like. They appear suddenly, everywhere, with chatty ad campaigns on public transit starring cool, young people who were clearly nerds in high school but who have since mastered impressive dance moves. They tell you that their products aren’t just better; they are simplifying the whole deal, changing how stuff works across society, and not a moment too soon. If you are buying an actual object and live in a major city, you might find a brick-and-mortar storefront decked with ha-ha-clever wallpaper where you can hold the toothbrush of the future or try one of five purportedly game-changing eyeglass frames. But the bulk of Venture World’s offerings are online, where they are hawked on bright, uncluttered sites that scroll down, down, and down again with charming animations, offering moving stories about one big idea that will change the industry, about community, about zero-impact supply chains, which, thanks to their backing, they can afford. In Venture World, everyone seems to be more or less on your wavelength. Its companies are geared toward unfussed people who keep their phones silenced and close. Venture capitalism is behind most of the platforms on which people lament the gaucherie of “late-stage capitalism”; it has become the chief industrial backer of the self-aware, predominantly upper-middle-class approach to life style now called woke.
A marriage between social enlightenment and manic growth defines the business of the past decade. Venture capitalists, having helped officiate the ceremony, often find themselves in awkward standing when the marriage falls apart. In the fall, WeWork, a venture-founded office-rental company, tried to enter the public markets with a forty-seven-billion-dollar valuation and the pixie dust of world-changing rhetoric, only to postpone the I.P.O. indefinitely when the valuation dropped by about seventy-five per cent and its lion-haired C.E.O. resigned amid disturbing revelations about his management style. Before that, there was Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing company, which, despite the absence of evidence that it could do what it promised, raised a mint in venture-capital funding—then, on the basis of that, hundreds of millions more—and Juicero, which, before the company’s abrupt shutdown, in 2017, had raised a hundred and eighteen million dollars for seven-hundred-dollar Wi-Fi-enabled squeezers of juice packets. Last week, news broke that Zume—a startup whose business centered on pizza par-baked by robots, then loaded into delivery trucks filled with ovens that finished each pie en route to its destination—had been compelled to lay off more than half of its employees because SoftBank’s venture-capital arm, which had already invested three hundred and seventy-five million dollars in the company, had backed away from further funding, wanting Zume to pursue more aggressive “global domination” in its pizza craft. The startup (which, despite its robust funding, delivered pizza to only a small portion of the San Francisco Bay Area) is pivoting its business to “compostable molded-fiber packaging.”
Could there be a moral to such embarrassments? Maybe occasional high-profile mortifications keep an essentially healthy system honest. This is what a lot of wealthy entities seem to think, given recent record-breaking growth in V.C. fund-raising: in 2018 venture capitalists, as a group, loaded more than fifty-six billion dollars into their funds.
“And this is our youngest, Timothy, who’s starting at Hotchkiss this fall.” Cartoon by Paul Noth Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
And yet a seepage of doubt is spreading, notably among venture capitalists themselves. “It’s a venture-capital-finance boom, where, within a mile of this building, there are somewhere between five hundred and a thousand startups,” a withered specimen of the old school told me a few years back, gazing out his window, across San Francisco. “But they’re not companies.” Viewers of “Shark Tank”—the reality show on which entrepreneurs pitch to regal investors dressed in midlife-crisis clothes—could be forgiven for coming away with the impression, shared by many startup founders, that getting funded is itself proof of value. The public markets often disagree. In recent years, it has become common for venture-backed companies like Facebook and Uber to wilt in share value subsequent to their public offerings—which happens to be the period when many venture capitalists distribute their stake back to investors.
On the money tree of contemporary finance, venture capital comes off the branch of private equity: the buying and selling of shares of companies which aren’t publicly available, ostensibly to turn a profit while helping businesses thrive and grow. When people speak of “private equity,” however, they usually mean funds that move on mature companies, often with the goal of restructuring and selling them as if flipping a house. Venture capitalists are different. They buy equity from brand-new or young companies, and they generally cannot get their money out until the startup enters the public market or is acquired by a larger company, like a herring being swallowed by a tuna. This is what happened to Instagram, when it was bought by Facebook, or YouTube, upon its acquisition by Google. Acquisitions are one reason that, despite the efflorescence of new startups, power in tech flows toward the giants at the top.
Another way that venture capital is unlike private equity proper, Nicholas explains in his first-rate history, is that the venture-capital industry was itself a product of speculative funding, tamed and coddled into being by the U.S. government. It started, as most American things do, with excess. By the late nineteen-twenties, one per cent of American families earned nearly a quarter of the United States’ income and held half of its wealth. Many set up investment vehicles, some specializing in high-risk offerings. Laurance Rockefeller, a grandson of John D., began putting “venture” money into untested aviation companies. Nicholas calculates that he could have made more in the stock market, but Rockefeller was undeterred. “Venture capital endeavors are not for the impatient,” he remarked. “Nor are they for widows and orphans or people who cannot afford to lose.”
During the Depression and the Second World War, patient, deep-pocketed investors were in short supply. “The 1930s brought more progressive taxation,” and it “was frequently argued that this diminished the supply of entrepreneurial finance,” Nicholas writes, sounding as scrupulously objective as the butler at a swingers’ party. Put more baldly, Franklin D. Roosevelt soaked the rich. In 1935, his Administration imposed a seventy-five-per-cent tax—then widely known as the “wealth tax”—on incomes greater than five million dollars. A year later, it instituted a tax on undistributed corporate profits, in theory giving businesses an incentive to disburse more earnings to workers. Such policies helped rebuild the American middle class in the depths of the Depression; they also pinched super-rich parties trying to grow their wealth. Nicholas quotes the then head of the Investment Bankers Association of America: “No one in the high income tax brackets is going to provide the venture capital and take the risk which new enterprises and expansion require, and thereby help create new jobs, if heavy taxes take most of the profit when the transaction is successful.”
This was and remains a standard plea for tax breaks for the rich. Yet, during the Second World War, the government raised taxes further while plowing taxpayers’ money into business growth. Prospective innovators were paid four hundred and fifty million dollars—about five billion dollars in today’s money, by Nicholas’s calculations—in government contracts. When the war ended, the G.I. Bill helped talented people get technical training and social access, expanding the pool of potential entrepreneurs. The war and its aftermath, which saw the growth and reimagining of such companies as I.B.M. and Hewlett-Packard—plus the first programmable digital computers, the jet engine, mass-produced antibiotics, and oodles more—was by most measures a golden age of American innovation. It happened largely on the government’s tab.
Venture capital itself was a beneficiary of such support. In 1958, Congress passed an act designed to encourage small-business investments and loans. If a small-business investment company could raise a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the government would match those funds and lend more at a low rate, bringing the fund to at least four hundred and fifty thousand dollars (nearly four million in current dollars). These investors received tax advantages, too. The lure invited fraud, and the fund-matching program was brought to an end.
By then, however, the friendly financial loopholes were on the books, and a pool of interested parties had assembled. Nicholas quotes early venture capitalists saying that they wouldn’t have got into the game if it hadn’t been for federal incentives; venture capital transformed from the pursuit of a few ultra-wealthy scions into a true profession. In the seventies, the government relaxed certain regulations—allowing pension funds to make high-risk investments, for instance—and lowered capital-gains taxes. These changes, plus firms’ embrace of limited partnerships, a legal structure that offered further tax shelters and protected passive investors, brought financial growth to the community that the incentives had founded. For the first time, a few venture-capital portfolios began to outperform the public markets. Many prominent venture capitalists now decry government controls and say they favor market meritocracy. That’s ironic, given that their industry exists as such only because of a sequence of supportive actions taken by the government.


newyorker--2020-01-20--“Bride,” by Maggie Smith

“Bride,” by Maggie Smith

How long have I been wed to myself ?
Calling myself darling , dressing for my own pleasure , each @ @ @ @ @ me on .
How long have I been alone in this house but not alone @ @ @ @ @ man than to the woman silvering with the mirror .
I know the kind of @ @ @ @ @ become her : the one who will leave this earth at the same instant I @ @ @ @ @ own bride , lifting the veil to see my face .
Darling , I say @ @ @ @ @ you all my life .

Audio: Read by the author.
How long have I been wed
to myself? Calling myself
darling, dressing for my own
pleasure, each morning
choosing perfume to turn
me on. How long have I been
alone in this house but not
alone? Married less
to the man than to the woman
silvering with the mirror.
I know the kind of wife
I need and I become her:
the one who will leave
this earth at the same instant
I do. I am my own bride,
lifting the veil to see
my face. Darling, I say,
I have waited for you all my life.


The Mail

As a person who had no wealth as a child but has been lucky enough to experience financial success later in life , I am proud of Abigail Disney and the Patriotic Millionaires for working to remedy the extreme imbalance of wealth and power in the United States ( “ Embarrassment of Riches , ” January 6th ) .
Taking such a step requires courage , and I find it disturbing when Disney ’ s efforts are met with scorn .
She owes no debt except to her conscience , which , thankfully , is alive and well .
Shaming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reality of economic inequality and becoming involved in making necessary changes to the system are what will save our country .
Welcoming all citizens to participate in these efforts , especially those with the wealth and the power to make changes fastest , should be a priority .
I was struck , reading Sheelah Kolhatkar ’ s piece , when Alan Davis , a member of the Patriotic Millionaires , described the differences among being “ affluent , ” “ rich , ” and “ mega rich.
” When very privileged people start @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be wealthy in the United States , you know we ’ ve reached the apex of income inequality .
The Patriotic Millionaires might see my own income—taken together with my student-loan debt and my lack of family inheritance—as piddling , yet I live a comfortable life , owing to my citizenship status and my white privilege .
Our perceptions about wealth and comfort in the U.S. can not be considered separately from social factors such as these , which need to be confronted honestly as we try to address income inequality .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Greta Gerwig ’ s “ Little Women , ” rightly fawns over the film , noting its place in the tradition of Alcott-based screen adaptations ( The Current Cinema , January 6th ) .
But his estimation that Gerwig ’ s movie “ may just be the best film yet made by an American woman ” strikes me as antithetical to the film ’ s spirit of inclusivity .
While I understand his implication that there are relatively few forerunners against which to compare it , the ranking of films directed by women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many of the year ’ s most critically acclaimed and audacious films were made by women .
Many thanks for giving cartoons their due in your Cartoon Takeover Issue ( December 30th ) .
While I now read most of the journalistic pieces in each issue , I was first motivated to subscribe to The New Yorker , as a teen-ager , in order to see the cartoons .
You can tell how long ago this was by a tart comment that my grandmother made at the time : “ Isn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for cartoons ?
” The Cartoon Issue was a huge hit with me and my fellow New Yorker readers .
It arrived in time to damp down the noise coming from cable TV and iPhone videos during the holidays .
The mix of old and new writings and drawings perfectly represented a rich vein of American humor , running all the way back to the nineteen-twenties .
All in all , a delightful mini-anthology .
Now back to , as Emma Allen writes in her Comment , “ bummer facts about corruption and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like to read those pieces , too ) .
Letters should be sent with the writer ’ s name , address , and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity , and may be published in any medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

Follow the Money
As a person who had no wealth as a child but has been lucky enough to experience financial success later in life, I am proud of Abigail Disney and the Patriotic Millionaires for working to remedy the extreme imbalance of wealth and power in the United States (“Embarrassment of Riches,” January 6th). Taking such a step requires courage, and I find it disturbing when Disney’s efforts are met with scorn. She owes no debt except to her conscience, which, thankfully, is alive and well. Shaming the rich is not the answer—confronting the reality of economic inequality and becoming involved in making necessary changes to the system are what will save our country. Welcoming all citizens to participate in these efforts, especially those with the wealth and the power to make changes fastest, should be a priority.
Laura Stephan-Corio
Blairstown, N.J.
I was struck, reading Sheelah Kolhatkar’s piece, when Alan Davis, a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, described the differences among being “affluent,” “rich,” and “mega rich.” When very privileged people start discussing the nuances of what it means to be wealthy in the United States, you know we’ve reached the apex of income inequality. The Patriotic Millionaires might see my own income—taken together with my student-loan debt and my lack of family inheritance—as piddling, yet I live a comfortable life, owing to my citizenship status and my white privilege. Our perceptions about wealth and comfort in the U.S. cannot be considered separately from social factors such as these, which need to be confronted honestly as we try to address income inequality.
Emily Buckler
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Women in Film
Anthony Lane, in his review of Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” rightly fawns over the film, noting its place in the tradition of Alcott-based screen adaptations (The Current Cinema, January 6th). But his estimation that Gerwig’s movie “may just be the best film yet made by an American woman” strikes me as antithetical to the film’s spirit of inclusivity. While I understand his implication that there are relatively few forerunners against which to compare it, the ranking of films directed by women seems in poor taste, especially when many of the year’s most critically acclaimed and audacious films were made by women.
Ben Rendich
Pawling, N.Y.
Cartoonish
Many thanks for giving cartoons their due in your Cartoon Takeover Issue (December 30th). While I now read most of the journalistic pieces in each issue, I was first motivated to subscribe to The New Yorker, as a teen-ager, in order to see the cartoons. You can tell how long ago this was by a tart comment that my grandmother made at the time: “Isn’t eight dollars a year rather a lot for cartoons?”
Susan Payne
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
The Cartoon Issue was a huge hit with me and my fellow New Yorker readers. It arrived in time to damp down the noise coming from cable TV and iPhone videos during the holidays. The mix of old and new writings and drawings perfectly represented a rich vein of American humor, running all the way back to the nineteen-twenties. All in all, a delightful mini-anthology. Now back to, as Emma Allen writes in her Comment, “bummer facts about corruption and oppression and imminent eco-apocalypse.” (We like to read those pieces, too).
Darrel O. Kirkland
Austin, Texas
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.


newyorker--2020-01-20--Can Masculinity Be Redeemed?

Can Masculinity Be Redeemed?

In 2016 , the journalist Peggy Orenstein published “ Girls & Sex : Navigating the Complicated New Landscape , ” a best-selling study of casual hookups , pornography , pop culture , and other aspects of young women ’ s sexual lives .
In the years since “ Girls & Sex ” was released , the “ new landscape ” that Orenstein described has shifted .
As she puts it , “ The pervasiveness , the sheer magnitude of sexual misconduct across every sector of society by men young and old became glaringly , disturbingly obvious.
” And yet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ latest book , “ Boys & Sex : Young Men on Hookups , Love , Porn , Consent , and Navigating the New Masculinity , ” she came to realize that a society which painfully required new approaches to masculinity was still imparting outdated notions of it to young men .
Drawing from interviews with more than a hundred young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two , Orenstein makes the case for a positive and constructive approach to raising them .
“ Boys , too , then , need a strong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on women , men , sex , and love , ” she writes .
“ Frankly , without it , there is a chance that they won ’ t see women as fully human , and that they will view sex as something a female partner does for them and that they do to her.
” Orenstein found , however , that the counternarrative was tricky in its own way : many of these young men , although “ able to reel off the excesses of masculinity , ” were still treating women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spoke twice by phone with Orenstein .
During our conversations , which have been edited for length and clarity , we discussed how much we know about pornography ’ s impact on young men , the ways to broaden the aims of sex education , and whether men ’ s ideas of masculinity have changed since the nineteen-fifties .
You write in the book , “ Feminism may have afforded girls an escape from the constraints of conventional femininity , offered them alternative identities as women and a language with which to express @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made few inroads with boys .
Whether you label it the ‘ mask of masculinity , ’ ‘ toxic masculinity , ’ or ‘ the man box , ’ the traditional conception of manhood still holds sway , dictating how boys think , feel , and behave.
” You then talk about men who “ internalize masculine norms.
” What are “ masculine norms ” today ?
On some level , things have changed a great deal .
Guys are more likely to see women as equal in the classroom , or in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or gay male friends as well .
But I would always ask my interview subjects to describe the ideal guy to me , and they would immediately sound like they were channeling some version of 1955 .
It was athleticism , dominance , and aggression .
Actually , it was some weird combination of aggressive and chill , which—I don ’ t know how you do that .
And wealth , sexual conquest , and the big one was emotional suppression .
You could argue that there were very different masculine norms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the classic nineteen-fifties idea of that very stoic , very suppressed kind of man .
So you mean norms from the nineteen-fifties , more than “ toxic masculinity ” per se ?
I don ’ t like to use that term .
I am really trying to back away from it , and in the book , I try to put it in quotes , because I think it is not really serving us as well as a phrase people are starting to use now , which is “ precarious masculinity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and demonizing .
And , particularly when I am writing about high-school-age boys and young men , a lot of this was about not only talking about the issues of sexual misconduct and the revelations the # MeToo movement has brought up but talking to them about what they can do and should do , and what creates a more positive environment , and how to help them have mutually gratifying personal relationships .
But I am definitely looking at those rigid norms , which hardened after the nineteen-fifties , and have continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of masculinity , but we know that boys who hold certain rigid norms around the idea that masculinity is associated with sexual conquest and dominance and aggression are at risk of a lot of things .
They are at risk of harming others , they are more likely to binge-drink , they are more likely to get in car accidents , be violent and consider committing suicide , and have fewer friends .
It is not a great place to be .
In a piece you wrote for The Atlantic , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argued , “ We have to purposefully and repeatedly broaden the masculine repertoire for dealing with disappointment , anger , desire .
We have to say not just what we don ’ t want from boys but what we do want from them .
Instructing them to ‘ respect women ’ and to ‘ not get anyone pregnant ’ isn ’ t enough.
” Why isn ’ t that enough ?
That really isn ’ t enough to tell anybody , even before the # MeToo revelations , even before the discussion of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Don ’ t get anyone pregnant .
Don ’ t get a disease.
” It was hardly adequate sexual education .
But now boys are in a situation where the expectations have changed , where there is a whole new discussion about consent and what constitutes misconduct , and having ramifications for that misconduct , and they are drenched in a media culture that tells them over and over about male sexual entitlement , and female sexual submission .
It is a whole culture of conquest , that “ hit it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be after , and those two things are very much in conflict .
And what parents would tell their boys , if they told them anything , was to “ respect women , ” and “ respect women ” meant pretty much nothing to them .
As one guy said to me , “ It ’ s kind of like telling someone who is learning to drive not to run over any little old ladies , and then handing them the car keys.
” Of course , you shouldn ’ t run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you don ’ t know how to drive .
Right , but it seemed like you were arguing that this had to go beyond sex education , that society needed a broader new way of talking to men about masculinity separate from sex .
Is that accurate ?
Absolutely , and I think those things are absolutely related , because one of the things that I think scares us about sex as Americans is that we want to put it off into this silo .
And when we are talking to our kids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is separate from all other aspects of life and who we are .
But the truth is that talking to them about sex is not just talking to them about sex .
It ’ s talking to them about gender .
It ’ s talking to them about power .
It ’ s talking to them about our ideas of masculinity and femininity .
It ’ s talking to them about the media .
It ’ s talking to them about culture .
For the most part , people would rather poke themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talk to their children about sex , but there are a whole bunch of conversations that radiate outward from that , which are just as crucial .
So what would this positive vision look like ?
I think we have to help boys broaden their emotional repertoire so they have a broader sense of what it means to deal with disappointment , to deal with sadness .
Boys funnel that whole bucket of emotions—betrayal , frustration , disappointment , sadness , fear—into anger .
That ’ s what they learn from the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get-go .
They are in a more impoverished emotional environment than girls .
And , when parents do talk to boys , they really narrow down the spectrum to happiness and anger .
Is this all about sex ?
Not on the surface .
But when you rob people of the ability to feel and express the whole range of human emotions in an appropriate way , you also undermine their ability to connect and have the kinds of relationships we want our boys to have .
And , when they are disconnected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into ideas about the culture of conquest .
And it plays into having disconnected sexual interactions , on one end , and , at the far end , potential coercion and misconduct .
How did your research on boys make you think differently about something or some things in your earlier book and work on girls ?
It gave clarity , or put some meat , on things girls would talk about .
For instance , girls would often complain about guys who ignored them the day after a hookup .
And then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avert their eyes from someone they had sex with the night before was really interesting , because it would always come down to what is at the heart of what I am writing about in this book , which is fear of vulnerability .
One guy said to me , “ Well , I don ’ t know if she thinks it was a one-off at a party or if she thinks it is something more , and I don ’ t want to be the guy who tries to connect , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was just a party thing.
’ ” So he said , “ If there is that question mark there , I am not going to look weak.
” And I said , “ So you would rather miss the opportunity to connect with somebody than take that tiny emotional risk of saying hi ?
” And he just went , “ Yeah.
” There is a Medium post that was widely read a couple of years ago about the so-called Softboy , who knows how to manipulate women .
It reads , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behavior is selfish and cruel , though his desire to get laid can trump this .
He feels shame .
He does it again .
He wants to know if you ’ re mad at him .
He already knows .
.
.
.
Obviously , he is an Ally .
.
.
.
He hasn ’ t texted you back for a reason ; he was not blowing you off .
He ’ s had a Weird Day .
Or maybe he ’ s Trying To Figure Some Shit Out .
Sometimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he Just Needs A Night To Himself.
” This is funny , but I think most people who have dated or know people who have dated recently know it ’ s pretty acute .
How does it fit into what you are saying ?
Are men being manipulative with new notions of masculinity ?
One of the boys that I talked to was basically a Softboy .
He called himself a “ feminist fuckboy , ” which meant that he could say all the right things , knew all the right language .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his school .
And that ’ s part of why I say consent is the beginning of these conversations , not the end of these conversations , because he was nonetheless using the skewed ratio of men to women that put men more in control of the hookup culture to his advantage , and he knew it .
He was still using partners as disposable .
He was still manipulative .
But he was legal .
So I think there is a way we can evolve some of the ideas and layer them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There are tensions within the way our ideas about gender and sex are evolving right now .
That is what is so fascinating to me , beyond even the desire to make the world more expansive for the young people .
So they feel more like complex tensions than simple dishonesty or manipulation ?
No , they can be dishonest and manipulative !
For sure .
The components of that dishonesty and manipulation now versus twenty or thirty years ago reflects something fundamental in the culture and the specific tensions of the moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he had done that , and coming to terms with that , and I was challenging him on that .
He starts out by saying you can be loving and respectful in hookup culture , and talks about his practice of consent , etc .
But then he goes along and starts telling me about how manipulative and a little bit unethical he has been in his hookups , and says that maybe he should be thinking about that .
There are all kinds of ways people can be unethical and manipulative , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trappings are at any given time .
And right now these trappings can look like the boy who has the feminist veneer but is still doing the same old stuff .
That ’ s why talking about sexual ethics , and not just sexual legality , is really important .
Your book doesn ’ t really delve into this , but are you making an argument about biology at all ?
You keep talking about men and what they need .
Do you want to weigh in and say they need these things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they are “ wired ?
” [ Laughs . ]
No .
What we know is that nurture becomes nature .
You see that all the time .
The sorts of things that we learn as small people or from the media that we absorb or from the messages we get from family shape whatever that clay is of how we are born .
But there is certainly no evidence that boys have less capacity for empathy at birth than girls do , so that is learned behavior about what it means to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study where they show a baby being startled by a video of a jack-in-the-box , and when the adults are told in advance that the baby is male , regardless of whether the baby is male , they are much more likely to project the response that the baby is having as anger .
We see that over and over .
Mothers have a tendency to use a broader range of emotional language and more emotional language with their daughters than they do with their sons .
Kids are bombarded with messages in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ female sexual subjectification .
We have long recognized how those messages can undermine girls ’ self-esteem and reduce girls to their bodies and affect their cognition , all these different things .
But boys are cooking in that same stew , and I would argue in some ways the temperature is higher .
And we never say anything to them .
We give them no critical lens or media literacy .
Parents and activists and advocates and everybody who works with girls have been so conscious of trying to equip girls to deal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
But we are at a much more primitive state with boys , and I think that is really one place where we can really step up and make a difference .
I wasn ’ t sure what to make of your porn chapter .
You report a lot of stuff that seems not great about young people watching porn , but do you feel that there is enough data to make broad claims about its impact ?
I don ’ t think that we really know enough .
However , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ matter whether we do or don ’ t know .
Our kids are part of a giant experiment of what it means to be steeped in this culture , and not just with porn but with mainstream media and social media , and what it means to be growing up with these images that are constantly bombarding them .
And what I do know is that we have to help them decode them , and we don ’ t have the luxury to be silent about it .
We have to start talking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Don ’ t use porn , ” or to shame them for it , but to help them understand what is real and what ’ s not real and what ’ s missing .
They will say , “ I know it ’ s not real .
I know the difference between fantasy and reality.
” That ’ s the line .
But the fact is that that is not how media works .
Media influences your thoughts and feelings and beliefs , and they have no actual personal experience when they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see in the research is that boys who use porn are more likely to believe the images they are looking at are real .
I don ’ t know where they get control groups for these types of studies , Isaac , honestly .
What was the demographic makeup of the boys you talked to ?
They were either college-bound or in college , and most of them were in that broad swath we call the middle class .
All different ethnicities , different religions .
They were from small towns , suburbs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking to boys of color , which is something I didn ’ t break out in “ Girls & Sex ” and wanted to break out more in the boy book .
You raised the question in the book of how your interviews might have been different if you were a man .
What is your answer now ?
I think that there were certain advantages to being a woman , and I think the main advantage was that , with a woman , guys felt more comfortable dropping the pose , dropping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vulnerability to me .
They were pretty blunt .
It ’ s not like they were pulling any punches in their language .
They were telling me about their sexual interactions , their porn use , the times that they felt that they crossed lines or possibly assaulted somebody .
They tell me all that stuff .

In 2016, the journalist Peggy Orenstein published “Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape,” a best-selling study of casual hookups, pornography, pop culture, and other aspects of young women’s sexual lives. In the years since “Girls & Sex” was released, the “new landscape” that Orenstein described has shifted. As she puts it, “The pervasiveness, the sheer magnitude of sexual misconduct across every sector of society by men young and old became glaringly, disturbingly obvious.” And yet, as she undertook her reporting for her latest book, “Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity,” she came to realize that a society which painfully required new approaches to masculinity was still imparting outdated notions of it to young men.
Drawing from interviews with more than a hundred young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, Orenstein makes the case for a positive and constructive approach to raising them. “Boys, too, then, need a strong counternarrative to develop grounded, realistic perspectives on women, men, sex, and love,” she writes. “Frankly, without it, there is a chance that they won’t see women as fully human, and that they will view sex as something a female partner does for them and that they do to her.” Orenstein found, however, that the counternarrative was tricky in its own way: many of these young men, although “able to reel off the excesses of masculinity,” were still treating women with disrespect and callousness.
I recently spoke twice by phone with Orenstein. During our conversations, which have been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how much we know about pornography’s impact on young men, the ways to broaden the aims of sex education, and whether men’s ideas of masculinity have changed since the nineteen-fifties.
You write in the book, “Feminism may have afforded girls an escape from the constraints of conventional femininity, offered them alternative identities as women and a language with which to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but it has made few inroads with boys. Whether you label it the ‘mask of masculinity,’ ‘toxic masculinity,’ or ‘the man box,’ the traditional conception of manhood still holds sway, dictating how boys think, feel, and behave.” You then talk about men who “internalize masculine norms.” What are “masculine norms” today?
On some level, things have changed a great deal. Guys are more likely to see women as equal in the classroom, or in leadership roles, or have female friends, or gay male friends, as well. But I would always ask my interview subjects to describe the ideal guy to me, and they would immediately sound like they were channelling some version of 1955. It was athleticism, dominance, and aggression. Actually, it was some weird combination of aggressive and chill, which—I don’t know how you do that. And wealth, sexual conquest, and the big one was emotional suppression. You could argue that there were very different masculine norms a hundred years ago, but it was the classic nineteen-fifties idea of that very stoic, very suppressed kind of man.
So you mean norms from the nineteen-fifties, more than “toxic masculinity” per se?
I don’t like to use that term. I am really trying to back away from it, and in the book, I try to put it in quotes, because I think it is not really serving us as well as a phrase people are starting to use now, which is “precarious masculinity,” which is a little less negative and demonizing. And, particularly when I am writing about high-school-age boys and young men, a lot of this was about not only talking about the issues of sexual misconduct and the revelations the #MeToo movement has brought up but talking to them about what they can do and should do, and what creates a more positive environment, and how to help them have mutually gratifying personal relationships.
But I am definitely looking at those rigid norms, which hardened after the nineteen-fifties, and have continued. My field is not the history of masculinity, but we know that boys who hold certain rigid norms around the idea that masculinity is associated with sexual conquest and dominance and aggression are at risk of a lot of things. They are at risk of harming others, they are more likely to binge-drink, they are more likely to get in car accidents, be violent and consider committing suicide, and have fewer friends. It is not a great place to be.
In a piece you wrote for The Atlantic, which is partially adapted from the book, you argued, “We have to purposefully and repeatedly broaden the masculine repertoire for dealing with disappointment, anger, desire. We have to say not just what we don’t want from boys but what we do want from them. Instructing them to ‘respect women’ and to ‘not get anyone pregnant’ isn’t enough.” Why isn’t that enough?
That really isn’t enough to tell anybody, even before the #MeToo revelations, even before the discussion of consent, to only tell your child, “Don’t get anyone pregnant. Don’t get a disease.” It was hardly adequate sexual education. But now boys are in a situation where the expectations have changed, where there is a whole new discussion about consent and what constitutes misconduct, and having ramifications for that misconduct, and they are drenched in a media culture that tells them over and over about male sexual entitlement and female sexual submission. It is a whole culture of conquest, that “hit it and quit it” is what they should be after, and those two things are very much in conflict. And what parents would tell their boys, if they told them anything, was to “respect women,” and “respect women” meant pretty much nothing to them. As one guy said to me, “It’s kind of like telling someone who is learning to drive not to run over any little old ladies, and then handing them the car keys.” Of course, you shouldn’t run over any little old ladies, but you don’t know how to drive.
Right, but it seemed like you were arguing that this had to go beyond sex education, that society needed a broader new way of talking to men about masculinity separate from sex. Is that accurate?
Absolutely, and I think those things are absolutely related, because one of the things that I think scares us about sex as Americans is that we want to put it off into this silo. And when we are talking to our kids about it, we act like it is separate from all other aspects of life and who we are. But the truth is that talking to them about sex is not just talking to them about sex. It’s talking to them about gender. It’s talking to them about power. It’s talking to them about our ideas of masculinity and femininity. It’s talking to them about the media. It’s talking to them about culture. For the most part, people would rather poke themselves in the eye with a fork than talk to their children about sex, but there are a whole bunch of conversations that radiate outward from that, which are just as crucial.
So what would this positive vision look like?
I think we have to help boys broaden their emotional repertoire so they have a broader sense of what it means to deal with disappointment, to deal with sadness. Boys funnel that whole bucket of emotions—betrayal, frustration, disappointment, sadness, fear—into anger. That’s what they learn from the time they are very little, from the get-go. They are in a more impoverished emotional environment than girls. And, when parents do talk to boys, they really narrow down the spectrum to happiness and anger. Is this all about sex? Not on the surface. But when you rob people of the ability to feel and express the whole range of human emotions in an appropriate way, you also undermine their ability to connect and have the kinds of relationships we want our boys to have. And, when they are disconnected from vulnerability and emotion, that plays into ideas about the culture of conquest. And it plays into having disconnected sexual interactions, on one end, and, at the far end, potential coercion and misconduct.