Also HN: No, not like that
If your comment is referring to the software company's exiting to provide a return to shareholders, that happens all the time whether it's venture-backed or privately owned. The owners of privately held bootstrapped companies still want an exit one day too.
As an open source software engineer who is now a venture capital investor, respectfully, I think your beef is with capitalism, not with the institutional investors.
Why not come out and say this?
Also another thing but other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699#46709164 points out how Vimeo wants to replace SV engineers with Italian engineers to save money.
They are a first and foremost private equity company, Don't forget. There's no loyalty to any group.
And yes, they in-house the engineering part, but the fact they are Italian is just because Bending Spoons is Italian and their offices are in Milan.
Bending Spoons pays its own engineers very well, an entry level junior position starts at 75k+ euros, which in Italy is a senior+ engineer salary.
This is not like making a small 20 person self funded company.
Me: can you take out the trash? My kid: dumps trash on the front lawn.
Me: people are speeding a lot, can we do something about it? Cops: shoots anyone speeding in the face.
But I guess I can't say anything about it, because they're just doing what I want!
So while individuals have different beliefs, the "average expected top comment" for communities like HN is usually pretty predictable, and hence the cognitive dissonance of the community on the whole can be called out.
Do you know other fallacies like this which are less known but as interesting (that you or others might know of) probably?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY
(I'm not.)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/private-equity-consolidation...
There are not more PE firms than McDonalds in the USA.
