The rising dominance of private capital: How VC and private equity are taking over the economy 

Meet the Speakers

Location: The event will be held at Manny’s: 3092 16th Street San Francisco, CA 94103

Private capital, in the form of both private equity and venture capital, are playing an increasingly critical role in the economy. Now, as the Trump administration loosens rules preventing people from investing their 401(k)s in private capital, VC and PE are poised to bring all of the risk and hubris they are associated with much closer to the core of the American financial system. At the same time, the two are converging towards each other, with private equity investing in riskier startups and venture capital adopting the traditional PE roll-up strategy. 

Megan Greenwell and Catherine Bracy have written books about private equity and venture capital that broach these topics from the perspective of how PE (Greenwell) and VC (Bracy) affect the lives of everyday people. On September 9, they will be in conversation with each other about how these two critical elements of the financial system are evolving, overlapping, and producing more risk for society and the economy than ever before. 

Event Schedule

  • Doors open: 5:30 pm
  • Program: 6:30–7:30 pm
  • Reception/Book Signing: 7:30–9:00 pm
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About Bad Company

Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company tells the hidden story of private equity through the experiences of four American workers who watched as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and a tenant in a large apartment complex. In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Greenwell tells a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the  idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of one of America’s most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.

About World Eaters

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.

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-read 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.

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