World Eaters

How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy

By: Catherine Bracy

Narrated by: Catherine Bracy

A Next Big Idea Book Club March 2025 Must-Read

An urgent and illuminating perspective that offers a window into how the most pernicious aspects of the venture capital ethos is reaching all areas of our lives, into everything from healthcare to food to entertainment to the labor market and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

The venture capital playbook is causing unique harms to society. And in World Eaters, Catherine Bracy offers a window into the pernicious aspects of VC and shows us how its bad practices are bleeding into all industries, undermining the labor and housing markets and posing unique dangers to the economy at large. VC’s creates a wide, powerful wake that impacts the average consumer just as much as it does investors and entrepreneurs.

In researching this book, Bracy has interviewed founders, fund managers, contract and temp workers in the gig economy, and Limited Partners across the landscape. She learned that the current VC model is not a good fit for the majority of start-ups, and yet, there are too few options for early stage funding outside of VC dollars. And while there are some alternative paths for sustainable, responsible growth, without the help of regulators, there is not much motivation to drive investors from the roulette table that is venture capital.

World Eaters is an eye-opening account of the ways that the values of contemporary venture capital hurt founders, consumers, and the market. Bracy’s clear-eyed debut is a must-listen for fans of Winners Take All, Super Pumped, and Brotopia, an appealing “insider / outsider” perspective on Silicon Valley, and those who are fascinated to look under the hood and learn why the modern economy is not working for most of us.

©2025 Catherine Bracy (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“One of the most important and insightful books about venture capital I have ever read. A clear-eyed and illuminating examination of VC’s peril and possibility. Bracy's call to action to reimagine what VC can be is one we should all heed.”—Ro Khanna, Member of Congress from Silicon Valley and author of Dignity in a Digital Age

"World Eaters is a compelling account of the grift that so much of Silicon Valley VC has become, and a vision of what a more equitable and equity-enabling VC industry might look like."—Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media

“Persuasively demonstrates how VC’s prevalence has created a startup monoculture."—Bloomberg Business Week

Going down the VC rabbit hole

Loved this book. Had to get it in print so I could track all the data and quotes.